Monday, January 31, 2011
Special Places
Dear All: By now, Rome had become somewhat more familiar and hopefully, you have had more opportunity to explore the city. Has any particular space or set of buildings truly tantalized your visual senses? Will this space or set of buildings be your special place in Rome.....by February 7th, please describe this special place or places, and tell us why it has tantalized your visual senses....please include photos or drawings. Please use the blog for your responses. Thanks, stuck in the snow here in Philadelphia. Brigitte
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For my space in the city I picked the Piazza di San Pietro. I picked it partly because it is my favortie piazza in the city, and partly because I walk through it at least twice a day on my way to and from school. The first time I encountered Saint Peters was in exactly the way Bernini planned, by emerging from a warren of dark narrow streets in to the open, airy square. Since then I have experienced it at almost all times of day and night. My favorite part of the square is the subtle use of elevation to create a powerful procession towards Saint Peter's and guide people around the square. It creates a tension to the space that would be otherwise very flat and numbingly symmetrical.
ReplyDeleteBridget, can you make us admins on this blog so we can post new entries. As followers we can only coment on posts and cannot post pictures or sketches in comments.
The piazza I am choosing for the semester is Piazza del Popolo. From my first explorations of the city I was most impressed by the volume and energy of this square, and upon several more visits I am continuing to find most and vantage points of the square that captivate me. From above and below the square offers perspectives of itself within the city, and the people within the square. The energy of Piazza del Popolo comes from the bottleneck that occurs at the termination of Via Flaminia where several larger streets and several public transportations nodes occur at the city’s ancient gate. This gate funnels countless people directly into the square where they are greeted with and immense volume of space to dilute them. This creates an ideal zone for inconspicuous people watching.
ReplyDeleteThe square is very diverse. It intrigues me both day and night and is crowded with both locals and tourists. The square becomes a place to make sense of a both chaotic and beguiling city while at the same time it offers a bridge between the dense medieval city and the more ordered more modern streets of northern Rome.
Piazza Trilussa/ Ponte Sisto/ Fiume Tevere
ReplyDeleteBack at home, I enjoy running outside to clear my mind and to stay active. Here in Rome there are beautiful parks to run and enjoy the nice weather. My realtor suggested a few parks but also mentioned the Tiber River as a nice place to run. Walking to the river I found a nice piazza near Trastevere called Piazza Trilussa. It includes a fountain and a small square where people often use as a meeting place. Across from the piazza is a pedestrian bridge, Ponte Sisto. The bridge is usually packed with people walking to meet someone in the square, enjoying the view of the river, playing music, walking dogs, or running to catch a bus on the other side of the river. Steps down to the river also stem from either side of Ponte Sisto, taking me from the busy chaos of the piazza and bridge to a quite although smelly place to run. The place I’ve chosen encompasses both the activity of Piazza Trilussa and Ponte Sisto as well as the transition down into the peaceful Fiume Tevere. This place offers much for me to observe and enjoy before I begin my run.
Even though the lively streets of Rome present me with so many different places that I have already grown attached to, I really take pleasure in being able to retreat into a nice, quiet church every once in awhile. One church in particular has served me with a special places that I know that I can always return to if I ever need to clear my head; the Church of the Gesu, or the Chiesa del Gesu. At first glance, this church may not seem so special, but what I loved most about it was the colorful mural on the ceiling that just seemed to come to life. In addition, and the very center of the church is a slanted mirror that allows you a closer and more personal view of the mural. This monument truly amazed me, and it was a way of connecting with the ceiling in which i had never experienced before. I stayed in the church for an hour, because someone had told me that a light show would play there every day at 5:30pm. But sadly, there was no light show. So i just sat in on of the piers relaxing, lit a candle, and left with high hopes of seeing that light show while I'm here!
ReplyDeleteBy the way, this is Julie. I don't know why my name didn't show up last time I commented. Sorry!
I chose the riverside in front of the school. It's not a piazza but it was my first taste of raw Italy and I'd like to continue to watch the local atmosphere. Many of us fail to notice it on our way to and from class. The boats lining the shore are actually restaurants and small service boats that are helping to clear the debris from the Tiber high waters.
ReplyDeleteMany old couples enjoy going to the shore to chat with the boatmen about the weather and how their gardens will grow based on the rain season....It's their personal version of the farmers almanac. Younger groups of people seem to go to hide away, aimlessly wandering....
I love this place because one goes to a Piazza to be around people...But at the riverfront, you go to be alone. To have a quiet moment and you end up finding five others that are looking for the exact same thing. In a place where one usually goes to withdraw from others, you always have good company.
While there are many places throughout the city that I find interesting, the one I enjoyed the most is Villa Doria Pamphilj. It is located west of Trastevere and provides somewhat of a polar opposite to the hustle and bustle of the rest of the city. It is very calm and peaceful there. The roads that surround it are muffled by the vegetation to the point that the city becomes nonexistent. You begin to forget that you are in a city at all, that is until you emerge into a vast open space. There is one of these spaces in particular that I found amazing. After walking through a grove of trees I entered an open field. It was different than others at the park because of the lack of people that in habited it. Elsewhere children were playing, dogs were running around and people were sitting and enjoying the scenery and sunshine. But here it was quiet. The few people that inhibited the large space kept to themselves and didn’t seem to affect the secluded feel of the space. Off in the distance one can see the city rising above the tree line and blocking Mother Nature from outreaching any further. I have been told that up until the past few centuries, Rome did not take over the natural habitat as it does now. However in the last century specifically, housing has covered the green space that existed. This place allow one to get a taste of Rome past in the present. It allows you to sit down and take a breath of fresh air without moped whizzing by filling the air with exhaust. While I have spent the past 4 years living in Philadelphia, I previously lived in the “county” were it is not difficult to find yourself surrounded by Mother Nature. This place helped me to feel at home while I am abroad in a foreign city. It was comforting to be able to lay back, relax and see the canopies of trees, birds flying and a blue sky without that image being clouded by the noise and pollution of our man made landscape.
ReplyDeleteThe spot in the city that has become special to me is piazza Santa Maria. One of the reasons why it stands out to me is its proximity to my apartment. It is about 100 meters outside my front door and I am able to pass by it every day. The piazza sits in the middle of a tangle of winding streets and paths and is a welcome relief to the congestion. So, it is a common gathering and meeting place. As a result, it becomes a very lively spot for people to gather and sit. There are children running around and playing while people come to visit its marvelous church during the day. At night there are students walking around and sitting at the base of its beautiful fountain as they have a drink and listen to the musicians filling the space with their music. The piazza is a marvelous magnetic space in Trastevere but Rome is full of places like this. The thing that makes it most interesting to me is the way it belongs to the community and for a while I am part of that community and in a way it feels like my piazza.
ReplyDeleteA special place to me that I discovered my first week here, but only recently entered is the Trionfale Market. Roman culture revolves so much around food, and I feel like this is the epitome of an important gathering space in Rome. Inside the market there are countless stands filled with food I love, as well as some things that I have never seen or heard of before. There are larges crowds of fast talking Italians ordering slices of meat, balls of mozzarella cheese, and whole fish. This place is extremely tantalizing to me, not just because my favorite thing to do is to peruse a grocery store and discover new things, but also because of the dynamic scents and extreme visuals like vats of wine and entire boar heads. Before learning to order quantities of meats and cheeses, the market was just a tease every time I walked by. I am very much looking forward to spending mornings there observing the Italians in such a rich atmosphere, perusing the isles, and ordering produce correctly.
ReplyDeleteThe spot that i have chosen is the Campo de fiori. During the week, both local Italians and foreigners crowd the piazza, which functions as a food and flower market. The imposing statue of Giordano Bruno overlooks the movement and energy present in the piazza. Its interesting to see the interactions that people have here, which understandably revolve around commerce. I enjoy how at one end someone could be enjoying an espresso, where midway through people could be talking about the most recent Burlesconi scandal, and at the outer edges a market vendor could be collecting water from the fountain to wet the plants that he intends to sell. On the weekends, the piazza quiets down during the day, waiting to explode into a noisy furor at night. It becomes a more touristy place at this time, where the native italians disappear and a host of english speaking travellers come to have a good time. Tall propane furnaces light the way and provide warmth which allows for festivities to move from the inside of the surrounding buildings to outside into the central piazza. The spilling of people outside facilitates a more dynamic experience that isnt limited by the time of day, season or even the weather.
ReplyDeletePiazza di San Pietro is a constantly evolving place. Each time of day and type of weather affects the crowd's size and pace. With the steady approach of the tourist season upon us, the piazza's overall feeling has already begun to change into a destination. This is very different from the tranquil piazza that I have come to know and understand.
ReplyDeleteThis past weekend, a line wrapped around most of the open area, dominating the space and changing the dynamic. With this in mind, I try to interact with tourists. I offer to take pictures and look how people want to remember the space. Where they stand and how they interact with each other gives insight into what the sacred space means for them.
After all, many tourists will experience this place only once in their lives. Seeing them in that experiential moment puts my daily commute through San Pietro into perspective.
The location that has captured my interest is Piazzale delgi eroi. This is located directly on the path that I take to school every morning. As a pedestrian, I was intimidated by the stampede of traffic flying by me as I traversed from one pedestrian "island" to the next.
ReplyDeleteTranslated directly as Heroes' Square, this piazza conjoins 5 large avenues in a complex series of curved roads organized around a round-about. In the center of this round-about is a large fountain that can be seen from any corner of the piazza.
Around the perimeter of the piazza is a set of buildings with varying architectural styles and uses. With a quick glance one can notice residential and commercial areas alongside street vendors and even a public school.
I have chosen this piazza because it initially seems to only be a pedestrian hazard, but with a little observation it proves to not just be an ordinary vehicular intersection.