The Italian Escape

A week ago, it was Easter like no other year, and the news of the famed opera singer Andrea Bocelli performing in an empty Duomo di Milano took me away to the wonderful week, five years ago, that my daughter and I spent in Italy before the pandemic brought death, depression and misery to this beautiful country so full of history, art and life. Bocelli’s concert was aptly named the Music of Hope, but to me it was the Music of a Glorious Past. So here I am trying to put together memories of the most wonderful holiday of my life.

“Going to Italy for a holiday…be very careful with your passports. Khushwant Singh lost his passport thrice in Rome and he was a very seasoned traveller.”

“Be careful with your bags…luggage is often misplaced or stolen.”

“Beware of pickpockets!”

“In the afternoons you will not be able to do anything..Italians are famous for their siesta.”

“Just the two of you will be travelling, mother and daughter and that too to Italy?Besides they don’t drink water, only wine and understand only Italian.”

“Italy is very crowded and congested…Venice is full of ‘nullahs’!”

I had already started having misgivings about my decision to go on a short holiday to Italy with my daughter. In fact, I had been making plans, checking out itineraries, reading books on Italy, talking to travel agents about customized holidays for a couple of years but for some reason or the other the trip was not materializing. When, finally, my plan fell in place and we were actually going that I started divulging details to friends and family and this was the kind of response I was getting. But there was no going back…so mother and daughter set out on a week’s tour of Roma-Firenze-Pisa -Venezia with a lot of trepidation in the hearts  and a chilling certainty that either passport or suitcase would be lost on the very day of their arrival. Our knowledge of the Italian language was restricted to ‘Ciao’ and ‘Cappuccino’ and so we imagined ourselves making our way through the streets of Rome and Venice like Shah Rukh in DDLJ!

Since it was a much awaited break we were sure of only one thing -no matter what happened we would enjoy! International flights, other than being longer, did not seem very different.  In fact, I was very impressed with the recently opened Mumbai’s T2 Terminal which I was seeing for the first time. As our flight was getting ready for the final descent to the Leonardo da Vinci Airport, we got an excellent aerial view of the Italian coastline with the beaches and the umbrella pines and it was then that my heart actually started racing! As our cab made way though the city of Rome to our hotel which was near the Termini Stazione I simply fell in love with Roma- the Eternal City…it was love at first sight!

The Eternal City

The hotel staff was simply excellent – from the moment we stepped in they were eager to help. Always pulling out maps, pointing our location, drawing directions but despite all their good efforts we managed to lose our way on the very first night while returning from a tour of Illuminated Rome. It was not exactly our fault…every cobbled lane looked the same with their identical houses, immaculate facades, pizzerias, cafeterias and gelaterias!

Rome is a city that exists in layers almost ‘like a lasagna’, an expression used by one of our guides. According to legend, Rome was founded by the twins Romulas and Remus ,  sons of a vestal virgin Rhea Silva and Mars , the God of War, on 21^st April 753 BC, on the very site where they had been suckled by a mother wolf. After the fall of Tarquin the Proud, the last of Rome’s seven Etruscan Kings, the Roman Republic was founded in 509 BC. After the assassination in 44 BC of Julius Caesar, the last of the Republic’s consuls and one of history’s greatest generals, who, as we all know, had to die for his ambition, Augustus became the first Roman Emperor. Rome, once the caput mundi, was burnt, built, attacked, routed, ransacked, only to be rebuilt. The Ancient Romans took their cue from the Greeks but to the Classical came the other influences- Byzantine, Gothic, the Naturalism of the Renaissance- followed by Mannerism and Baroque. The present Rome we see owes much to the 17^th century baroque masters Bernini and Borromini. Ancient Rome, with its Pantheon, Colosseum, Roman and Imperial Forum, co-exists with the marvels of the middle ages and the Renaissance – the basilicas and the churches, the Trevi fountain, the Fountain of Four  Rivers, the piazzas and the palazzos.

The Colosseum

The ancient blends so well into the modern that at times it leaves you completely wonderstruck – they are kind of interwoven. As the two of us stepped out of the Metro station, ready to ask for directions, there loomed before us the Colosseum. You are kind of struck by its immensity (the only other monument that has given me a similar feeling is our very own Taj Mahal). This two thousand year old massive ancient stadium, the Flavian Amphitheatre, could house 70000 spectators at a time and its stone walls were once covered by marble. Beautifully sculpted statues stood in its niches with a velarium or awning covering the arena to provide the spectators with shade. This was the arena where blood flowed to amuse the emperor and the pauper. Modern day ‘gladiators’ are today seen in its vicinity adjusting their helmets while talking on their mobile phones and posing for ‘selfies’ with tourists.

Walking along a narrow cobbled street, wondering how much further one has to go, you literally bang into the Pantheon- an architectural masterpiece constructed around 120 AD by Emperor Hadrian over Marcus Agrippa’s original temple in honour of all the Olympian Gods. Pope Boniface IV received it as a gift from the Byzantine emperor Phocas  and transformed it into  a church dedicated to Santa Maria ad Martyres, one of the most beautiful churches I have ever seen. This monument is a perfect blend of the pagan and the Christian.

Climbing up the Spanish Steps, as we look across the Piazza di Spagnia, we can see all the designer stores one can dream of… Prada, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Yves Saint Laurent. The house, where one of the greatest Romantic poets, John Keats, lived for a while before succumbing to tuberculosis at the age of twenty five, is also to be seen in this piazza. One century slides into another in one small square.

It was spring in Italy…beautiful flowers adorned the balconies and gardens… and no matter how much we walked (we were constantly losing our way but thanks to Google map navigation we managed to reach our destinations on time for the guided tours) we never felt sweaty or grimy and believe it or not the soles of my brand new pair of Nike looked as if I had worn them only indoors when I returned home after nine days. The cobbled sidewalks were so perfect you could drag your suitcases for miles without any problem. Picture perfect houses with wide windows and smart blinds lined the streets. Fountains in every piazza or monument allowed you to refill your bottles. The drivers actually stopped their cars to let you cross the road…something we have never experienced on our Indian roads. I was so impressed. Not a scratch on any monument, or any hearts drawn or names scribbled, not a bit of litter anywhere….how I wish we, too, could keep our roads and public places so clean. I guess it is necessary to take pride in one’s history, culture and country to be able to preserve it well. We are so particular not to drop a single piece of wrapper when we go outside our country and yet in our own city we do not hesitate to spit or throw any piece of junk anywhere.

A traditional Italian menu in a ristorante would include antipasta (appetizer), pasta, main course (primo secondo),  side dish(es) , salad, dessert(Frutti e dolci), caffe. Fortunately our stomachs being small and Euros being limited, one pizza (no concept of slices there…just one huge round thing that almost covered a table for two) or pasta or lasagna with a new dessert everyday kept us going and of course the most awesome breakfast that the hotels would serve… breads, scones, croissants, tarts, ham ,cheese, eggs…. Every day we experimented at a new trattoria or a pizzeria with some exotic mouthwatering pizza topping or a different variety of pasta. Yet I did not see a single plump Italian...except for their cherubic babies…you felt as if every person walking by you was Mr. Al Pacino. Even a mother, taking a toddler to a kindergarten, dressed in the trendiest of clothes, looked like Monica Bellucci. Anybody obese had to be a tourist!

Our early morning entry into the Vatican, breakfast in the Pigna or Pinecone Courtyard followed by a guided tour of Vatican Museums, the Sistine Chapel and the St. Peter’s Basilica was probably the best experience we had. Vatican City, the smallest state in the world, with its own flag, guards, radio station, newspaper, stamps, is also a member of the United Nations and other world organizations. Its head of state, the Pope, is also the head of the Catholic Church and the Bishop of Rome. Though it is the largest of the four patriarchal basilicas of Rome, St. Peter’s is not the official cathedral of the Diocese of Rome. That title goes to the Basilica of St. John (Basilica di San Giovanni in Lateran), which is the Mother and head of all churches of the city and the world, with the Pope as its bishop. In the Piazza di San Giovanni is the Scala Santa, the staircase that Jesus is said to have climbed in Pontius Pilate’s palace in Jerusalem at the time of his crucifixion. You are allowed to climb these 28 steps only on your knees.

Entering Vatican Museum as Michelangelo & Raphael keep watch

You cannot see the entire 7 km of the Vatican Museums in one trip but what we saw left us completely speechless. Raphael’s paintings only substantiated the epitaph we read on his tomb inside the Pantheon, “Here lies Raphael , by whom Nature feared to be outdone while he lived, and when he died, feared that she herself would die.” Such was the brilliance of an artist though he lived on this earth for only 37 years.

St. Peter’s Basilica was not built in days but took almost eighteen centuries. Though started under Emperor Constantine in 324 AD, its restructuring and rebuilding continued through several centuries. It owes its square to Bernini, its facade to Maderno and its cupola to Michelangelo. The 284 columns, each 15 m high, in  Bernini’s Square outside, set out in rows of four are arranged with such mathematical perfection that from certain points you do not see four columns one behind the other but just one column. Entering this basilica was like walking through the gates of paradise...as if the Book of Revelations had just been opened up before us. It was difficult to believe that it had all been created and perfected by mortals. Its main altar is as high as a ten storeyed building and each letter inscribed on its walls just below the dome is seven feet high. The innumerable tourists entering the basilica seemed like tiny specks. Seeing the “Pieta” it is difficult to believe that Michelangelo had done it when he was only twenty-four. In fact, even back then he had to inscribe his name on the sculpture so that people would believe it was his creation. What is even stranger about the complexities of the human mind is that an Australian tourist had once caused extensive damages to this sculpture by striking it with a hammer several times. Bernini’s 29 m high baldachin rises over the high altar supported by four golden spiral columns. The mosaics on the walls of the basilica, the tapestries and paintings we saw in the Vatican museums and, of course, the star attraction, Michelangelo’s frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel are beyond my capacity to describe. You honestly have to see to believe that they were done more than five hundred years ago. The frescoes on the ceiling, the theme being the history of mankind before the birth of Christ, took Michelangelo  four years to complete .Twenty five years later , when  he was almost sixty,  Michelangelo was commissioned by another Pope to paint the ‘Last Judgement’ on the wall in the extreme end of the Chapel.

St.Peter's Square with 284 columns & 140 statues of saints

Michelangelo's Pieta

The visit to Villa Borghese and its gardens was worth the miles and miles of walk. The collection of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, belonging to one of the most prominent families of Rome, left us completely spellbound. Paintings and sculptures we had only heard of or seen in pictures were all before us. Raphael, Bernini, Canova, Caravaggio were till then just names of famous artists or sculptors to us but what we saw have left an indelible impression on our minds. “What immortal hand or eye” could create such perfect human forms, capture such expressions and movements, and execute such breathtaking symmetry!

Roma to Florence by Eurail gives you the most glorious view of the Tuscan landscape in all its vibrant blues and greens. In fact, on our way from Florence to Pisa, we had an even more beautiful view of this region complete with the vineyards. The colourful houses were just like the ones we used to draw as kids with the rectangular walls, square windows on either side of a middle door, sloping roof and a chimney. Picture perfect!

After seeing St. Peter’s I had certainly not expected to see another cathedral that would leave me speechless but there it was , right before us, as we walked towards our hotel in Florence, the Duomo or Cathedral of Santa Maria di Fiore or Flower. This architectural wonder dominates Florence like ‘a mountain of marble topped by a giant ruby’. Then, there was Michelangelo’s David, the original being kept in the Galleria del Accademia and the replica in the Palazzo Vecchio. You truly have to see it to believe that such a sculpture could be sculpted out of the same block of Carrara marble in which two other artists had earlier tried but failed to carve anything and given up. It is, therefore, said that David was already in that block of marble and all Michelangelo did was to release him!! The Uffizi Gallery brought to life to innumerable paintings we had only heard of or seen in the pages of books like Botticelli’s ‘Spring’ , ‘ The Birth of Venus’, Leonardo’s “Annunciation’, Michelangelo’s ‘ Holy Family’ to mention only the most famous. From the Uffizi Gallery you get one the most amazing views of the River Arno. We have to remember that Florence was the city which had been the first to revisit the disused term ‘museum’, which for the ancient Greeks signified a space dedicated to the Muses. Apart from the Uffizi, which housed the administrative offices of the Medicis and whose topmost floor was made into an art gallery, Florence also gave the world its first open air museum ,which we saw near the Palazzo Vecchio. The Medicis, the bankers and lords of Florence for three centuries, were great patrons of art and collectors of antiquities. The last Medici bequeathed everything to the people of Florence on condition that nothing could ever go out of the city.

Brunelleschi's Dome

River Arno from the Uffizi Gallery

The Miracle Square of Pisa with its Cathedral, Baptistery, Bell tower is indeed a ‘miracle of miracles’. We had heard about the leaning tower of Pisa but never expected this Carrara marble tower to lean to such an extent… and it has been leaning from the time of its construction! No wonder the architect’s name, unlike that of any other monument, is not known. Climbing it is real fun.... you really have a problem with your centre of gravity…. and find yourself tilting too!

Miracle Square, Pisa

Venice was nothing short of a fairyland city. From the time you get off at the Santa Novella station and take the vaporetto (ferry) , a shuttle water bus, to reach the hotel it is a completely out of the world experience. St. Mark’s Basilica, St. Mark’s Square, the Doge’s Palace are all very beautiful….but I loved the walk we took with our Venetian guide through its narrow streets, its sotoportegos, campos, its innumerable bridges and canals. We saw the family house of Marco Polo in Sotoportego del Milion, which takes its name from his book Il Milione , based on his adventures in the Far East. The Grand Canal by day or night with the gondoliers serenading the passengers in their gondolas is unforgettable. Visit to the nearby islands of Murano, known for glass- blowing, Burano, famous for its lace and colourful houses and Torcello, famous for its tranquility and peace and the lone Byzantine cathedral standing on it, is a must. Ernest Hemingway had spent some time on this island writing ‘Across the River and into the Trees’. No prize for guessing what inspired him with the title of the book!

Torcello

As we bid goodbye to Venezia, always represented in paintings as a beautiful lady or a winged lion, and by Wordsworth described as “the eldest child of liberty”, we could not but help remember “Once did She hold the gorgeous East in fee/And was the safeguard of the West”

By now we could really boast of having enriched our Italian vocabulary much beyond the two words that we had started with. Italy had been unfolded to us by excellent guides, who were not only punctual, professional and extremely polite, but they really knew their subjects. We just loved the way they showed us everything…they took so much pride in their history and art. We owe much of the success of our trip to these beautiful, proud Roman, Florentine, and Venetian ladies and gentlemen who unraveled the mysteries of so many paintings, explained small nuances of many a sculpture and brought to life the rich history of the ancient ruins.

It was time to go back to the Marco Polo airport standing not on water, thankfully, but terra firma. We took our last ride together in the water- taxi and kept looking back at the receding coastline. Some hours later, we were jolted back to reality by the Turkish Airlines aircraft  making a rough landing on the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport tarmac – as if reminding us to get back to the daily grind. At last, my passport, which till date had been pulled out only for renewals, was stamped!

DS