What Lies Below: Capuchin Monks and Necropoli of Tarquinia

After spending time in the beautiful Protestant Cemetery we headed to a different corner of the city to see how the Capuchin monks are interred at Santa Maria della Concezione. Here grotesque art lines the walls and ceilings. Human bones, those of devout former Capuchin monks, form the mosaics. But the effect, despite the material of their construction, while austere and solemnifying, is not at all repulsive. It was with great interest that we peered at each room, inside a rather unassuming looking building. They asked us not to take pictures, and we obliged, but you really have to see it for yourself anyway.

We then headed north out of Rome to visit the Necropoli of Tarquinia. We arrived in the late afternoon, and had the place nearly to ourselves. Tarquinia is the site of an Etruscan cemetery, where each of the tombs date from around the 6th and 7th centuries BC. Each tomb consists of a room carved out of the rock of the hill. a winding path leads from tomb to tomb, descend a set of steps through a little stucco entryway, and peer through glass into the rooms painted with nearly Roman figures. The quality and complexity of the murals vary with the rooms age, and show a variety of scenes from Etruscan life.

Before leaving we picked up a small bronze replica statue, like those many Etruscan works we had seen at museums throughout our trip, a memento of yet another culture which once inhabited this country. We returned to Rome for an early start on our last day in Italy.

Ancient Ruins Modern Remains

After seeing what Vatican City had to offer, we leapt a little further back in time to the Roman era, when we went to visit the Baths of Caracalla. The baths are in relatively poor condition, but the towering bits of wall, and broken fragments of mosaic floor that do remain, are enough to impart the general idea of the scale of these baths, if not their opulence. Caracalla makes the well preserved baths we visited in Pompeii seem quaint, in terms of scale. We wandered the ruins, identifying the various areas of the baths based on the wikipedia information we had. It is hard to imagine, as with the Coliseum, the marble walls and various decorations which must have once covered the bare brick that remains today. What is even more difficult to grasp in my mind is the engineering complexity of the baths. I want nothing more, after seeing the ruins, than to see a functioning replica of one of these baths. Preferable life size, but a scale model would do.

From Roman times back to the future, and a visit to Rome's Protestant Cemetery was next on our todo list.  The cemetery is easy enough to find, thanks to the prominent Pyramid which marks the grave of Caius Cestius, which well predates the Protestant Cemetery having been built around 15 BC. The Cemetery is all surrounded by a wall,

and through the gate is a surprising green landscape scattered with headstones of every type. Lounging in the pools of light amidst the greenery and blooms, was the odd cat, another sanctuary. The whole place has the feel, not of a burial ground, but of some secret garden. After the hordes of tourists at the Vatican, this place was purely abandoned. We had it to ourselves.

Besides a few interesting headstones, and the beautiful mourning angel, the cemetery is most well known for two of its residents, and their sidelong buried friends. The first of these is Percy Bysshee Shelley, who's wife penned Frankenstein, and who himself was an accomplished poet. My own favorite poem of his, and probably the best
known, is Ozymandias. He lies buried next to Edward John Trelawney, whose name I only noticed at the time because of one of Harry Potter's professors. But, as it turns out, Trelawney was a friend of Shelley, and when Shelly died in a boating accident in Italy, Trelawney was at the cremation, and took Shelley's heart, to give to Mary Shelley which she kept in a box until her death.

In a corner of the walled cemetery is the grave of John Keats, with its famous epitaph "Here lies one whose name was writ in water", but that's not all there is to the story. A friend of Keats, who was there with him through the final stages of his tuberculosis, abided by Keats's wishes by placing the epitaph , but not Keats's name on the tomb. This man, Joseph Severn used a sort of loop hole in Keats's dying wishes, and wrote a good deal more on that headstone instead. In full, it reads: This Grave, contains all that was Mortal, of a YOUNG ENGLISH POET, Who, on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his Heart, at the Malicious Power of his Enemies, Desired these words to be Engraven on his Tomb Stone Here Lies One Whose Name was writ in Water. Feb 24th 1821. That same year, Percy Shelley, a friend, wrote Adonais in honor of Keats. But still, the story does not quite end there. In 1879, Joseph Severn died, and was buried next to Keats. As a final  honor to the dead poet, Severn's tombstone names the young English poet he is buried next to. Severn's inscription begins: To the memory of Joseph Severn, devoted friend and death-bed companion of John Keats, whom he lived to see numbered among the immortal poets of England.

Basilica di San Pietro

The first thing that you will notice about Saint Peter's is that is it large. It is massive. It is difficult to really photograph this. The curved colonnades that reach around the plaza  like a pair of gargantuan arms to gather you in are hard to grasp in return. The Piazza within these arms is filled with row upon row of chairs, presumably for services here. The people are routed along the right hand side, through security. Be sure to cover your shoulders and knees. Immodesty is frowned on here. You may be able to buy a pair of paper pants if necessary, but the cost is not so modest.

There are nuns and tourists here. there are Swiss guards here and there. We wandered first through the Vatican grotto, beneath the church, where many of the popes are buried. Our visit fell only a few years after the death of Pope John Paul II, and the passageway was crowding with people, several of whom wept quietly in the dimly lit, low ceiling hall. We did not linger long, feeling a little too out of place, too much like a tourist at a funeral, and headed into the church itself.

Because everything is on a grand scale, it is hard to really feel it without other people for scale. Those cherubs are nearly as large as adults. The statues in the nooks are really Goliaths.

Everything in the rich hue of various marbles. Through the years of its construction, the hands of many designed its various structures, most famously Michaelangelo.

It is one of Michaelangelo's own works, the Pieta, which is the most famous piece of sculpture within the church. Christ's body, draped across the lap of his mother, the statue is highly finished and highly detailed. Like David, the Pieta is protected behind a barrier, because someone once took a hammer to it.

Overall I think the vastness of the church is decreased by its decoration, making the structure itself less imposing than, for instance, the austere interior of the Koln Cathedral. However, the greater detail does make it perhaps more interesting to explore and contemplate.