C'è Roma e Roma - English Version -: luglio 2014

giovedì 24 luglio 2014

Marforio: from the Roman Empire to the Oscar night

C'è Roma e Roma keeps on writing about the "City Talking statues" known as "The Congregation of Wits",classical monuments where the Romans posted satirical verses against the politicians (such as nobles families).

The best friend of Pasquino (C'è Roma e Roma wrote an article about it) is "Marforio", a marble statue from the I B.C., today settled in the yard of Palazzo Nuovo (in English: New Palace), a building which is part of Capitoline Museum.
The sculpture represents a reclining bearded man holding a shell on its hand; this iconography allows to identify it as a river god or the Tiber.
According to the tradition, the name Marforio is a corruption of the Latin inscription "mare in foro" (in English: the sea in the Forum) which decorated a circular basin discovered in the Forum, near the statue.
Another theory explains that the term Marforio comes from the Marfuoli family that lived near the Forum.
In 1558 Pope Sixtus V ordered to move the sculpture to piazza San Marco, where Giacomo Della Porta planned a fountain using Marforio as a decoration; but in XVII century it was relocated in the yard of Palazzo Nuovo.
The basin was used as drinking trough until 1816 when became part of the Dioscuri Fountain, set opposite the Quirinal Palace.
One of the most famous dialogue between Marforio and Pasquino is an invective against Napoleon; indeed during the French invasion of Italy someone posted on the statue a satyric sheet about the French general, accusing him to steal Italian artworks.
(The Italian dialogue is hard to translate in English. It is a play on words in Roman dialect using the verb "steal" and the surname "Bonaparte").
Today Marforio is famed thanks to the Oscar Movie "The Great Beauty" by Paolo Sorrentino.
The international poster is a brilliant photomontage representing the colossal statue behind the main character Jep Gambardella, dressed like a perfect and bored dandy.

Marforio (Palazzo Nuovo)

International poster of "The Great Beauty"

mercoledì 2 luglio 2014

Circus Maximus

From the gladiators to The Rolling Stones. Circus Maximus is getting one of the most famous archaeological site in the world.
Today we can only see an huge green elliptical expanse, but in the past it was an ancient stadium for Roman chariots racing and public games sponsored by Emperors.
The site was 600 m in length and 200 m in width, accommodating up to 300,000 spectators.
According to the legend, the valley housed the mythical episode of the "Rape of the Sabine women”, in Italian “Ratto delle Sabine” (e.d.: in this context the word rape is wrong, it is better using the word kidnapping), described by Tito Livio.
Romolus, the founder of the city, decided to populate it kidnapping the wives of Sabini people, which were settled in the centre of

Italy

; so Romans organized a ceremony in honour of Conso, a god of wheat, inviting them and abducting their women.
The husbands declared war to Rome, but the women, who had reached civil rights and goods, forced them to accept the peace deal.
In VII B.C. Tarquinius Priscus, the fifth king of Rome coming from the Etruria (a central region of Italy which included part of Tuscany, Lazio and Umbria), created the archaeological site, ordering to reclaim a valley called “Murcia" valley.
According to Livio, the word "Murcia" came from a Roman Genius which had a temple between Aventine and Palatine hills where Circus Maximus was built.
In the II B.C. Julius Caesar planned a masonry structure and few years ago Emperor Augustus moved there the Ramses III Egypztian obelisk, which today is in piazza del Popolo.
In the following centuries Costanzo II transferred there also the obelisk of Tutmes III, now settled in piazza San Giovanni in Laterano (C’è Roma e Roma wrote a post about it).
The area changed thanks various Emperors such as Tiberius, Nero, Titus, Domitian and Trajan.
The last two gave to the Circus the actual look.
In the Middle Ages Circus Maximus became a rural and fortified area of Frangipane, a Roman patrician family.
There is a little tower who belongs to that period and it is called "Torre della Moletta" because of its proximity to a mill, which used the water of river Saint John, diverted from Aniene river.
According to the tradition, in 1223 this tower houses Saint Francis of Assisi, friend of Iacopa dei Normanni (a member of Frangipane family).
These buildings were destroyed in 1943, under the fascist dictatorship, and today we can only guess its original project.