Comments on: Neo in Rome

By: steve walsh

steve walsh — Mon, 03 Sep 2018 01:42:05 +0000

Rome, is seems, takes an approach similar to Boston when it comes to street signs, you are supposed to know where you are.

Btw, nice hat.

By: miklos000rosza

miklos000rosza — Sun, 02 Sep 2018 20:56:31 +0000

My favorite film, ever, is THE CONFORMIST, directed by Bertolucci, based on the novel by Alberto Moravia., starring Jean-Louis Trintignant and Dominique Sanda. I’m not so much a fan of other work by Bertolucci, but everything comes together perfectly here.

An excellent but not too well-known novel by an Italian author is THE DEVIL IN THE HILLS, by Cesare Pavese. Here he’s like an Italian F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Fitzgerald at his very best.

By: Kate

Kate — Sun, 02 Sep 2018 18:21:33 +0000

Mike K, relics of St. Mark have been returned to Egypt, and now reside in the Coptic Cathedral in Cairo. However, I think, by agreement, that St. Mark’s in Venice kept a bone or two, so St. Mark is now in both places.

By: Mike K

Mike K — Sun, 02 Sep 2018 14:42:11 +0000

I, too, (many years ago) found the really ancient stuff the best, and most of all I remember just strolling the Forum, amazed at its relatively small size and the compactness of the buildings;

I felt that way in Pompei, looking at the wheel ruts in the street.

By: Ralph Kinney Bennett

Ralph Kinney Bennett — Sun, 02 Sep 2018 12:38:33 +0000

Neo, I found myself wanting to touch my screen and lift the brim of that hat. I, too, (many years ago) found the really ancient stuff the best, and most of all I remember just strolling the Forum, amazed at its relatively small size and the compactness of the buildings; just drinking in the idea of all the voices that had been heard there; the personalities seen, the moments of history —small and large — that had transpired, the inscriptions carved and graffiti expunged, the morning greetings, the shouts by torchlight, the statues toppled and set aright, the pavement worn by millions of sandled and booted and bare feet; purpled nobles and Greek slaves. I remember standing for a moment and feeling so thankful that I had labored through and finally loved all the Latin I had taken in grade school, high school and college. I felt at once how long ago it had all been and yet, how all those centuries can collapse and seem so near and within the reach of the recollection of successive lifetimes. Thanks, Neo, for your ruminations and reports from Italy; they have been a tonic.

By: Mike K

Mike K — Sun, 02 Sep 2018 00:29:35 +0000

Venice has St Mark’s body in the basilica. They snuck it out of the Ottoman ruled Egypt under a cover of pork so the Muslims wouldn’t look under.

By: Waidmann

Waidmann — Sun, 02 Sep 2018 00:26:20 +0000

Being a Protestant and an amateur historian, what I found most interesting was the relics in Rome. I think the “audit trail” of most of the relics seems to be pretty reliable, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that most of them belonged exactly to whom they claimed to belong to. I was in one of the churches in Rome, and someone pointed out St. Luke’s head, stuck up on a shelf in one of the Alcoves there. It probably (or at least possibly) really is St. Luke’s head. I went to Malta about 15 years later, and visited a couple of churches there that claimed to have St. Paul’s hand and something else. It would be interesting to do DNA tests on all these relics of St. Paul and see if they were all donated by the same person.

At any rate, I also found Italy a fascinating place. I spent a total of 9 years in Europe with the US Army, and had occasion to visit a lot of territory. My wife and I found Italy among the most interesting, and visited it several times.

Waidmann

By: Mike K

Mike K — Sat, 01 Sep 2018 22:06:41 +0000

The first time we were there the Sistine was being redone and all was covered in scaffolding. I got to see it about ten years later.

By: Paul in Boston

Paul in Boston — Sat, 01 Sep 2018 21:23:46 +0000

I visited the Vatican long ago in the early 70s when I was young, ignorant, and unsophisticated. (I’m no longer young). There was no major problem with crowds and I was able to go at my own pace. The art works that I found stunning, outside the standard ones, were the huge maps of the world drawn within fifty years of Columbus, MichaelAngelo’s reconstruction of the ancient Greek statue the Laocoon of a father and his sons strangled by a huge snake, and the Stanza’s of Raphael in the Pope’s apartments. I went again a second day and did the tour backwards to be able to get to pieces I wanted to see again without walking the extra couple of miles required by doing the tour in order. No one cared or bothered me.

Neo and Trimegestus, the truth about the street signs in Boston is in between. There are no signs on the main drags, evah. Some of the side streets have them but they can be untrustworthy because they are obscured by other signs or foliage, or they may just point the wrong way. The city just moved our street sign, which had been behind both a telephone pole and a bus stop sign for years. As the locals say, If you don’t know where you are, you should’nt be here.

By: Les

Les — Sat, 01 Sep 2018 20:44:09 +0000

My family and I took a tour of the Vatican which I believe are supposed to generally last about two hours. A man on the tour didn’t feel well after we walked a bit so our guide led us all to an entrance where he could leave. This, combined with the guide’s enthusiasm, caused the tour to last a little short of five hours. I enjoyed the extra time. We went through the Sistine Chapel twice. But what interested me most of all was the guide’s enthusiasm. He marveled at all the people coming to enjoy the art, the commonality that enabled the different nationalities, different cultures to be awed by what we saw – the common humanness we all shared.