LEGENDS OF ROME!

The Rape of the Sabine Women

is an episode in the legendary history of Rome in which the first generation of Roman men acquired wives for themselves from the neighboring Sabine families. The English word "rape" is a conventional translation of Latin raptio, which in this context means "abduction" rather than its prevalent modern meaning of sexual violation. Recounted by Livy and Plutarch (Parallel Lives II, 15 and 19), it provided a subject for Renaissance and post-Renaissance works of art that combined a suitably inspiring example of the hardihood and courage of ancient Romans with the opportunity to depict multiple figures, including heroically semi-nude figures, in intensely passionate struggle. Comparable themes from Classical Antiquity are the Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs and the theme of Amazonomachy, the battle of Theseus with the Amazons. A comparable opportunity drawn from Christian scripture was the Massacre of the Innocents. 
The Rape is supposed to have occurred in the early history of Rome, shortly after its founding by Romulus and his mostly male followers. Seeking wives in order to found families, the Romans negotiated unsuccessfully with the Sabines, who populated the area. Fearing the emergence of a rival society, the Sabines refused to allow their women to marry the Romans. Consequently, the Romans planned to abduct Sabine women. Romulus devised a festival of Neptune Equester and proclaimed the festival among Rome's neighbours. According to Livy, many people from Rome's neighbours attended, including folk from the Caeninenses, Crustumini, and Antemnates, and many of the Sabines. At the festival Romulus gave a signal, at which the Romans grabbed the Sabine women and fought off the Sabine men. The indignant abductees were soon implored by Romulus to accept Roman husbands.
Livy is clear that no sexual assault took place. On the contrary, Romulus offered them free choice and promised civic and property rights to women. According to Livy, Romulus spoke to them each in person, "and pointed out to them that it was all owing to the pride of their parents in denying the right of intermarriage to their neighbours. They would live in honourable wedlock, and share all their property and civil rights, and—dearest of all to human nature—would be the mothers of free men."

IF YOU ARE PLANNING TO VIST FLORENCE, THIS IS THE PERFECT PLACE FOR LUNCH: NERBONE AT ST.LORENZO FOOD MARKET!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A MAP OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

TODAY YOU CAN WALK AMONG THE STREETS AND PALACES WHERE THE EMPERORS THAT RULED THE WORLDS MOST FAMOUS EMPIRE WALKED!

ARCH OF TITUS

The Arch of Titus is a 1st-century honorific arch located on the Via Sacra, Rome, just to the south-east of the Roman Forum. It was constructed in c.82 AD by the Roman Emperor Domitian shortly after the death of his older brother Titus to commemorate Titus' victories, including the Siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

The Arch of Titus has provided the general model for many of the triumphal arches erected since the 16th century—perhaps most famously it is the inspiration for the 1806 Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France, completed in 1836.

 

 

MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO

GAIUS JULIUS CAESAR

Gaius Julius Caesar

Gaius Julius Caesar - Julius Caesar, the father of the Roman Empire, was the most critical element of the transformation of Rome into an empire.  Julius Caesar sayings,  1.) “It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life.” 2.) "Cowards die many times before their actual deaths.” 3.) “I came, I saw, I conquered.” 4.) “The die is cast.” 5.) “I would rather be first in a small village in Gaul than second in command in Rome."

La chiesa di San Luigi dei Francesi  -  The Church of St. Louis of the French  1518 and 1589

The church's most famous item is, however, the cycle of paintings in the Contarelli Chapel, painted by the Baroque master Caravaggio in 1599-1600 about the life of St. Matthew. This include the three world-renowned canvases of The Calling of St Matthew, The Inspiration of Saint Matthew, The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew.

The Patriarchal Basilica of St. Mary Major reigns as an authentic jewel in the crown of Roman churches. Its beautiful treasures are of inestimable value, and represent the Church's role as the cradle of Christian artistic civilization in Rome. For nearly sixteen centuries, St. Mary Major has held its position as a Marian shrine par excellence and has been a magnet for pilgrims from all over the world who have come to the Eternal City to experience the beauty, grandeur and holiness of the basilica.  One of the Four Basilica's of Rome.

SECRETS AND MYSTERIES IN ROME. ALTERNATIVE ITINERARIES - PART 2

 

 

SECRETS AND MYSTERIES IN ROME. ALTERNATIVE ITINERARIES - PART 2

SAINT YVES AT THE SAPIENZA

One of Borromini's masterpieces. Pope Urban VIII Barberini, asked him in 1632 to complete the Sapienza palace, the seat of the university and today... housing the National Archives, with a church dedicated to Saint Yves.

The church, one of the most elegant in Rome, has a wealth of symbolic elements starting from its triangular shape, built on the seal of Solomon which together with parts of the circle forms the figure of a bee. The interior of the Church, with its diffuse whiteness, is regarded as one of the finest expressions of the Roman Baroque.

Borromini was forced to adapt his design to the already existing palace. He choose a plan resembling a star of David, and merged the facade of the church with the courtyard of the palace. The dome, with its corkscrew lantern, is remarkable in its novelty. The complex rhythms of the interior have a dazzling geometry to them. It is a rational architecture- intricate to view, but on paper the overlap of a circle on two superimposed equilateral triangles creates a basis for a hexagonal array of chapels and altar in a centralized church. The undulations, both concave and convex of the interiors, create a jarring yet stunning appeal. The decoration is a mixture of novel organic (six-winged cherubic heads) and geometric (stars). Rising along the base of three of the dome's pillars are the symbol of the papal Chigi family, the "six mountain beneath a star".

The main artwork of the interior is the altarpiece by Pietro da Cortona, portraying St. Yves.

SECRETS AND MISTERY IN ROME. ATERNATIVE ITINEARIES - PART 1

SECRETS AND MISTERY IN ROME. ATERNATIVE ITINEARIES - PART 1

THE BASILICA OF ST. CLEMENTE

One of the very oldest in Rome, it was built towards the end of the 4th century AD and was dedicated to St. Clement, the third Pope after St. Peter.... The interior ratains a medieval aspect, with 2 aisles and a central nave, terminating in three apses, ancient columns with ionic capitals and a Cosmateque pavement. In the central apse a marvellous mosaic is preserved, depicting the crucified Christ between the Virgin and St John the Evangelist.

From the sacristy there is the access to the lower palaeo-Christian basilica, built at the end of the 4th century AD.
In the subsoil it is possible to approach mithraeum, built over the remains of 2nd-century houses and composed by 3 rooms. The first 2act as a vestibule and a Mithraic school. From the vestibule can be seen the room for worship properly so called, where the mystical banquet for those initiated into the cult of Mithras was served.
In the centre there is a marble altar decorated on all four sides with reliefs depicting the god Mithras slaying a bull, two torchbearers, cautes and Catopates, symbolizing sunrise and sunset, and a serpent. The third one is the mithraeum itself in the shape of a cavern, the typical place of the Mithraic religion, with Mithras sacrificing the bull.

TINTORETTO AT "PALAZZO ESPOSIZIONI"

JACOPO ROBUSTI (or CANAL), better known as TINTORETTO (1519-1594), is the only key Italian 16th century painter not to have had a major monographic exhibition devoted to his work to date. If we ignore the thematic exhibition of his portraits held in Venice in 1994, the last exhibition of the great Venetian master's work was held in 1937, due among other reasons to the sheer physical impossibility of shifting the large canvases that he painted in Venice
The exhibition at the Scuderie del Quirinale is part of a broader programme designed to explore the work of those artists who have helped to make the story of art in our country so unique and so grandiose, ranging from Botticelli to Antonello da Messina, from Bellini to Caravaggio and, more recently, to Lorenzo Lotto and Filippino Lippi.
This exhibition, focusing on the three main themes that distinguish Tintoretto's work: religion, mythology and portraiture, is strictly monographic and will be divided into sections comprising a handful of carefully selected and unquestioned masterpieces, beginning and ending with his two celebrated self-portraits of himself as a young man, from the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and as an old man, from the Louvre. Even though he was in competition with Titian, his contemporaries yet recognized his "utterly exquisite eye in portraiture", and some of his most famous portraits from leading international collections will be on display here in Rome.Also on display will be the spectacular Miracle of the Slave painted in 1548 for the Scuola Grande di San Marco, a work that allowed him to grab the limelight as one of leading lights of the Venetian art scene, while the exhibition closes with The Deposition (1594) from the Monastry of San Giorgio Maggiore, possibly the last work in which it is possible to identify the hand of the master. Other famous works on show will include what is considered to be one of his first acknowledged paintings, Jesus Among the Doctors (1542) lent by the Milan Cathedral's Diocesan Museum, and such celebrated masterpieces as the Madonna of the Treasurers and the Stealing of the Dead Body of St. Mark, both from the Gallerie dell’Accademia, and the St Mary of Egypt and the St Mary Magdalen from the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. Visitors will also have the privilege of being able to witness the unprecedented and spectacular juxtaposition of the Last Supper from the Venetian church of San Trovaso with another version of the same subject, from the church of San Polo, painted five years later to celebrate one of the Scuole del Sacramento's favorite themes.

Alongside the large canvases with their dramatic impact and their tense, rapid brushwork, visitors will also be able to inspect the artist's intense historical and mythological works, charged with emotion, including, for example, the octagonal panels depicting Apollo and Daphne and Deucalion and Pyrrha, two of the fourteen made in 1541 for the ceiling of Casa Pisani and now in the Galleria Estense in Modena, or the splendid Susanna and the Elders from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
A major innovation at this exhibition is the commentary in the shape of texts in each room penned by Melania Mazzucco, a writer who has devoted numerous novels to, and written unforgettable pages on, Tintoretto and his circle. Her narrative will accompany visitors step by step, room by room, from the beginning to the end of the show.
This deliberately small exhibition comprises some 40 paintings (accompanied by a section devoted to the artistic environment contemporary with the Venetian master), all of the highest quality and on loan from leading international museums and collections, offering visitors a tight but extremely significant overview of the artistic career of Jacopo Tintoretto: that ‘tireless manual labourer’ as his fellow Venetian and art critic Boschin called him once and for all, ‘but without intending in any way to demean him’, as the great art critic Roberto Longhi pointed out, describing him in his turn as ‘a natural genius, a great inventor of dramatic tales that unfold in a choreography of vibrant light and shade... an endlessly entertaining performance.’

Tintoretto
25 February - 10 June 2012
Full price € 10.00
Reduced price € 8.50

Sunday to Thursday 10:00am to 8:00pm
Friday and Saturday 10:00am to 10:30pm
Admission is allowed until one hour before closing time.

Information and reservations +39 06 39967500 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting            +39 06 39967500      

"Salvador Dalì“ Exhibition in Roma, from 9th of March 2012 to 1st of July 2012

"Salvador Dalì“
Exhibition in Roma, from  9th of March 2012 to 1st of July 2012

Exhibition in Roma: Joan Mirò from 16 March to 10 June 2012

Exhibition in Roma: Joan Mirò from 16 March to 10 June 2012
Chiostro del Bramante, Arco della Pace, 5 00186 Roma

ROMANLICIOUS: RECIPE OF THE DAY

BUCATINI GRICIA STYLE

This might be the easiest pasta dish to make!
Ingredients
1 lb bucatini pasta
5 oz guanciale (Italian unsmoked bacon), diced
4 Tbsp pecorino romano cheese, grated
Freshly ground black pepper

Cook the pasta in plenty of salted boiling water. In the meantime, in a saucepan over medium heat sauté the guanciale until nice and golden. When the pasta is al dente, drain it and reserve about ¼ cup of the cooking water. Toss the pasta over the guanciale, add the cheese, some freshly ground black pepper, and the reserved starchy water. Give a quick stir and serve!

Tips
Pasta alla gricia is supposed to come from the town of Grisciano near Rome. The absence of tomatoes indicates its ancient origins: pasta alla gricia was eaten before tomatoes were introduced to Europe from South America.

Bucatini are like thick spaghetti with a transversal hole inside. Buco means hole in Italian.

The traditional recipe calls for guanciale, a kind of Italian unsmoked bacon (actually, cured and unsmoked pig jowl).

GOOD DEAL FOR SHOPAHOLIC

FOR ALL THE SHOPAHOLIC WE SUGGEST TO TAKE A LOOK NEARBY THE HOTEL: AMAZING SHOPS WITH AMAZING PRICES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

VIEWS FROM OUR ROOFTOP TERRACE: VITTORIANO

The enormous white marble monument located in Piazza Venezia was built as a tribute to the first King of a united Italy, Victor Emmanuel II.

after his army joined forces with Garibaldi and defeated the papal army, the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in 1861 with Victor Emmanuel as King.

Winged Lion Statue

Construction

In 1885 construction of the monument started after a design by Giuseppe Sacconi. The site on the northern slope of the capitoline hill was cleared to make way for the monument. Roman ruins and medieval churches were destroyed in the process. In 1911, at the 50th anniversary of the new kingdom, the new symbol of a united Italy was inaugurated.

The Corridor

The monument, also known as 'Il Vittoriano' consists of a large flight of stairs leading to the Altar of the Nation, dominated by a colossal 12m long equestrian statue of the King. At the foot of the statue is the tomb of the unknown soldier, guarded by two sentries of honor. The monument is rounded off with a long corridor featuring 15m/50ft high columns. On top of the corridor are two bronze quadrigae, each with a winged Victory.

Views

View from Il Vittoriano

Tthe Victor Emmanuel monument has been given nicknames such as 'typewriter' and 'wedding cake'.

The monument is well worth the visit, if only for the great views from the top. The top of the Il Vittoriano is also connected to the Capitoline Hill. Most of the time the Monument hosts important exhibitions of world famous artists. Running exhibition 'till july 2012 "Salvador Dali".

SOMETHING ABOUT OUR LOCATION : CAMPO DE' FIORI

SOMETHING ABOUT OUR LOCATION : CAMPO DE' FIORI

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One of the world's liveliest outdoor markets opens for business is here in Campo de' Fiori-a vast,moving still-life of tables piled high with bargain trinkets, kitchen equipment, and enough glistening produce, fresh cheese, meat, and fish to make an amateur chef long for a kitchen instead of a hotel room to return to.

Just behind Campo de' fiori, on Corso Vittorio Emanuele street, Begin with a stop at S. Andrea della Valle, the baroque setting for the first act of Verdi's Tosca.

By night, the square is an international youth fest, where caffes overflow with locals and tourists; everyone is meeting at the base of the statue of Giordano Bruno in the center of the piazza.

The statue honors the iconoclastic scholar whose conviction for heresy, unlike Galileo's 30 years later, has never been retracted by the Church, and who was burned alive on this spot on February 17th, 1600.

The surrounding streets, mostly named for the trades once practiced in them, are filled with stylish shops and restaurants. Stop into Fahrenheit 451  on the north side of the square to see its well-stocked shelves of books in English, and the bakery Forno for memorable bread and pastries.

One of the best surrounding  streets Via dei Giubbonari  is lined with inexpensive fashion boutiques, pretty much from end to end.

Today it's filled with people and activity round the clock, but centuries ago Campo dei Fiori was just a flowery meadow (as suggested by its name, which literally means “field of flowers”) and an execution spot during the Inquisition.

Here, the philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for heresy in 1600, allegedly for daring to opine that the earth revolved around the sun. His statue now stands at the centre of this square.During the day, Campo dei Fiori hosts an open-air food market from Monday to Saturday. Stalls set up around 07.00 and pack up around 13.30.

Here you can find seasonal fruits and vegetables, as well as fresh meat and fish. Lining the square are food shops, restaurants and plenty of outdoor cafes

ROMAN AQUEDUCTS

The great and highly advanced Roman waterway system known as the Aqueducts, are among the greatest achievements in the ancient world. The running water, indoor plumbing and sewer system carrying away disease from the population within the Empire wasn't surpassed in capability until very modern times. The Aqueducts, being the most visible and glorious piece of the ancient water system, stand as a testament to Roman engineering. Some of these ancient structures are still in use today in various capacities.

PIZZA MARGHERITA

In June 1889, to honor the Queen consort of Italy, Margherita of Savoy, the Neapolitan chef Raffaele Esposito created the "Pizza Margherita," a pizza garnished with tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, and basil, to represent the colors of the Italian flag. He was the first to add cheese. The sequence through which flavored flatbreads of the ancient and medieval Mediterranean became the dish popularized in the 20th century is not fully understood.

The Theatre of Marcellus (Latin: Theatrum Marcelli, Italian: Teatro di Marcello) is an ancient open-air theatre in Rome, Italy, built in the closing years of the Roman Republic. At the theatre, locals and visitors alike were able to watch performances of drama and song. Today its ancient edifice in the rione of Sant'Angelo, Rome, once again provides one of the city's many popular spectacles or tourist sites. It was named after Marcus Marcellus, Emperor Augustus's nephew, who died five years before its completion. Space for the theatre was cleared by Julius Caesar, who was murdered before it could be begun; the theatre was so far advanced by 17 BC that part of the celebration of the ludi saeculares took place within the theatre; it was completed in 13 BC and formally inaugurated in 12 BC by Augustus