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FYI: Chiese e Basiliche = Churches and Basilicas. A basilica is a type of church with a specific kind of layout.

Today we recuperated. The day started off slow. We slept in a bit - it was wonderful. We ate breakfast in the apartment. Mary, Dario, and Jeff cooked the food. Our menu was French toast, scrambled eggs, hash browns, and some mystery meat Dario picked up at the little grocery store around the corner. Mmm…French toast made of American style white bread smothered in syrup imported from the good ol’ U.S. of A. That sounds lame I know, but we were just trying to save money. When Dario bought the mystery meat he was hoping that it was sausage. The meat was packaged like normal breakfast sausage. Even after I translated the package it was inconclusive. The meat got cooked anyway. Half of the breakfast got cooked in Dario and Mary’s room and the other half got cooked in our room. When Dario started cooking the meat in their room a familiar scent wafted into ours (we always leave our doors open since we share a locked hallway). It smelled like my Granny’s house on weekend mornings…bologna! That mystery meat was bologna!

As I was sitting on my butt drinking soda out of this cute little Coca-Cola bottle, I noticed that while Mary was cooking she wasn’t in the kitchen watching it. She was in one room doing something, then on the computer, and then back in the kitchen after Jeff and Dario reminded her that she was cooking. Good thing Jeff noticed she wasn’t eyeing the stove or we would have had special black French toast.

After we finished breakfast, time came to figure out what we were doing today. I had my heart set on seeing Basilica di San Clemente. Frommer’s advertises it as a 12th century church that was built on top of the original 4th century church. How cool is that! I really wanted to go. But I also wanted to see the Baths of Caracalla. It’s this big Roman bath place. Naturally, since it has to do with water, my ears perked up. I forget why we chose to go to Basilica di San Clemente instead of the Baths of Caracalla but we did. Maybe the basilica seemed closer. Who knows.

On our first train (of two), from Ottaviano to Stazione Termini, I met an interesting family. I was standing there waiting for our stop when I heard a very familiar Southern accent coming from a family to my right. I turned them and asked them where they were from.

- “Tennessee, USA”
- “Where in Tennessee?”
- “Chattanooga.”
- “Really? My Grandma lives in a small town right outside Chattanooga.”
- “Really? What town?”
- “Whitwell.”
- “How about that. He has (pointing to the father) family there.”

We talked about what a small world it is, the places we’ve seen in Rome, and about Pompeii. They had just been to Pompeii. We will be going there tomorrow. Meeting that family was so exciting. I’ll be sure to tell my Grandma all about it when I send her postcard.

On our way to San Clemente, we passed a small archaeological site being documented by a guy and a cameraman. Since they were filming the site we couldn’t get into it. Oh well. The site wouldn’t have been so fascinating had it not been for the filming of it.

When we arrived at San Clemente, there was an ambulance trying to get through the cars parked on the narrow street. There was a postal van parked right outside of the post office with its ass hanging out too far on the street. The ambulance driver got out of his vehicle and started arguing with some guy about the traffic-blocking postal van. The man left and the ambulance driver went back to the ambulance. Nobody moved the postal van. He got back out and started arguing with presumably the same guy. Why didn’t someone just walk a few feet to the post office to get someone with keys to move the van? The ambulance driver got the bright idea to push the postal van farther up on the sidewalk up against a pole. Well hurray - he and the backed-up traffic finally got through.

When we arrived at San Clemente, it was closed for lunch. While we were waiting for it to open, we wandered down the street. We walked by a small restaurant that smelled fantastic. I felt like a cartoon character floating towards the window with the pie. The origin of the smell was a little pizza place called Pizza Rustica. Somebody asked the guy behind the counter where that wonderful smell was coming from. He pointed to the lamb meat on a rotisserie to the right of him. The lamb meat went on what the restaurant called a panino kebab (kebab sandwich). It consisted of pita bread, shreds of lamb meat, shredded lettuce, shredded turnip, onion, tomato, and a sour cream sauce. The ingredients seem strange but dear god it was good. Mary said it was Persian. Here we are in Italy, supposedly in the motherland of food, and the best food we’ve had this entire trip is Persian. I guess it’s hard to find good authentic Italian food in a tourist area.

After I scarfed down the last half of Jon’s panino kebab, the Basilica of Saint Clement opened. What a complicated place. We didn’t learn much about it since there weren’t many information signs around. According to Frommer’s, this is the layering of the site:

12th century church, built on top of
4th century church, built on top of
Early Roman apartment building and temple, built on top of
Public building dating back to AD 64.

Most of what I gathered was from sheer observation. The 12th century church, which is at the current ground level, is very ornate on the inside. It reminds me of the inside of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican - just a lot smaller. The ceiling has lots of gold on it, along with lots of paintings. What is it with these Italian churches with their gold and paintings? The most interesting part about this layer is that you can see on one wall how they used part of the 4th century church as a foundation for the 12th century church. The 4th century church is really old and so is the Roman apartment building/temple layer underneath it. What can I say? There was no tour guide. Everything just looked really, really old. It would have helped if we were archaeologists with a specialty in Roman architecture.

We did manage to figure out some things (so we think) about some stuff we saw. We noticed that there is a hodgepodge of materials in the walls in the lower layers. It looked like they used whatever they could get their hands on to build the walls. The walls contained what looked like chunks of marble columns cemented into the walls. The other thing we figured out was this reversible slab thing. In the 4th century church is this reversible slab (about 2’ x 4’ or so…I would have taken a picture but no photography is allowed) that has Christian inscriptions on one side and Pagan inscriptions on the other. We think that the user used the Christian side to worship in secret. Maybe they flipped it over to the Pagan side whenever outsiders came in. This church did exist during Christian executions. Who knows. As for the public building layer (the bottom-most known layer)…it’s not accessible, at least not by the public.

After visiting San Clemente, we had time to kill before our Dark Heart of Rome tour began. While waiting, we went to Giolitti (pronounced “Joe-lit-ee”). Giolitti is a huge gelateria-café-pastry shop in Rome. It’s mainly famous for its huge variety of gelato. I was lame and got chocolate gelato. I’m not sure what flavor Mary got but I remember her wanting to poor espresso over her gelato. The man who served us our gelato didn’t know English and Mary couldn’t for the life of her communicate what she wanted to do with her espresso and gelato. She got so frustrated. All was well when the manager (I think) came by and figured out what she wanted. Mary tried to apologize to the gelato man. Hopefully he understood Mary’s apology. On a brighter note, I tried espresso for the first time! It was so bitter! I didn’t realize you have to prepare espresso drinks with cream and sugar just like regular coffee. >< Mary’s espresso made her bounce off walls for hours.

Our second and final stop before our tour was…McDonald’s! We are officially super-lame tourists now. We were hungry and McDonald’s was right across the street from our tour meeting point. My god it was crowded in there. It’s interesting how McDonald’s are the same everywhere. At this McDonald’s, the bags are just about the same as ours - mostly in English. The restaurant has the same red and yellow get up on the inside. Cheeseburgers are called cheeseburgers and “cheeseburger” is even printed on the burger wrapper. One thing that was different about this McDonald’s was that it had “patate vertigo” - curly fries. They were pretty good.

Time finally came to meet for our Dark Heart of Rome tour. The evening was dark and cold with a full moon in the night sky. It was the perfect setting to hear all the dark secrets of this long-lived city. Our tour guide couldn’t have been more perfect. He was born in Italy but raised in Australia. He had the fitting Australian accent and outfit. See his picture. He reminds me of a slightly shorter version of Heath Ledger with a young professor edge. During the tour he told us seven stories along with a bunch of facts (I only talk about six…I didn’t understand one of them). Since it was a walking tour, we walked to each site with each holding a unique, dark secret.

Our first story involves a man named Giordano Bruno (1548 - 1600). He believed that life existed on other planets. That Jesus wasn’t the son of God but a magician. He beat Galileo in saying that the Earth wasn’t flat. Bruno was branded a heretic and burned at the stake in Campo de Fiori, where a statue of him now stands. The statue was erected in 1889 to symbolize free speech - to say that we can say things without being burnt at the steak. While Bruno suffered death for his heretical ideas, Galileo (1564 - 1642) suffered permanent house arrest. The Pope apologized to Galileo in 1992 and to Bruno in 2000.

Our next story takes place in an alley between two buildings. In the 17th century there was no garbage pickup system, so people piled their garbage in the streets. The problem with this is that cats and dogs would go through the trash and make a big mess. The people didn’t mind bad hygiene but they did mind untidy hygiene. Poison was put in the garbage to kill the animals. In the summer, the streets smelled of rotting garbage and animal carcasses. To remedy the problem, on this particular street at least, a sign was placed on the side of one of the buildings that says, “Don’t dump rubbish here.” If someone placed trash there they would get hung by their wrists for three hours. Needless to say, mostly everybody got hung by their wrists because most citizens were illiterate.

Our next stop was Ponte Sisto - a bridge. In the early- to mid-17th century lived a woman named Olimpia Maidalchini. She was a gold-digger and the widowed wife of Pope Innocent X’s dead brother. Olimpia ran the city of Rome through the Pope. She is widely believed to have been the mistress of Pope Innocent X. Our tour guide said she was called “la pimpada” which translates to “bad bitch” (don’t quote me on this). Society very much disliked women with power.

My favorite story came next - a story about a woman named Giulia Tofana (pronounced “Julia”) who produced and sold poison to women who wanted to kill their husbands (as a means of “divorce”). This poison is called Aqua Tofana (literally “Tofana water”). This poison is made of arsenic and other ingredients. It was clear and virtually tasteless. The poison took three weeks to kill each victim. Aqua tofana was the perfect murder weapon. She would have gotten away with her business had it not been for one customer who decided not to kill her husband and told the police. After a police investigation, they discovered that more than 600 people had been killed using Giulia’s poison. (I forget now where this story took place.)

The next story is about an early- to mid-19th century executioner - Mastro Titta. During his 69 years of service, he executed a total of 516 people. He is Rome’s best known executioner. Our tour guide described him as the Elvis of executioners. Mastro Titta was a superstar. He had an elaborate style of execution and wore a costume. He made a show of it in order remove himself emotionally. Parents brought their children to executions as an educational experience. “This’ll happen to you if you’re a bad person!” You’d think that Mastro Titta would have been a butcher or at least a carpenter. As his day job he painted umbrellas for tourists. Ha! Charles Dickens witnessed one of his last executions. (I forgot where this took place too).

Our last story took placed in front of Castel Sant’Angelo. Just one problem - I can’t remember most of the story! I’m looking at my notes and they aren’t helping! Something about executions, forced confessions, and a greedy pope wanting some family’s money. I do know that the youngest person of the family wasn’t executed - just castrated and imprisoned for life. Lucky him. Talk about corruption.

I think I’ve just about covered today entirely. It took me long enough! We all thought today would be light. Ha! We were so wrong. Be sure to catch tomorrow’s blog on Pompeii for an exciting story of how a volcano destroyed an entire city.

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