Terme

Viterbo has been a famous watering hole for thousands of years. During that period it was a stopping point on the Francigena, a home to the Pope and more. It is certainly a fortified city, but the natural defenses are nothing compared to a place like Orvieto. There isn't a major river or port to facilitate trade. Why then, would people have gathered and settled here from the Etruscan times onward? The answer surely lies at least in part on the geothermal activity in the area. In particular, the hot springs which bubble up from underground, heated by the same natural forces which formed this largely volcanic region. There are so many of them that there is an entire website devoted to describing the location and particulars of what you might find.

There are essentially three tiers of hot bath experiences: free, inexpensive, and over-the-top. At the free end, you can find hot springs bubbling away in fields, sometimes not all that far off the beaten path. One such place is a little pool to the north of Viterbo along the Francigena. Free is the right price, but you get what you pay for. No one is responsible for upkeep and they are seldom (read never) emptied and cleaned so you are basically sitting around in the accumulated detritis of all the hot, sweaty people who came before you.

An example of the intermediate range is the  Associazione Le Masse dei San Sisto. It is located about 5 km to the south of Viterbo along the Via Cassia. There you find a fenced area with a large hot pool, a smaller cool pool, changing cabins, chemical toilets, a massage room, a seasonal snack bar, picnic tables, charcoal grills and open space for playing games. It is open 24/7 except for two evenings a week when it is closed for cleaning. The membership fee is 10 euros and the yearly fee is 20 euros making it a total of 60 euros for the two of us to join. In subsequent years that drops to 40 euros. Small children are free. Italians make a weekend of it by driving their campers up and parking in a field nearby. That way they can come and go as they like and still have all the necessities of home at hand. When you first arrive there is a noticable smell of sulphur, but that rapidly fades into the background to become unimportant. The super heated water bubbles up from a rock formation and is then channeled into the main pool. At this well-head there is an interesting feature. Two flexible hoses come out of the concrete cap which has been put in place and a bench has been provided. Italians sit there and do "theraputic things" with the sulphurous steam. Some inhale it through either the mouth or nose and others direct it into their ears. Don't ask, I don't know and don't really even want to know. If you come to visit, we will look into having guests so that you can experience it for yourself. One point to be aware of. When we were at the beach earlier this year, Amy was told it was the God given right of every Italian woman to wear a bikini. Sometimes you really wish they wouldn't take that to heart. No pictures are allowed, so you will have to make do with a picture of our membership card.

Then we get to the high end. The Terme di Papi is a destination spa of the same type as the Blue Lagoon in Iceland. It is located approximately 4 km to the west of the city and, as the name suggests, the Popes bathed there when Viterbo was their home. It is likely the Bulicame Pool mentioned in Dante's Divine Comedy. There is a full spa, offering anything you could want in the way of massage, etc. The pool is HUGE. As big as it is, it can turn in to a bit of a meat bowl when it is overflowing with bodies.  The cost of a single admission is 12 euros. That just gets you through the door and gains access to the pool. The costs rise rapidly from there. As a special treat it can't be beat, but we will be spending most of our hot-springs time out on the Cassia, soaking in the hot pool and directing smelly, hot air into our ears.

Il Cimitero Acattolico di Roma

So, you are out in the world on your own. An expatriot or just a tourist from a far away place, come to Rome to see the sights. Boom, the unexpected happens. You get hit by a car or an outbreak of the Black Plague. Now you are standing at the Pearly Gates in front of St. Peter who tells you, "You're not a Catholic. There's no place for you in Rome!" But you know different so you head off to the non-Catholic Cemetery, just inside the original city walls of Rome. There you can lie at rest among one of the highest concentrations of interesting people you will find anywhere.

On Friday, after our Ostia visit, we swung past the cemetery on our way downtown. It is conveniently located near the Piramide stop of the Metro where it connects to the Ostiense Station, the terminus of the train to Viterbo. Alternately referred to as the Protestant Cemetery or, less frequently, the Foreign Cemetery, the non-Catholic Cemetery is the final resting place of a variety of dead people who find themselves in Rome with either no way or no desire to go home.

The pyramid was built by a wealthy Roman during the last half of the first century BC during a particular Egyptophile period. It was later incorporated into the city walls. Judging by the construction activity around its base, they are hoping to make it more accessible to tourists. One of the best views you get of the structure is from inside the cemetery.

The main part of the cemetery is packed. It gives the impression of being very old, so I was surprised to note that many of the graves are recent. As in, some are from last year.

In an open part of the cemetary, a travertine walk leads you to a pair of graves in the corner near a wall. The "young poet" on the left is actually Keats, identified on the headstone of his male "friend", Joseph Severn, on the right.

In the upper row near the wall at the back of the packed portion of the cemetery is Shelley, not all that far away from Goethe who is a few rows forward.

One of Amy's favorite monuments is for Emelyn Story, a young woman born in Boston in 1820. The angel draped over her stone was the last work of her sculptor husband. Note the fresh, red rose on the base of the monument.

The cemetery is another of the cat sanctuaries that dot Rome. We were there at feeding time and got to meet a number of the locals. I told Amy that if I die while I am in Italy I don't want to be buried there. In fact, I don't want to be buried anywhere. But, she can scatter my cremated remains wherever they will allow her and then make a donation in my name for the care of the cats. Apparently, those would be her wishes as well.

Ostia Antica

Fridays are fun days. Even Friday the 13th. The class schedule for a typical Friday is for only AP classes to meet (which means, unfortunately, both Amy and I do teach) and for the Italian language classes to have a 2 hour meeting to show/discuss a movie. Students are finished by noon and Amy and I are done with our commitments by 10 AM. One reason for this reduced academic schedule on Friday is that the entire school often takes field trips on Fridays. That was true yesterday as we took the second of what will ultimately be 5-6 day trips to Rome. The day starts with a 7:56 AM train ride to the city, after which the group divides as it may and undertakes the day's activities.

Yesterday was the first of what is planned to be a three visit cycle of trips. In order for students to get more out of it, the school was divided into three groups of approximately 20 students each. One group explored ancient history (forum/Colosseum/Palatine), a second explored art at the Vatican Museum and the third group went to an activity with an American faculty member. The ancient and art trips will be done each time and every student is expected to do them on one of the three trips to the city. The third activity is led by a different person each time and thus changes. The first activity was planned and executed by Amy with the tiniest bit of help from me tagging along. She opted to take all of her upper level, Latin students to Ostia Antica for the day.

Pompeii and Herculaneum are known as the places you can go to get a first hand glimpse of what it might have been like to live in ancient Rome. There are very few sites that offer such a peek. Another is Villa Adriana (Hadrian's Villa) in Tivoli. This is the ruins of a HUGE palace of the emperor Hadrian. A third is Ostia Antica, the former port town of Rome, situated at the mouth of the Tiber River some 12 miles from downtown Rome and accessible on the Roma-Lido line, a small train line which is included as part of the transit system. It costs a Euro each way to travel to the site from Rome. Ostia differs from Pompeii in a number of important ways. Pompeii was buried essentially instantaneously. Thus, it offers a snapshot of life as it must have been, complete with dogs and people curled up and buried by the ash from the eruption of Vesuvius. Ostia suffered a different fate. Over time, the mouth of the river became silted in and thus difficult for barges to navigate. This resulted in a pair of man-made harbours being constructed a few miles up the coast with a canal to connect them to the Tiber a few miles closer to Rome. When an earthquake caused the course of the Tiber to shift somewhat dramatically, it reduced the importance of the city even further. Over time, Ostia was abandoned, then nature took over and buried it deep under sand dunes for hundreds of years. Ultimately, the ruins were rediscovered, excavated and they are now open to the public. While most of Pompeii is closed off to the casual visitor, very few places in Ostia are off limits, making it the perfect place to spend a gloriously sunny day with a group of excited, boisterous teenagers.

Ostia was actually the first colony of Rome. It dates from hundreds of years BC, although much of what remains and is visible now was constructed in the first few centuries AD. What most people don't realize is that the Romans had a basic blueprint for a city which was copied to some extent almost everywhere they settled. There were certain elements which were expected to be in place. Ostia is old enough that not all of the blueprint was followed exactly, but much if it IS present making it a fantastic learning opportunity.

The first thing you encounter after you enter the archaeological site is the necropolis. Below are the remains of some sort of a crypt with niches on the walls for cremated remains. Romans both cremated and buried the dead, depending on the time period. On display along the road are a number of sarcophagi as well.

The Roman cemetery was always outside the city gates, and Ostia was no different. Ostia had three main entrances and as you continue along the road you then enter the city through the remains of Porta Romana. Shortly after that you encounter the remains of a HUGE bath complex. There are at least three public bath complexes in the city and wealthy citizens would have had their own private baths at home. The bath was essentially the health club. It was expected that all citizens, even the poorest, would have access to the baths. Below is a picture of the baths. It is easy to see the black and white tiled floor, complete with a mosaic pattern of sea creatures and the god Neptune. For that reason these are referred to as the Neptune Baths.

Every Roman town had a theater and Ostia was no different there either. The semi-circular theater would have seated approximately 4000 people and the show area could even be flooded to provide for water spectacles. Though not an amphitheater like the Colosseum in Rome, it provided the same opportunity for entertaining the masses.

At the end of the theater there is a merchant square set up around a temple. Ostia was an important point for the entry of goods into Rome and, indeed, all of Italy. The square is lined with what were once buildings. These weren't shops and cargo would have been stored in warehouses in other parts of the city. Rather, they were the official offices of the shipping merchants. It is interesting, because the floors were done up in mosaics indicative of the type of business being transacted. Thus, the mosiacs below of an elephant, deer and boar probably indicated that the shipper who was quartered there did business importing animals, exotic and otherwise, which might have been used in spectacles in the arena in Rome.

Other bits of the city which have been identified are somewhat more mundane. Below is the fulling mill, i.e. laundry. Fullers cleaned clothes. There are large pools for soaking clothes at various stages of the cleaning process as well as vats around the edge which slaves would have stomped around in compressing and cleaning the clothes. Fulling was smelly, hard work. One of the smells was from urine which was collected from public toilets and used to bleach clothes.

Below is a grist mill. The upper piece would have been turned by animals or slaves to grind grain against the bottom piece. It was set up close to a bakery.

Then there are the public toilets. Those keyholes are for sitting and doing your business which would have dropped into running water in the trough below. The channel in front would be for collecting the urine for use in the laundry. Toilets were communal and Romans would think nothing of sitting and holding a conversation with their neighbor while toilet slaves would hover nearby with a sponge on a stick to be used in the cleaning up process. Apparently, the sponge wasn't cleaned between successive usings. Too much information, I know, but teenagers love this stuff - you have to trust me on that.

Another common feature was a forum where all important civic business was transacted and where there was always a capitolium temple. The inner skeleton of the temple is quite intact at Ostia, but the portico of columns which would have been in front of it is nearly entirely gone save for the steps up to the platform.

One reason I really enjoy going to Ostia is all of the mosaic work. The really intricate floors, such as in the Baths of Neptune and around the Merchant's Square, are off limits except for looking. However, there are any number of places where you can simply walk in and be standing on a mosaic tile floor which is nearly 2000 years old. Most are black and white tiles, but occasionally you find one which is colored, such as the one below in an out of the way temple.

The other thing I really like about Ostia is that there is never a crowd. During the height of the summer tourist season there could be as many as a hundred or so people. Which sounds like a lot until you realize the site covers many acres. Yesterday there were perhaps a dozen people other than our group and we walked for several hours through the ruins while only occasionally catching sight of another visitor off in the distance.

La Bella Luna

Yesterday evening we got an unexpected request. It seems that the Italian couple that works permanently for the school had adopted a 3 month old, mixed-breed puppy. They had discovered her wandering the streets of Montefiascone several days ago and had located her "owner" who was more than happy to have them take her.

They brought her home and she had her vet check and all of her shots. Then they realized they had a dinner invitation. Since she was relatively new to the house they didn't want to simply leave her there alone, which is where we came in as puppy sitters for a few hours. Amy thinks she has a little wire-haired something going on based on her muzzle and I think she might have some corgi based on coloring and the proportions of her legs and body. After a little play she was quite content to spend her time on a pillow on the floor, always making contact with my leg.

She actually spent most of the three and a half hours napping; she had a big day.

In case you haven't figured it out. Her name is Luna.

Epiphany

Yesterday we celebrated a completely unexpected tradition which is a fascinating amalgam of pagan and Christian rituals. Today, of course, is Epiphany. The day set aside for the visit to the baby Jesus of the three wise men bearing gifts who had followed the star to find the child. It is a significant holiday here with most shops and businesses closed. In Oberbozen, where we visited this fall in the northern part of Italy, priests travel throughout the town and mark the top of the door frames to bring good luck in the year to come. The marks are left for the year and refreshed in subsequent years.

In the section of Italy where we are living, it is customary for children to hang a stocking on the night before which is then filled with presents to be opened on Epiphany, shadowing the gifts of the wise men. Then it gets fun. The bringer of these gifts isn't Santa Clause, Saint Nick or any form of jolly fat man at all. They are brought by a witch, named Le Befana. Indeed, the word Befana translates as Epiphany. How a witch figures into the Christ narrative I have yet to discover, although I am sure there is an explanation of the symbolism somewhere.

In Viterbo, the occasion is marked by a parade. The route begins at the Porta Romana, comes down Via Garibaldi to Fontana Grande, continues down Via Cavour past the school and then ends at the Piazza de Plebescito. The procession began around 3 pm with a group of drummers and flag twirlers walking the route to alert the spectators.

Following that, a group of bearers dressed as witches were escorted along the reverse of the route by a marching band. This process is identical to that which marks the Macchina di Santa Rosa. Notice at the left of the picture below we have a group of men dressed as chimney sweeps, bringing in yet another of the traditions of the new year.

The procession then turns around at the gate and returns bearing ... a giant sock! In principle, it is the largest stocking in the world. Or at least that is the claim of the organizers.

It is carried on top of 11 Fiat 500s, supported between cars by wooden broomsticks held by a witch on each end.

The entire thing is lead by a quintet of cars and trailed by 11 more of the colorful beasts all honking their individualized horns.

The procession is quite a sight, to say the least, as these Fiat 500s are tiny little cars that remind me of the little things the Shriners travel around on in parades. Most have a sunroof and there were, unbelievably, 3-4 people in each car. The engine is in the rear and there is no cooling system so the operators usually leave the rear trunk open to keep the cars from overheating.

Buon Anno

Happy New Year to All!

Hoping each of you had a wonderful time ringing in the new year and wishing you all the best in the coming year and beyond.

During our celebration here we observed many Italian traditions, beginning with the wearing of the red underwear. I'm not entirely sure what it is supposed to signify, but both Amy and I wore red undershirts, much to the delight of our Italian friends! We gathered early to partake of the traditional New Year's Eve feast, a stew of Cotechino Modena and Lenticchie di Onano served with mashed potatoes. Cotechino is basically a sausage, spiced similarly to salami, but not dried out. The richness of the food speaks to hope for plenty in the coming year. Lenticchie are lentils. They are eaten to insure wealth in the coming year. Mashed potatoes are mashed potatoes ... not sure what they signify. Traditionally the meal would be eaten as late as possible, spilling from the old year to the new. However, I am battling a cold and we haven't stayed up to welcome the new year for almost a decade now, so it didn't seem necessary to burn the midnight oil. After a walk down to the main square where a rock band was warming up for a free, open air concert we headed home and went to bed.

Until midnight when all hell broke loose. It would seem that Italians like fireworks and like making VERY loud noises. We aren't talking a few strings of firecrackers here. Whatever the popper of choice was, it is significantly more powerful. It sounded almost like we were under attack. Small arms going off all around us in the street and even in the courtyard behind us, with the booming of the overhead fireworks display filling in the background. The noise lasted for well over half an hour with sporadic pops for hours after that. According to one of our friends, a significant number of people end up in the hospital with significant firecracker-related injuries every year. So, best laid plans aside, Amy and I did manage to see the start of the new year!