The House of Life

We owe a lot to the artistic and literary studies of Professor Mario Praz (Florence 1896 – Rome 1982), to his in-depth and accurate analysis, with which he shed new light on so many works of art and literary trends, from Machiavelli’s reception in Britain and the Renaissance emblem books through the conceptismo of the Baroque, John Donne’s texts and Byron’s poems to the dark side of Romanticism or the reevaluation of bourgeois taste in the Biedermeier and Empire home interiors. His writings always move on the – strongly subjective – border area, where literature meets other art forms, to make together more livable a hostile world. By this effort Praz also intended to fill the emptiness of the second part of the twentieth century, which he abhorred, and where he felt completely alien.


One of his most personal books is La casa della vita (“The House of Life”, 1958, enlarged edition 1979), which is an essential document to understand who Mario Praz was, and how he saw himself. In this book he does not conceal the dark sides of his own life and character either. The ambiguous title is also a reference to the innermost and most hidden part of the Egyptian temple, where the secret texts and ceremonies were hidden from the external world. Praz talks along multiple threads about how he constructed his life around his objects, friendships, loves and manias, and behind this becomes clear the melancholic loneliness pervading all his life. As he moves through the rooms of his home, he gradually unfolds the fabric of his life, keeping a delicate balance between the detailed technical description of the objects of a passionate collector, and a highly personal, intimate and self-critical revelation of himself. A fascinating book, unique in its kind. And one cannot put it down: we have read it in a single breath. In the year of its publication it was presented to the Strega Prize, but, to Praz’s misfortune, Lampedusa’s The Panther was also published in the same year. Luchino Visconti drew inspiration and details from this book to his film Gruppo di famiglia in un interno (in English Conversation Piece). But, for a balanced opinion, we should not overlook Cyril Connoly’s judgment, who wrote a criticism on 20 September 1964 for the Sunday Times about the English translation of the book:

“One of the dullest books I have ever read; it has a bravura of boredom, an audacity of ennui that makes one hardly believe one’s eyes […] He has an ant’s eye view of small objects, an overwhelming sense of their importance in relation to himself and viceversa […] his disseminated egotism, his fulminating cliché…”

With which, of course, we do not agree. If nothing else, the magnificent and melancholic report about the vanishing Rome – specifically, Via Giulia and the surroundings of Palazzo Ricci – makes the book worth reading. Mario Praz moved here in 1934, and in 1967 he had to remove to Palazzo Primoli. To date, the remaining objects of his huge collection are on display in the latter apartment. Here he died on 23 March 1982, thirty-three years ago today. A few weeks ago we also went to see “the House of Life”, to pay a tribute in our modest way.


Soon we will also write about Via Giulia, Rome’s most beautiful street according to Annibale Caro, which is “constantly put to shame, ruined and threatened with destruction by the botched intervention which tears apart its unity”, as Roberto Papini says in his review on Ceccarius’ monumental monograph Strada Giulia.

La Casa della Vita

Hemos aprendido mucho de los estudios sobre arte y literatura del profesor Mario Praz (Florencia, 1896 – Roma 1982), de su mirada penetrante y exacta que dio nueva luz a tantas y tantas obras y movimientos literarios: desde la presencia de Maquiavelo en Inglaterra al conceptismo barroco y los libros de emblemas, de los textos de John Donne al lado perverso del romanticismo y los poemas de Byron, o la reevaluación del gusto burgués en la decoración de interiores Biedermeier o Segundo Imperio. Siempre moviéndose en un terreno —fuertemente subjetivo— en que la literatura se encuentra con las otras artes para ayudar a hacer más habitable un mundo hostil. Un sostenido esfuerzo por poblar el vacío del presente, de un siglo XX cuya segunda mitad Mario Praz aborrecía y en el que se sintió un completo extraño.


Uno de sus libros más personales es La casa della vita (1958, ampliado en 1979). Son páginas obligatorias para saber quién fue Mario Praz y cómo se vio a sí mismo. No esconde en ellas las zonas oscuras de su vida y su carácter. El propio título se refiere ambiguamente a aquella parte profunda y resguardada del templo egipcio donde se almacenaban los textos sagrados y rituales. A la vez, habla de la construcción de la vida alrededor de sus objetos, sus amistades, amores y manías. En el fondo, su melancólica soledad. Mientras va recorriendo las habitaciones de la casa, una vida intenta aclararse en equilibrio entre la descripción técnica, objeto tras objeto, del coleccionista apasionado y el desnudamiento íntimo pero siempre respetuoso y refractado en una justa inteligencia autocrítica. Es en verdad un libro fascinante, con pocos precedentes a su altura, y no pudimos dejarlo de mano hasta acabarlo de un tirón. No intentaremos ni siquiera empezar a resumirlo aquí. Se presentó el año de su publicación al premio Strega, pero en aquella ocasión —para desgracia de Praz— concursaba también Il Gattopardo de Lampedusa. Luchino Visconti lo leyó para empaparse del ambiente que dio lugar a la película Gruppo di famiglia in un interno (en español, Confidencias)… Pero para saber de qué estamos hablando, también es oportuno el juicio de Cyril Connoly cuando tuvo que reseñar la traducción inglesa del libro el 20 de septiembre de 1964 en el Sunday Times:

«Es uno de los libros más aburridos que he leído jamás. Es un tostón elevado a la enésima potencia, lleva tan lejos el aburrimiento que cuesta trabajo creerlo […]. El profesor Praz tiene una mirada de hormiga para los pequeños objetos, un excesivo sentido de su importancia en relación a sí mismo y viceversa […] su egotismo difuso, su cliché fulminante…»

No estamos de acuerdo. Aunque solo fuera por el magnífico canto elegíaco a una Roma desaparecida, en concreto a Via Giulia y los alrededores del Palazzo Ricci donde se ubicaba originalmente su residencia, el libro ya merece la pena. En 1934 Mario Praz fue a vivir allí. En 1967 tuvo que trasladarse al Palazzo Primoli. Y aquí es donde ahora están los objetos que quedan de su colección para que el público los vea. Praz murió el 23 de marzo de 1982, hoy hace justo treinta y tres años. Hemos ido a visitar la «casa della vita» para rendirle un humilde homenaje.


Próximamente hablaremos de Via Giulia, la más hermosa de las calles de Roma para Annibal Caro y, simultáneamente maltratada, «profanada, destripada, amenazada de muerte con un desgarro que interrumpe irremediablemente su unidad» como dice Roberto Papini en una recensión del libro Strada Giulia de Ceccarius.

Eating well and cheap in Rome

is not so easy. Like the structure of the city, the rules of finding the good eating places are not as transparent as you would like. The catering units of the neighborhoods visited by many tourists usually specialize in quickly bleeding them white. Nevertheless, as we will see below, even the most touristy parts have some excellent, cheap eating places. As a rule of thumb, if you want to eat traditional food for cheap, you should look for a pizza rustica, an antico forno, or the small bars of the locals. In these, you can have a hot meal for five to ten euros, and, in addition, a meal prepared by the Romans for themselves, not for the tourists.

The pizza rustica is a bar selling locally baked pizza, and sometimes also traditional, simple one-course dishes. These are made by and for the locals, and the regulars are those of the neighborhood. It is important to know that pizza is originally a poor food, a thin (!) bread dough, on which they put whatever would be at hand in a simple household: oil (pizza bianca), tomato mash (pizza rossa), tomato mash and one of the cheapest cheeses, mozzarella (margherita), and my favorites: boiled potatoes (patate) and zucchini flower with anchovy (fior di zucca). If you are lucky enough to be in Rome in the fall, you can also have mozzarella and yellow boletus (porcini), but, unfortunately, this is quite expensive.

Of course, creativity has no limits, but the more ingredients on a pizza that surely were missing in a poor household of old times (sausages, expensive cheese etc.), the more confident we can be that it is an eyewash for tourists. If you look at what the locals eat, they almost exclusively choose the simplest ones. This is likely due not only to the surrealistically conservative taste of the Italians, but also to the fact that the more worldly pizzas are much more expensive, and in my experience their dough is also thicker, so the buyer – the tourist – pays twice or three times as much for a slice the same-size of one had he or she chosen a traditional type.

Unfortunately, pizza rusticas seem to have begun disappearing in recent years, and even the remaining ones have become more touristy in appearance. And though with the crisis the pizza dough also seems to have become thicker, and the rosemary is gone from the pizza with potato (o tempora o mores!), nevertheless these pizza rusticas belong to the sites to be necessarily tested, because without them you simply cannot understand Rome.

Likewise is the case with the antico fornos. These are traditional bakeries selling bread, pastry and old-fashioned sweets as well as locally baked pizza and often also simple homemade dishes. In contrast to pizza rusticas, here you generally cannot sit down, but the crazily good almond and pistachio muffins make up for that. These are sold in bulk, in normal places for not more than 2-3 euros for a hundred grams. They readily weigh even one single piece. Take care, they are dense, so two pieces can often make a hundred grams.

In the somewhat less crowded streets and squares (sometimes only twenty meters from the flood of tourists!) you can find Italian-style small cafés, which, in the downtown, are often also the meeting and exhibition places of artists and students. They mainly offer sandwiches and traditional one-course dishes to a local clientele as well as to the tourist who is willing to get off the main roads, a taste of real Italian food and life.


Antico Forno La Stelletta – Via della Scrofa 33
That type of old-fashioned bakery, for which one constantly longs back to Rome.

Antico Forno Marco Roscioli – Via dei Chiavari 34
A traditional bakery. They sell a wide variety of pizzas, but they are not what I recommend here, because their dough is too thick, in my opinion. But try the dishes available in the back room! And their pastry, too.

Barnum Cafè – Via del Pellegrino 87
Near Campo de’ Fiori, pleasant, alternative design, inexpensive dishes.

Caffè Perù - Via di Monserato 46 (Piazza di Santa Caterina della Rota)
An old-style café in the immediate neighborhood of Campo de’ Fiori, with artists, university students, small exhibtions, traditional, simple food, free WiFi.


Ciao Checca - Piazza di Firenze 25-26
Pasta in a new edition. A completely new phenomenon, nothing like this existed a few years ago. They do not cook local recipes from traditional materials, but rather fit to an international trend by emphasizing certain elements of the Italian tradition. (It perhaps belongs to trendiness, that checca means homosexual women or men in Italian slang.) It is questionable, whether one must necessarily smear some business philosophy on pasta, and whether it is not better to shape one’s identity in a more sophisticated way than “I’m the one who does not eat hamburger”, but it is a fact, that their approach attracts the appropriate audience. In any case, they are near Piazza Navona, their pasta is quite complex, and they give a honest dose.

Dar Ciriola – Via dei Banchi Nuovi 15
Another novelty in Rome. A small sandwich bar in the street behind Corso Vittorio Emanuele, among the many tourist-fleecing places, where you can stuff a traditional kind of bread with a variety of things. Delicious and cheap.

Della Palma – Via della Maddalena 19/23
150 sorts of ice cream. It is not obvious whether we should recommend it. First, in a few days you will spend your last penny on ice cream. Second, you will roam about unhappy and aimlessly later, for example in Berlin, that what you can get here is no ice cream. Its daily visit – which, if you are no fakir, and have no sore throat, you will certainly do – has one benefit for sure. Given that the Italians here elbow their way even more brutal than usual, as if they fought for their lives, seizing an ice cream amounts to the participation in a survival tour.

Fior di Pizza – Via Metastasio 20
An absolutely good-old-times, classic pizza rustica, a few minutes away from Piazza Navona.

Forno Campo de’ Fiori – Campo De’ Fiori 22 × Vicolo del Gallo 14
There is no more touristy place in Rome than Campo de’ Fiori (and not without reason, because the square is fabulous), and I do not really recommend to buy at the market, because it is really for the tourists. But the traditional bakery on the corner should be tried. Classic pizzas and wonderful cakes.

La Renella Panificio – Via del Moro 15
One of the best and certainly the most popular traditional bakery in Trastevere, with fantastic pizzas, and enough seats to taste your way through them. The pizzeria is also a passage from the Tiber to the Santa Maria del Trastevere, which saves you a big turnoff, but makes you arrive a hour later. Next to the pizzeria, you cahn peek through the permanently half-open door of the bakery, and take beautiful photos on the oven and the fresh loaves of bread on the shelves.

Market in the Mars Field – Piazza Monte D’Oro
Not in the immediate neighborhood of Piazza Spagna, but it takes just a few minutes to walk here, and it is very worth, because only a few yards from the main tourist flow you can find an authentic, hidden small market. Here you can eat in three excellent places. If you approach the market through via di Monte D’Oro, then you get exactly to Monte D’Oro Pizza. Here, in a market stall, they sell traditional pizzas and ready meals to the locals at lunchtime. If you appreciate steamed vegetables with cheese or a little meat, the locals obligatorily take it with pizza bianca. A few meters away, at via dell’Arancio 60 is La Bottega di Cesare, a well-done country feeling small inn. A few people can comfortably sit here, they do not hurry with the service, but the food is gorgeous, and the prices low. On the other side of the square, at piazza Monte D’Oro 94 you can find a real traditional café, Caffè Monte D’Oro. Time has stopped there, so you should also stop for a coffee, sandwich, cake.

Paninoteca da Guido – Borgo Pio 3
In the close proximity of the Vatican, a few tables on the street, enough for a smaller company, a few types of simple home-made dishes for cheap. What else do you need?

Pazza per la Pizza – Via della Mercede 18
Next to Spagna and Barberini, a traditional, especially cheap pizza rustica, with touristy design, but old-fashioned, reliable and good pizza.

Pizzeria Vecchio Borgo – Borgo Pio 27
Pizza rustica next to the Vatican. It was one of our favorites already twenty years ago, when we came here for lunch from the Jesuit Historical Institute. Here I fell in love with pizza with zucchini flowers. Since then, it has only changed in as much it already has a Facebook site and a homepage. Both then and now it has been visited by locals. They also make sandwiches from pizza dough, you must try the one with roast piglet. And if by some miracle – not unusual in this holy district – you can still eat more, or you go with a company and you order with a wise apportioning, you should also try their ready meals. (I have to correct myself, just now I saw that they also have a Pope Francis pizza. This was not there twenty years ago.)

Pizza da Michele – Via delle Vergini × Via dell Umiltà
It is incomprehensible, how this pizza rustica could remain authentic in the immediate neighborhood of the Trevi fountain, in the middle of the tourist business, but the point is that it has remained.

Pizza il Capriccio – Via Giustiniani 18.
It looks a bit touristy, and a bit more expensive than usual – well, near the Pantheon you can forgive both –, but they sell real pizza (which of course is always good).

Pizza Rustica – Via Merulana 267
Next to the Santa Maria Maggiore, miraculously, a completely authentic pizza rustica.

Pizzeria Tavola Calda – Via Falegnami 69
Oh, the other old favorite. A few steps away from Via Arenula. Twenty years ago, whenever it was possible, I always made a little turn here when going to the city (and, possibly, also on the way back). Unfortunately, it has been a bit modernized, but the pizza is just as good, and if you’re tired of the much dough, you can also try their delicious vegetable meals.

Pizzeria Minerva – Via della Minerva 4
It is a pity, that this pizza rustica, next to the Pantheon, also fell victim to modernization. The pizza is still good, though not as much as it used to be, and I would prefer to see the old simplicity and prices instead of the present checkered tablecloths.

La sonrisa de la Madonna

En Roma, detrás de la iglesia de San Clemente, cuando la calle empieza a empinarse por el Monte Celio hacia la abadía medieval de los Santi Quattro Coronati para alcanzar después la Basílica de Letrán al pie de las murallas de la ciudad, una curiosa capillita resiste aferrada a la esquina. Llama la atención porque parece ser varios siglos más antigua que el edificio al que está adosada, pero también por su inscripción. Las capillas de los caminos, los cruceros o columnas con imágenes, al pedir oraciones al transeúnte suelen hacerlo para un fin concreto, prometiendo una específica ayuda sobrenatural. Sin embargo, este poemita grabado en una placa de mármol invita sencillamente a saludar a la Virgen, sin más propósito.

Il sorriso di Maria
A questi luoghi allieterà
Se chi passa per la via
«Ave o Madre» a lei dirà.

La sonrisa de María
estos lugares alegrará
si quien pasa por la calle
«Ave o Madre» le dirá.

El mapa de Giambattista Nolli, de 1748, nuestro compañero a través de la historia de Roma, no señala su existencia, o por lo menos no le otorga un número propio, pero es bien posible que el minúsculo saliente que destaca en la esquina se refiera a ella. No obstante, en el mapa de 1593 de Antonio Tempesta se podía discernir con claridad una capilla de arco de medio punto en el lugar de esta esquina. En aquel momento estaba todavía situada ante un jardín o huerto, mirando a una construcción residencial a medio camino entre San Clemente y los Ss. Quattro Coronati.



La pequeña calle nació hace casi tres mil años con el nombre de Via querquengetulana, o Via dei Querceti por el robledal cuyos restos son aún visibles en el mapa de Nolli. Pero según la monumental obra en ocho volúmenes de Ferdinand Gregorovius sobre la Roma medieval, fue también conocida desde la Alta Edad Media como Vicus Papissae, la Calle de la Papisa, porque la casa de en frente perteneció en su tiempo a la matrona de la familia Papa.

Fue en el siglo XI cuando surgió otra explicación para el nombre de la calle, que acabaría excitando a toda Europa. El dominico Jean de Mailly, de Metz, afirma en una nota marginal de su crónica del mundo escrita en 1099 haber oído una historia —que, confiesa, aún debía verificar— según la cual la explicación de la inscripción PPP grabada en una piedra de Roma (en realidad pecunia propria posuit, «erigido a su propia costa») era que una mujer vestida de hombre fue elegida Papa y cuando, durante una procesión, dio públicamente a luz un niño, el pueblo mató a ambos y grabó en su lápida: Petre Pater Patrum, Papissae Prodito Partum – «Pedro, padre de los padres, desveló el parto de la papisa». Parece ser que los guías de Roma ya trabajaban duro por sus negocios en el siglo XI.

La historia entró en la crónica de los escándalos medievales en la forma que le dio otro hermano dominico, obispo de Gniezno, en el siglo XIII: Martinus de Opava/Troppau. Martinus, obviamente inspirado por el nombre de aquella pequeña calle que había visto en Roma durante su toma de posesión, afirmó conocer la ubicación exacta del fabuloso evento, del cual nadie había oído hablar durante cuatrocientos años.

“Post hunc Leonem Iohannes Anglicus nacione Maguntinus sedit annis 2, mensibus 7º, diebus 4, et mortuus est Rome, et cessavit papatus mense 1. Hic, ut asseritur, femina fuit, et in puellari etate Athenis ducta a quodam amasio suo in habitu virili, sic in diversis scienciis profecit, ut nullus sibi par inveniretur, adeo ut post Rome trivium legens magnos magistros discipulos et auditores haberet. Et cum in Urbe vita et sciencia magnis opinionis esset, in papam concorditer eligitur. Sed in papatu per suum familiarem impregnatur. Verum tempus partus ignorans, cum de Sancto Petro in Lateranum tenderet, angustiata inter Coliseum et sancti Clementis ecclesiam peperit, et post mortua ibidem, ut dicitur, sepulta fuit. Et quia domnus papa eandem viam semper obliquat, creditur a plerisque, quod propeter detestationem facti hoc faciat. Nec ponitur in cathalogo sanctorum pontifcum propter mulieris sexus quantum ad hoc deformitatem.”

«Después de León [IV, 847-855], Juan Ánglico, nacido en Maguncia, fue Papa durante dos años, siete meses y cuatro días, y murió en Roma, tras lo cual se produjo una vacante en el papado por un mes. Se afirma que este Juan era una mujer que, de niña, había sido llevada a Atenas vestida de hombre por un cierto amante suyo. Allí se hizo experta en una variedad de ramas de conocimiento hasta no tener igual, y después en Roma enseñó artes liberales y grandes maestros salieron de entre sus alumnos y público. Una alta opinión de su vida y su sabiduría se extendió por la ciudad, y fue elegida como Papa. Mientras era Papa, sin embargo, quedó embarazada de un cortesano. Al ignorar la hora exacta en que se esperaba el parto, dio a luz a un niño yendo en procesión desde San Pedro a Letrán, en una calle entre el Coliseo y la iglesia de San Clemente. Después de su muerte, se dice que fue enterrado en este mismo lugar. El Papa siempre se aparta de esta calle, y muchos creen que esto se hace por el bochorno que provocó el evento. Tampoco se la encontrará en la lista de Santos Pontífices, tanto a causa de su pertenencia al sexo femenino como por la repugnancia de la materia».

La papisa dando a luz en una ilustración de Jacob Kallenberg al De claris mulieribus de Boccaccio (1533); y la papisa (Johanna Wokalek) en Die Päpstin (2009) de Sönke Wortmann.

El recorrido ceremonial que va de Letrán, casa parroquial del Romano Pontífice, a la Basílica de San Pedro, la iglesia de peregrinación más sagrada de Roma, tenía de hecho tres rutas alternativas en este primer tramo. La más espectacular, la calle de San Juan de Letrán, que sería constituida como Via Papalis por Sixto V en 1588, fue intransitable durante toda la Edad Media por las ruinas del Ludus Magnus, el lugar de las barracas de los gladiadores junto al Coliseo. Por ello había otras dos rutas: la pintoresca via Ss. Quattro Coronati —que vamos a seguir durante nuestra marcha por la colina de Celio— que, sin embargo, no es apropiada para procesiones ceremoniales debido a su pendiente excesiva; y la antigua calle principal, la Via Labicana, donde ahora un tranvía une Letrán y el Coliseo. Los papas medievales por supuesto elegían la segunda, pero el pueblo de Roma buscó una explicación racional a por qué el Papa no seguía la ruta más corta, como todo el mundo. Y quien busca encuentra.

La abadía de los Ss Quattro Coronati, aún en pie, solitaria en la colina de Celio antes de la especulación inmobiliaria y la urbanización de fines del s. XIX. Sin duda, éste fue el verdadero escándalo del barrio.

La leyenda de la papisa, extrañamente, fue refutada al fin no por los católicos, sino por los protestantes ayudados por el método de la crítica textual humanista. Onofrio Panvinio, el gran historiador romano del s. XVI, todavía la daba por buena y su única aportación consistió en adornar los detalles; pero el hugonote David Blondel dejó claramente subrayada su naturaleza falsa a principios del s. XVII y desde entonces los papas censurarán el relato.

El pueblo de Roma, con todo, sabe lo que sabe. Papas y eruditos vienen y van; el vicus Papissae se extendió hasta el hospital militar erigido después de un proceso de especulación inmobiliaria, un bloque de pisos fue construido en el lugar que ocupaba aquel jardín, pero la capilla sigue ahí. El barrio del Monte Celio, incluido en el sistema nervioso de la ciudad sólo a fines del siglo XIX, mantiene vivas aún muchas tradiciones y edificios que en otras partes van cayendo en el olvido. Debido a la prohibición, el origen de la capilla no se puede mencionar pero todo el mundo lo conoce. Así, los restauradores del siglo XVIII solo pidieron un saludo al viandante para disipar los malos recuerdos del lugar.

Por entre los barrotes de la estropeada cancela de hierro nos asomamos el interior de esta capillita de paredes agrietadas, cubiertas de rojo romano. Se ve el fresco de una Madonna cuya fecha es difícil de fijar pero que podría datarse en el s. XV. Aunque sus rasgos faciales casi se han borrado, su sonrisa luce todavía entre las flores secas, las cintas votivas colocadas en la puerta y la tenaz flora mediterránea que crece entre las tejas y en las grietas de la acera, memoria del robledal desaparecido.

The smile of the Madonna

In Rome, behind St. Clement’s Church, where the road starts steeply up the Caelius hill to the medieval abbey of Santi Quattro Coronati, and beyond it the Lateran Basilica standing at the city wall, a strange, weathered little chapel stands at the corner. It is strange, because it is apparently centuries older than the house to which it was stuck, but also because of its inscription. Roadside chapels, crucifixes, and image columns, when asking for prayers, mostly ask for a particular purpose, and promise specific supernatural assistance. The poem carved in the marble plaque of the small chapel, however, requests the passerby to greet the Madonna without any interest.

Il sorriso di Maria
A questi luoghi allieterà
Se chi passa per la via
«Ave o Madre» a lei dirà.

The smile of Mary
will shine on this place
if whoever walking on this road
will tell her “Hail, Mother”.

The 1748 map of Giambattista Nolli, our companion through the history of Rome, does not mark the chapel, or at least  he does not provide it with a number, but it is not impossible that the protruding little snag on the corner refers to it. However, in Antonio Tempesta’s 1593 map one can clearly discern the semicircular chapel on the corner, at that time still in front of a garden or field, facing a residential house, about halfway between St. Clement and the Ss. Quattro Coronati.



The small street has born for almost three thousand years the name via Querquengetulana, or via dei Querceti after the oak-grove, still visible in Nolli’s map. However, according to Ferdinand Gregorovius’ monumental eight-volume work on medieval Rome, it was also called since the early middle ages vicus Papissae, the street of the Popess, namely because the house facing it belonged to the matron of the Papa family.

It was first in the 11th century that another explanation emerged for the name of the street, which would then excite the whole of Europe. The Dominican Jean de Mailly from Metz mentions in a marginal note of his 1099 world chronicle, that he had heard a story, which he had yet to verify, according to which, the explanation of the inscription PPP of a stone in Rome (actually pecunia propria posuit, “erected on his own expense”) is that a woman dressed as a man was elected pope, and when she, while riding, publicly gave birth to a child, the people killed both of them, and engraved on their tomb: Petre Pater Patrum, Papissae Prodito Partum – “Peter, father of fathers, unveil the birth of the popess”. It seems that the guides of Rome were working for their money already in the 11th century.

The story, however, entered the scandal chronicle of the Middle Ages in a form given to it by his fellow Dominican brother, the 13th-century Bishop of Gniezno, Martinus of Opava/Troppau. Martinus, obviously inspired by the name of the little street that he had seen in Rome during his inauguration, already claimed to know the exact location of this incredible event, about which nobody had heard for four hundred years.

“Post hunc Leonem Iohannes Anglicus nacione Maguntinus sedit annis 2, mensibus 7º, diebus 4, et mortuus est Rome, et cessavit papatus mense 1. Hic, ut asseritur, femina fuit, et in puellari etate Athenis ducta a quodam amasio suo in habitu virili, sic in diversis scienciis profecit, ut nullus sibi par inveniretur, adeo ut post Rome trivium legens magnos magistros discipulos et auditores haberet. Et cum in Urbe vita et sciencia magnis opinionis esset, in papam concorditer eligitur. Sed in papatu per suum familiarem impregnatur. Verum tempus partus ignorans, cum de Sancto Petro in Lateranum tenderet, angustiata inter Coliseum et sancti Clementis ecclesiam peperit, et post mortua ibidem, ut dicitur, sepulta fuit. Et quia domnus papa eandem viam semper obliquat, creditur a plerisque, quod propeter detestationem facti hoc faciat. Nec ponitur in cathalogo sanctorum pontifcum propter mulieris sexus quantum ad hoc deformitatem.”

“After Leo [IV, 847-855], John Anglicus, born at Mainz, was Pope for two years, seven months and four days, and died in Rome, after which there was a vacancy in the Papacy of one month. It is claimed that this John was a woman, who as a girl had been led to Athens dressed in the clothes of a man by a certain lover of hers. There she became proficient in a diversity of branches of knowledge, until she had no equal, and, afterward in Rome, she taught the liberal arts and had great masters among her students and audience. A high opinion of her life and learning arose in the city; and she was chosen for Pope. While Pope, however, she became pregnant by her courtier. Through ignorance of the exact time when the birth was expected, she was delivered of a child while in procession from St. Peter’s to the Lateran, in a lane between the Colosseum and St Clement’s church. After her death, it is said she was buried in that same place. The Lord Pope always turns aside from the street, and it is believed by many that this is done because of abhorrence of the event. Nor is she placed on the list of the Holy Pontiffs, both because of her female sex and on account of the foulness of the matter.”

The popess giving birth in Jacob Kallenberg’s illustration to Boccaccio’s De claris mulieribus (1533), and the popess (Johanna Wokalek) in Sönke Wortmann’s Die Päpstin (2009)

The ceremonial route leading from the Lateran, the parsonage of the Roman pontiff to the St. Peter’s, the holiest pilgrimage church of Rome, had indeed three versions on this first segment. The most spectacular, the street of S. Giovanni in Laterano, which would be made Via Papalis by Sixtus V in 1588, was made impassable throughout the Middle Ages by the ruins of the Ludus Magnus, the gladiator barracks next to the Colosseum. Because of this, there were two alternative routes: the picturesque via Ss. Quattro Coronati – which we will also follow during our tour in the Caelius –, which, however, was not suited to ceremonial marches due to its extreme steepness; and the ancient main street, the Via Labicana, where now the tram runs between the Lateran and the Colosseum. The medieval popes of course choose the latter, but the people of Rome sought for a rational explanation as to why the pope does not follow the shorter route, as everyone else. And those who seek, will find.

The abbey Ss. Quattro Coronati, still standing solitary on the hill of Caelius, before the late 19th-c. land speculation and urbanization. Well, that was the really juicy scandal of the Caelius neighborhood!

The legend of the popess, strangely, was finally rebutted not by the Catholics, but by the Protestants, with the methods of humanist textual criticism. Onofrio Panvinio, the great 16th-century Roman historian still accepts it as authentic, and merely seeks to beautify its details, but the Huguenot David Blondel clearly pointed out its false nature in the early 17th century, and since then the popes also censored its mention.

The people of Rome, however, know what they know. Popes and scholars come and go, the vicus Papissae was extended to the military hospital erected via land speculation, a block of flats was built on the place of the garden, but the chapel stands there still. The Caelius neighborhood, which was included in the city’s bloodstream only at the end of the 19th century, still keeps alive many old traditions and buildings forgotten in other parts. Due to the ban, the reason for the chapel’s founding cannot be specified, but everyone is familiar with it, and its 18th-century restorers only ask a greeting from the passersby to dismiss the bad memory of the place.

Peeking through the broken iron gate of the chapel of cracked walls, painted in Roman red, one can see a Madonna fresco, whose age is difficult to say, but probably it can be dated at the late 15th century. Her facial features have already been blurred, but her smile still brightens the dry flowers and votive ribbons pinned on the chapel gate, and the Mediterranean flora richly growing on the tile roof and in the cracks of the pavement, the memory of the disappeared oak-grove.

Talk to us, we can help you

This morning in the Trastevere. A knotty problem, isn’t it?


But the solution is obvious.


There you go. Already working.

Pasquino greets Hitler

Pasquino was once a king. He was called Menelaus, and he carried the body of Patroclus from under the walls of Troy, killed by Hector, as it is seen in the Roman copy made after the original of Pergamum, under the arcades of the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence.


Rome, however, does not tolerate the kings, and the statue of Menelaus that is to be found here was much less lucky. By the time it came to light during the foundation works of the Orsini palace – at whose wall it stands until this day –, the land of the Brutus had deprived it of its members, its face and its identity.


The people of Rome, however, which nestles on its own history just as comfortably as it does under the arcades of the ancient monuments, gave him a new identity. They called him Pasquino – or in Latin Pasquillus, “Small Pasquale” – after the local tailor, who was just as small and curved as the statue, and whose chief merit was – as described by his contemporary, Lodovico Castelvetro – that due to his Vatican clientele, he came home day after day with the juiciest gossip, and passed it on with the most biting commentary to the local community. After his death, this function was taken over by Pasquino, on whose pedestal, night after night, savagely biting political pamphlets in verse – pasquinades or pasquils – saw the moonlight, and Rome’s people happily got up before sunrise to read, memorize and pass them on, before they were ripped down by the morning patrol.

Pasquino throughout the centuries

Piazza Navona and its environment on Giambattista Nolli’s 1748 map. Number 620 is Piazza Pasquino (at that time still Piazza Parione), and 621 the Orsini palace, with the statue of Pasquino marked in red at its corner. Below: Pasquino statue in Google Street View

The pasquils, these early Romaleaks, were obviously leaked by well-informed and educated courtiers from the papal court and cast in artistic form in the Roman vernacular, and they were also published in regularly updated volumes beyond the Alps. They clearly irritated their main target, the leaders of the city and the papal state. The Netherlandish Adrian VI, the last northern pope before John Paul II, who in the early 16th century hoped to create order in Rome, wanted to throw the statue in the Tiber, but his advisers – among them certainly a good number of authors – convinced him that this is still the most effective safety valve for draining the dissatisfaction of the people of Rome. Two centuries later, Benedict XIII inflicted the death penalty on the authors of the poems, but to no avail. Pasquino became the uncrowned king of Rome, a dreaded tyrant of popes, politicians and celebrities.

Hitler and Victor Emmanuel III are driven to the ceremonial reception in the Capitol, 8 May 1938

In 1938, Hitler, who reached the summit of his international recognition, had a solemn visit to allied Italy, including Rome, Florence, and Naples. At the railway station in Rome he was received by King Victor Emmanuel III and Prime Minister Benito Mussolini. Hitler took a seat on the King’s side in the ceremonial carriage, and the procession drove under the papier maché triumphal arches along the Via dei Fori Imperiali, next to the Colosseum. This zone hd only just a little while before been “cleaned” by Fascist town planning from every living medieval and Renaissance addition, and converted into that solemn and dead zone of ancient monuments in the middle of Rome, that we see today, as it is graphically described by the popular name for this process: lo sventramento di Roma, “the disembowelment of Rome”.

But if rulers meet in Rome, Pasquino must also be there. On the morning of the visit, the uncrowned king of Rome greeted his colleague in a verse on his pedestal:

Roma, de travertino
vestita de cartone,
saluta l’imbianchino
suo prossimo padrone!

Rome, from marble
converted to paper,
greets the house-painter,
her future master.

We do not know how Hitler returned the greeting. We also do not know how Pasquino foresaw the events of September 1943. But in two thousand years he must have seen enough of the past to glimpse into the future even without a face, like his companion, the two-faced Janus on the bridge over the Tiber, at the entrance to the ghetto. About whom we will discuss in a new post.