Italy 2011, Rome, Piazzas and Pizzas

Our plan was to spend two days in Rome and today we would visit the northern classical part of the city and the areas that are predominantly Renaissance and Baroque in architectural character and we would leave Ancient Rome of the Emperors and the Gladiators until the following day.

It was approaching midday as we set off towards the Piazza della Republica and then down the long straight Via Nazionale towards the centre of the city. We could see the huge Victor Emmanuel monument now but before we reached it we took a turning right that took us past the Quirinale Palace built by the Popes on one of the original seven hills of Rome, previously the home of the Italian Monarchy and now the official residence of the President of Italy and to our first sightseeing destination, the famous Trevi Fountain.

There was no need for a map to find it, we just followed the swarm of people, because this has to be one of the busiest places in Rome with the huge fountain almost completely filling the tiny Piazza with people crammed in and shuffling through as they squeeze slowly past the crowds. Thirty-five years ago, on my first visit, people were still allowed to sit on the monument and cool their feet off in the water but that has been stopped now. There is a tradition of throwing three coins in the fountain guarantees that you will return one day to Rome. These days’ tourists with a desire to return to the Eternal City deposit an average of €3,000 a day in the fountain and this is collected up every night and is used to fund social projects for the poor of the city. That is probably why people aren’t allowed to paddle in it anymore and there were plenty of police on duty to make sure that we didn’t.

It was time for a refreshment break and true to form Kim rejected the first perfectly suitable place that we came across so we walked a little way further and found a pavement café where we stopped for a while. It was pleasant but the cost was a shock when the waiter presented a bill for €25 for three small beers, a Coca-Cola and a bottle of water, which was expensive by any standards and much more than we really like to pay.

Rested and refreshed we made our way now to the most famous and most crowded of all Rome squares, the Piazza di Spagna, shaped like a bow tie and surrounded by tall, elegant shuttered houses painted in pastel shades of ochre, cream and russet red and in the centre a fountain shaped as a leaking, sunken boat at the foot of the famous Spanish Steps that were crammed with people making their way to the top and back under the shade of cheap parasols sold on the streets by the illegal traders.

To the right we saw the house, now a museum, where the English poet John Keats lived and died and to the left the Babington Tea Rooms which was opened in 1896 by two Englishwomen who spotted a market for homesick British tourists with a yearning for a traditional afternoon pot of Earl Grey and a plate of cream scones. We turned our back on this and walked along Via Condotti, which is Rome’s most exclusive and most expensive shopping street where the major designers have their shops and where prices were way beyond our budget!

At the Via del Corso we turned left and walked back towards the Victor Emmanuel Monument at it southern end but turned off half way down and in a matter of minutes passed through hundreds of years of history, first through Piazza Colona and the column of Marcus Aurelius, then skirting past the Italian Parliament building, the Palazzo di Montecitorio, and after that the Temple of Hadrian with its huge columns which is now the façade of the Italian stock exchange.

It was lunchtime now but after the earlier scare we weren’t prepared to risk Rome restaurant prices so in the narrow and shady Via del Seminario leading to the Pantheon we found a fast food take away and ordered a slice of pizza each and ate it in the street before continuing with our itinerary.

We visited the Pantheon, which is one of the best preserved ancient Roman buildings, originally built as a pagan temple but later converted into a Christian Church and is the burial place of the ex kings of Italy and other important Italians such as the artist Raphael. Next it was the Baroque Piazza Navona in the blistering heat of the afternoon as the temperature reached well into the thirties.

I liked all of these sights but I was intrigued by something much more mundane. All of the manhole covers displayed the Roman symbol SPQR which, I learned later, is the motto of the city and appears in the city’s coat of arms, as well as on many of the civic buildings. SPQR comes from the Latin phrase, Senātus Populusque Rōmānus (The Senate and the People of Rome), referring to the government of the ancient Republic. It appeared on coins, at the end of public documents, in dedications of monuments and public works, and was the symbol on the standards of the Roman legions.

Krakow, Auschwitz

As Eric drove away leaving behind a cloud of choking grey exhaust fumes we found ourselves at the Grunwald monument, which is a statue to commemorate a famous Polish victory over the Teutonic Knights in 1410. It was erected five hundred years later in 1910 but predictably destroyed in 1939 by the Nazi’s who wanted to stamp out Polish nationalism and went about doing so through acts of mindless vandalism such as this. Thankfully Krakow didn’t hang around quite so long to rebuild it, they didn’t leave it another five hundred years but promptly put it back in place in 1975.

We now had some time to spare before the others returned from their visit to Auschwitz so we walked into the market square which was now bathed in gentle central European mid March sunshine and found a café with pavement tables and a good vantage point to be able to see what was going on. As the horse drawn carriages jangled by and the place filled up with tourists I wondered how they were getting on at the concentration camp tour and I began to recollect our own visit there in 2006.

I hadn’t been quite sure what to expect at Auschwitz and I confess to having been a little apprehensive at the beginning of the tour especially when a cold wind seemed to blow across our faces at the very moment we passed through the infamous gates of the camp.




At this place and near-by Birkenau, one million, six hundred thousand people were killed as part of the Nazi’s ‘final solution’ including one million Jews, seventy-five thousand Poles and twenty-five thousand gypsies. When the camp was at its most ruthlessly efficient they slaughtered four hundred and fifty-eight thousand Hungarian Jews in just three months. That is slightly over five thousand people a day and for any sane person totally impossible to imagine.

Amongst the exhibits were whole rooms of empty Zyclon B canisters, seven tonnes of human hair from an estimated one hundred and fifty thousand people and part of a grim recycling operation to process it into army uniforms. In others there were spectacles, pots and pans, prosthetic limbs, suitcases with return addresses optimistically scrawled on them for identification purposes and most moving of all a display of children’s clothes and possessions.

We saw the death wall where an unknown number of people were murdered and the prison cells that were positively medieval in their cruelty; the starvation cell, the suffocation cell and the standing in a very confined space with others cell; and there was a display of photographs of the prisoners which in each case showed the dates of admission and then of death, on average only three short months.

Finally we passed through the first gas chamber and crematorium where seven hundred people at a time were gassed to death and this was a horrible place, grey, grim and cold. For me the shocking fact was that all of this took place less than ten years before I was born and although there is still unpleasantness around the World my thoughts at that time were how lucky we have been to live a happy life. I was bought up on tales of the war told to me by my dad, but these were always gallant tales about impossibly brave paratroopers and square jawed commandos, about fearless desert rats and valiant fighter pilots, about courageous heroes and stiff upper lips, about medals and honours; I am certain that he never really understood what the war was like in the east; brutal and nasty, hateful and with indescribable suffering.

I had thought it important to visit the place and I was glad that I did and I hoped that the others would agree with me when they returned.

After our break we walked again through the market place and down some previously unexplored streets, stopped for a Pizza and looked around an impressive church, the Basilica of the Holy Trinity Dominican Order. Then back to Kazimierz and the Hotel Ester where Kim had a sleep and I sat in the sunshine and waited for Micky to call to tell me they were back. As it turned out they were already in the Crocodile but just about to leave in search of a pizza for themselves. This took some doing and we trawled around the streets examining menus without the Italian favourite and only unacceptable alternatives, so without success we just kept walking until finally in Kazimierz Square we found a pizza parlour and the day was saved!

Later we reassembled at the Crocodile for pre-dinner drinks and assessed our options. We certainly weren’t going back to the Casablanca next door but Kim had spotted a likely place close by so we agreed with her suggestion and walked the short distance to the Honey Pub just off the square. Inside we were allocated a table in a down stairs cellar and we had a very enjoyable evening with plenty of wine, excellent food and prompt service.