December's Postcard from Rome
I’ll be doing a live-streamed Christmas walk on 21 December, info and how to join is at the end!
A bevy of blue skies have characterised the home straight of 2025, and somehow (bewilderingly) the Jubilee year is almost over. And so we enter—implausible as it seems—the second quarter of the third millennium. Positively dizzying stuff.
Monday was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, which traditionally marks the beginning of Christmas festivities it Italy, and the Rome city lights were switched on. The Vatican Christmas tree and nativity scene are, curiously, rather behind this year but busily being assembled as I write.
While in Italian the Immacolata unambiguously alludes to the Virgin the English translation often gives rise to confusion: it refers not to the Immaculate Conception of Christ (celebrated as the Feast of the Annunciation logically on 25 March) but rather to that of the Virgin herself. Though long sustained, amongst others by Francis of Assisi, it only became Church dogma in the nineteenth century, relieving Mary not only of personal sin but also of the taint of original sin.
Specifically it was promulgated by Pope Pius IX with the Bull Ineffabilis Deus on 8 December 1854 and, following the declaration the Hall of the Immaculate Conception was painted in fresco by Francesco Podesti. The room is in the Borgia Tower of the Vatican Palaces, adjacent to the apartments painted by Raphael for Julius II and Leo X (now all part of the Vatican Museums).
I don’t often mention things I don’t like here but I have to confess I’ve always found these paintings to be ploddingly literal and tiresomely didactic, perhaps testament to my (almost certainly unfair) antipathy to much nineteenth century history painting. Undoubtedly the room suffers for its proximity to Raphael’s work, a tough comparison for anyone to face. Whatever my prejudices, however, it is an intriguing fresco cycle, testament to a radical clarification of Catholic dogma not two centuries ago.
On Monday, in celebration of the Immacolata, at dawn firemen scaled the monument erected to the Virgin in piazza di Spagna atop an ancient column of cipollino marble found in the late eighteenth century near the church of Santa Maria della Concezione in Campo Marzio to replace her floral wreath. I spent the day showing folk fabulous places away from the centre of town, teeming as it was with Romans and visitors from across Italy here for the holiday weekend.
As we drove back to their hotel just before four we slipped through just before the road closures as the gathering crowds awaited the arrival of Pope Leo who came, as is tradition, to pay homage to the monument to the Immacolata.
And so across Rome lights were turned on and the holiday season began. In this festive spirit, on the evening of Sunday 21st December and following various (much-appreciated) requests, I’ll be doing a live-streamed gallop through Rome taking in as much Roman festivity as I can in an hour (including the Vatican tree and nativity scene which will by then be gleaming away).
The festive jaunt will be streamed via Zoom meeting, will begin at 4pm Rome time (which is 3pm GMT, noon ET, 7am PT for example), last one hour, and will cost €30 per screen connection. Recordings will be available for the same price. Questions and comments along the way are extremely welcome.
To book please email info@understandingrome.com
For those of you who are members of Tiro a Segno of New York: I’ll be doing a version of this just for you the previous week, so please don’t sign up twice!
Saluti from Rome!
Agnes
So glad to know I'm not crazy--- we've been watching the
Vatican tree and wondering what's going on! Did they lose track of time? Baffling. And I'm with you on those paintings. Definitely well under what is admittedly an almost ridiculously high bar.
I’m looking forward to this walk as we will be arriving in Rome on 31 December!