January's Monthly Postcard from Rome
L’Epifania tutte le feste le porta via, as the phrase has it: Epiphany takes away all of the holidays. The 7 January this year was a Wednesday, but also quite the most Monday of perhaps the whole year. When it comes to visiting Rome this is the quietest time of the year, until mid-February when things begin to fill up again, especially at weekends.
This Epiphany, Rome was beset by weather so bad that all events, even the traditional Befana who usually flies over the Piazza Navona Christmas market, were cancelled. I had the day off and repaired to a favourite restaurant, Taverna dei Fori Imperiali, for a long and convivial lunch in super company. By the evening the weather had abated, and my chums and I wandered to the terrace of the nearby and long-neglected Palazzo Silvestri Rivaldi which is undergoing major state-funded restorations and is to be bought by the Regione Lazio. The gardens were open (and free) for the festive season, though partial public opening of the palace as restorations progress is on the cards, more info as it comes!
I presently find myself in Madrid visiting old pals (one of whom I met just over thirty years ago in my first week at Edinburgh University in 1995) and because they know me well they suggested a visit to Complutum, the Roman archeological site on the outskirts of the pretty town of Alcalá de Henares. Tapas and a wander to some Roman ruins through a somnolent Saturday afternoon suburb, what could be nicer?
The site was only discovered in 1970 during building nearby which swallowed up most of what was once the main urban settlement of the area of what is now greater Madrid and Guadalajara. Close to the Henares river and surrounded by abundant arable land it was a prosperous place. The Roman settlement developed especially in the first century close to the defensive settlement of the Carpetani on a strategic bluff above the Henares and was raised to the status of municipium by Vespasian.
The site has vestiges of the Forum with its Curia and adjacent bath complex, all rebuilt in the third century, and the decumanus which connected Complutum with Emerita Augusta (Meridà), Toletum (Toledo), and Caesaraugusta (Zaragoza). The grandest domus of which part survives is the first century House of the Griffins with its elegant garden courtyard, replete with a water supply, and frescoed dining hall.
After all one really is never very far from Rome!
Saluti, Agnes
So many Roman sites still coming to light !