January's Postcard from Rome
December saw a flurry of frenetic activity as restoration projects and roadworks across the city hurried towards completion in time for the beginning of the Jubilee Year (if you’re wondering what it’s all about, here’s my post “What is a Jubilee Year?” from September, no paywall) and it’s all looking really rather splendid.
The area between the Ponte Sant’Angelo to St Peter’s is now entirely pedestrianised with the inauguration of a new underpass for traffic, planned and completed within fifteen months which is pretty impressive.
Via Ottaviano has been pedestrianised, as has half of piazza Risorgimento making for a much more agreeable approach for visitors to the Vatican from the Metro.
Within the Vatican City, inside St Peter’s Basilica Bernini’s Baldacchino and Cathedra Petri have been buffed and gilded, and there’s a new (and less reflective) glass in front of the Pietà.
Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano, in front of the cathedral of Rome (free post), has been entirely remodelled and was inaugurated the day before Pope Francis opened the Holy Door. San Giovanni is often under-visited but can expect a great deal of attention during the Jubilee. It is the world’s only Archbasilica, the most important of the four patriarchal basilicas (trumping St Peter’s), and is described in an inscription at its entrance as urbis et orbis ecclesiarum mater et caput (the mother and head church of the city and the world). It is also one of the seven pilgrim churches which I’ll mention in a post about the history of pilgrimage later this month.
Elsewhere in the centre of town fountains have been restored and cleaned including those in piazza Navona and the piazza della Rotonda at the Pantheon.
Piazza Farnese has been liberated entirely of scaffolding for the first time in what feels like living memory, and its fountains are once again bubbling into the twin tubs of Aswan granite repurposed from the frigidarium of the Baths of Caracalla and which I shall always imagine transported from the quarries down the Nile, floating on barges past crocodiles and hippopotamuses.
These are just a few of the myriad of projects impressively completed in record time, which usher in this new—Jubilee—year in Rome. Twelfth Night has now been and gone, and with it the end of the holidays, l’Epifania tutte le feste le porta via (Epiphany takes the holidays away). An archaic version of the saying once continued …poi arriva San Benedetto che ne riporta un bel sacchetto but the moving of the feast of St Benedict from late March—with its promise of Easter festivities—to mid July rather put the kibosh on that rhyme.
In any case in Rome it is the seventh of January which heralds the real beginning of the new year: may yours be peaceful, healthy, and happy.
Saluti from Rome,
Agnes
So glad you highlighted what really is a modern miracle-- that all of these projects were not only completed, but completed more or less on time. It's rather shocking for Rome, which doesn't have the best historical reputation for this kind of thing. But honestly, it's pretty remarkable for any major city. In New York, even the repointing of our apartment building went almost 18 months longer than planned-- and the building was built in the 1960's. You're absolutely right-- the city looks wonderful at the moment. Caput Mundi indeed....
This is lovely! Thank you for the update and all the lovely photos. Time for a trip back to Rome!