These cypress doors on the Aventine were carved around 430. One small panel is often cited as the earliest surviving public image of the Crucifixion, and it has no cross, just three figures with their arms out. Fifteen centuries on, they're still hanging in the same church, and still in service. RR
SSomeone in Rome has swapped the Playboy bunny for a muscular statue holding up a column capital, and stamped it DISMESSO: retired, out of service. I read it as satire on the decline of traditional masculine ideals. Rome had the original playboys, rich men who ignored the mos maiorum, the
At sunset Rome turned the whole sky orange. Italians call a sky like this "a pecorelle," little sheep, and say rain is on its way: cielo a pecorelle, pioggia a catinelle. I'll take the rain, as long as the sheep keep coming. RR
In Italian, riso means both rice and laughter. They come from two different Latin words that ended up spelled the same (Risotto = riso + -otto; riso "laughter" from Latin risus, rice from oryza). So a risotto isn't a little smile, whatever your face does when it arrives.
The Order of Malta's door on the Aventine has a famous keyhole. Through it you see the Order's gardens, then Rome, then St. Peter's dome in the Vatican, so three sovereign subjects in one view. The plaque says this is the Order's