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 embassy to the Italian Republic. Small embassy, big keyhole. 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.
A French saint in a Roman garden: Joan of Arc, at the stake, between Sant'Alessio and Santa Sabina on the Aventine. A French sculptor gave her to Rome in 1935, but the war got in the way and she only reached this garden in 1954. Even a saint