Roma Part Due

In spite of our disappointment with the flat, we fell in love with the Aventine neighbourhood.

For good reason: the hill is mostly residential and, except for a couple of tourist hotspots at the top, the Aventine is blissfully tourist-free.

During the height of the Empire, most Roman noblemen and patricians built their villas and palaces on the Palatine Hill, across the Circus Maximus from the Aventine.  But it was the Emperor Nero who pretty much kicked everyone else off the Palatine to make it his own, exclusively.

Site of the Circus Maximus with the Palatine Hill in the
background.

The nabobs all moved next door, onto the Aventine.  Today, there are still some really pretty villas scattered among the apartment houses, some of which are actually converted villas.

Down along the border of the neighbourhood is the Viale Aventino (Aventine Avenue) where we were treated to all manner of good to excellent eateries:

A Sake bar with a small menu (no sushi)

A regular sushi restaurant

A Roman-style pizza joint

A Neapolitan-style pizza joint

A French restaurant

A great burger joint, and 

A much-better-than-average Italian restaurant

And these but a fraction of all the eateries along this one long avenue!

There is one restaurant and one bar up on the Hill I want to lavish with praise:

The bar at Hotel San Anselmo, a sister hotel to our own Hotel Aventino:

A tiled mural of medieval times

Shortly after our arrival in Rome, we made this our first stop of the evening, before venturing out for dinner. Even though we were not yet guests of the other hotel, we could see this as our ‘local’ for prosecco and a gin & tonic. 

It’s what we ordered almost every evening.  

That is until I discovered Franciacorta a step (or two) up from prosecco in the Italian sphere of sparkling wines.

The barkeepers got to know us since we haunted their territory pretty much every evening for two weeks.  Walking the 2 blocks from our hotel, we enjoyed the fragrance of night blooming jasmine which filled the air throughout the Aventine, even climbing up the umbrella pines.

The restaurant on the hill, and a short two blocks away, is Apuleius, named after the Roman novelist, whose most famous work is the novel Metamorphoses, otherwise known as The Golden Ass. It is the only Latin novel that has survived in its entirety.  

Walking into this establishment was like walking into the dining room of a Pompeiian villa, pre AD79.

The desk was flanked by a most beautiful mosaic:

Literal translation from the Latin: Bowl that you are thirsty

And the rooms were decorated with frescoes as seen in the House of the Faun in Pompeii:

As for the food:  all is sourced from farms and wineries in Lazio, the province of Rome, including this wine from an Etruscan estate 

That fine print beneath "Sant'Isidoro"
is Etruscan (!)

We were so happy to find such a lovely place to dine so close to home. We visited several times during our Rome adventure.

Roma Part Uno

The jury is still out for me about Rome.

The first time I visited Rome, I was nine years old and accompanied my brothers, parents and some grandparents back in 1960.  We toured with a personal guide. I put my hand in the Mouth of Truth.  We saw Pope John XXIII from afar. That’s my memory.

The next time was with friends and, except for a (sort of) private visit to the Papal Palace and Sistine Chapel it was mostly eating and drinking. And drinking.

This time, Scott and I were determined to get to know the place, or at least a neighbourhood or two.  We booked a two-week stay in a private flat in the Aventine from a very nice lady who advertised in the London Review of Books.  

Our first experience from the Review of Books was the incredibly wonderful flat on the Rue du Four in Paris, (https://www.letterfromludlow.com/2024/11/falling-in-love-all-over-again-with.html) so we were sure to have the same luck in Rome.

That was not to be.  While the lady was very very nice, and clearly an intelligent woman, and her large flat on the Aventine was in an almost perfect location, the flat itself was not perfect.  It was stuffed with thousands of books, dozens of plastic boxes full of fabrics - clothes and linens - piled from floor to ceiling. There were ten-year-old issues of the London Review of Books gathering dust on the tops of bookshelves in the hall.  A raft of hundreds of DVDs sat on the lower shelf of a large coffee table in front of the telly.

There was some very good (and very bad) art on the walls, and a hutch that filled an entire wall filled with religious figures, dolls and ancient Roman relics (including a life-sized penis in terracotta). 

One of the first things this very nice lady said to me while greeting us at the entrance to the building was, “Please don’t post any photos of the flat. There are some valuable pieces of art here.” (She’d googled us and saw my blog).

After spending the first day there, I couldn’t imagine posting any photos at all of the interior.

The kitchen was another hoarding spot for unopened boxes of unused pots and pans.  The refrigerator was a 1970s Miele that made a large buzzing sound whenever the refrigeration turned on.  We had to keep the kitchen door closed at night lest the noise keep us awake. The walls of the kitchen were ‘50s green subway tiles. 

At least the washing machine was in working order.

We knew intellectually that the flat was clean. But it didn’t feel like it. 

And the closet smelled musty if you closed the door for any amount of time.

We braved an entire week before packing up, saying goodbye to the homeless guy sleeping just outside the door to the building, and moving to a little hotel down the street for the remainder of our stay. (We returned to the flat to wash clothes).

So you can see why this experience may influence my feelings about the Eternal City.

Now, onto wondrous things, hordes of pilgrims and unexpected wonders.