Ciao!

A chamber room in the Palazzo Doria Pamphili Where the priest if he Would greet visitors Indeed Were visiting . You can vaguely see His throne under the portrait bearing His Likeness .

I Think They Went a little overkill with the whole fertility reference. A statue of Diana in Villa D' Este.

A view from behind of the cascading fountains and monumental (and Rome in the distance ) as if the almighty water flows directly from Villa D' Este to the Romans .

Hadrian's Theatre Maritmo - his own private island ( included moat ) on the Villa Adriana grounds. here I thought of Mom and how sheWould like her own little island .

My roommate has the roman Fever. It is not atypical for him to ooze sweat or stay in bed for days no end or smell of week-old soup but it is uncommon for him to run a fever of 101degrees. He's a jolly white giant, 6'4 240lbs. of body hair and pimples and he thinks he's Rodney Dangerfield 2.0 which would be quite funny if I didn't know some of his jokes came straight from the mouth of Rodney Dangerfield 1.0.

Anyways, I'm in the kitchen (while the rest of the coop is at la playa scaring away the beachgoers with their very unbeachy bods. There's a reason why poets are pale.) You'd think they'd know better coming from a school which E.L. Doctorow once wrote, "At Kenyon we did poetry like Ohio State does football." I've been venturing off by myself fairly frequently and as a result I know Rome fairly well on foot. I've been waking up at 7 AM most days to hit the streets before the forestieri mob the piazzas. This week one day I spent time at the Fountain of Trevi (absolutely packed, I must go either late at night or early morning) and the Palazzo Doria Pamphili. The Doria Pamphilis rose to prominence when Cardinal Pamphili was elected Pope and became Pope Innocent X. The palazzo was built for his nephew (cough, cough son) and I was fortunate enough to have the extravagant palazzo basically to myself for the afternoon as I took a few hours to examine the vast collection. Works by Lorrain, Caracci, Del Sarto, Corregio, Caravaggio, Jan Brueghel, Bernini, Parmigianino, Rembrandt, Durer, Rubens, Veronese, and the most famous of the collection, a portrait by Velasquez of Pope Innocent X. It is said that when the portrait was unveiled for the Pope he despondently exclaimed, "It is too real!" for it captures his aging visage too well.

The art gallery is quite overwhelming as pictures are hung from floor to vaunted ceiling (which of course are painted as well). Fun macabre fact--the Pamphili's had the remains of two saints, Theodora and Justin, exhumed from the catacombs to be put on display (literally their decomposing bodies are visible) in the family chapel.

Other destinations this week included a guided tour by the Pantheon Institute director, Romolo Martemucci (architect and blabbermouth). Romolo was backed into this free tour of Villa D'Este and Villa Adriana because he neglected to tell our own program director that electives (like my Vatican course) wouldn't start until two weeks after we arrived in Rome.

Villa D'Este was a vacation home for Cardinal Este before he too became pope in the 16th Century, 25 miles to the east of Rome. It is one of the most complete and refined examples of Renaissance elegance and has been my favorite spot thus far. Romolo gave us the longest winded speech I thought I could ever bear (only to trump it with an even longer one at the Villa Adriana) during which he explained quite eloquently the philosophy behind the architecture of the sprawling gardens. Renaissance artists and aristocrats were obsessed with connecting themselves to the classical ideals and thus modeled their home or homes to reflect their elite status and intelligence. For instance, Hercules is the recognized mythical forefather of the Este clan and his likeness can be found at the Villa D'Este and in the Este family tree where firstborn sons as named Ercule.

The villa overlooks the river valley and the city which Este would come to govern and the gardens are meant to showcase water, where all life springs, in its most grandiose. Romans were particularly fond of their water systems and fountains are everywhere, even some that shoot 60 feet in the air. Water is further paralled to life and fertility in the Fountain of Tivoli at Villa D'Este which portrays a narrative of Sibyl, a wet nurse to Bacchus, and at another fountain of the myriad breasted Diana (get the fertility references yet?)

After lunch we took a trip to Villa Adriana, one of the homes of Emperor Hadrian during his reign in the second century, only about 1/3 of which has been excavated. Romolo talked for an hour and a half at the gates before letting us walk about. Somehow he managed to tell us not only the history of Hardian and his villa but also on the reach of his empire, the tenets of democracy, Plato's Republic, tennis, Genesis, the Egyptians, his years at college, and his grandkids. It was actually not going to end until Professor Clarvoe had to stop him, and only after that were we able to walk around on our own. I promptly headed past Hadrian's private island, Teatro Maritimo, to his palazzo where I napped under an olive tree praying Romolo's voice would somehow get out of my ears.

Classes are here, too, and I am already swamped with work. I spent all of Friday and Saturday reading and writing and today will be spent drawing, and surprise! more reading. Currently I'm trucking my way through Hawthorne's Marble Faun and also prose poetry (although he would die, again, if he heard the phrase "prose poetry) by a Kenyon alum, James Wright, a Pulitzer winner whose verses have been particularly refreshing and captivating recently. it seems always to be a breezy summer day in France or Italy or some cobblestoned city in his reflections of his time away from Ohio, yet there is a strong undercurrent of melancholic tones. "The men and women and their children are still arranging for our slow ambling choice the heaps of grapes, melons, peaches, nectarines and all the other fruits of the season in a glory that will not last too long. But they will last long enough. I would rather live my life than not live it." Wright's ethereal, fleeting scenes, just as the piccolini he writes of, leave a ripple in my mind to ponder and remind me (as if we all need reminders) of our transience.

To return to the quotidian we have dinner as a group in a local restaurant. The locals in Trastevere are quite hospitable and I just happened to meet an Italian with an Australian accent which I was thoroughly amused by. He left me with a "Buongiorno, mate" and I bid you good day as well, mates.