Pillar #3: Romans are somewhat skeptical of technology

This may be too broad a claim to make at this point. I mean, I've yet to see a Roman texting on an iPhone (most all have normal cell phones), or working on a laptop on the tram, and generally speaking they don't seem to be as gadget crazy as we are. Our school has 4 Macs that are shared between 50 students. It could be that the extremely high cost of electricity in Italy is a factor, which is almost double that of the United States. (Not to mention gas prices, which equate to somewhere around $10 per gallon, give or take.)

The only real basis for my most recent observation is my return from a whirlwind weekend tour of Umbria, where we were directionally assisted--sort of--by our driver's TomTom GPS device. Alternate titles for this blog post I considered were, in no particular order: "Italian road maintenance is low on the priority list"; "Italians are horrible drivers (yet manage to avoid accidents)"; or "Romans trust TomTom like Julius Caesar trusted Brutus." As it turns out, GPS technology is not quite as advanced in Italy as it is in the U.S., and combined with a far more complicated road system, it made for an interesting trip. Let's just say round-abouts and weird intersections really confused TomTom and our driver, and there are a LOTS of those between Rome and Umbria.

GPS issues aside, however, it was a truly fantastic trip. Umbria is a very mountainous region of Italy north of Rome between Lazio (Rome's region) and Tuscany (Florence, Siena, etc.), and from what I gleaned from my professor, Umbria is famous for "woody" wine, truffles, pigs (who dig up truffles), and hill towns. Between Friday morning at 6 am and Sunday evening at 8 pm, we quickly visited the towns of Orvieto, Todi, Perugia, Assisi, Spello, Spoleto, and Civita Castellana, which was literally a last minute addition "on the way back to Rome" and proved to be not very fruitful. I'd never been to any of these cities before or to Umbria for that matter, and our objective was to study the armatures and public spaces of these hill towns (see post #2 for an explanation of armatures) in addition to any cool churches, frescoes, mosaics, paving patterns, doors, windows, lights, etc., etc. Needless to say, it was a lot of incredible information to take in during only a few days.

The common link between all these cities is their mostly Roman origins and the fact that they later were all jockeying for power within the Catholic church and control of the Papacy before it settled in Rome. Each had a "Duomo," or cathedral, of various (usually large) size and elaboration, among other churches and religious functions. Not to bore you too much with the details, but it's worth mentioning a bit about each city. Orvieto was great because we arrived at 7:30 am Friday morning and got to see the city waking up. It was surprisingly clean for a Medieval city, and one of the coolest things was the way the various towers and churches were "framed" by the buildings while walking up and down streets. Todi is famous for its large central piazza (with the Duomo) that is L-shaped and has a great view of the valley and surrounding mountains. Perugia is the capital of Umbria (they won out eventually) and has the widest main street of any of the cities we visited (keeping in mind that the narrowest streets can be around five feet wide and the widest are typically 20-25 feet building to building. VERY dense). It runs along the main ridge of the mountain, and the surrounding neighborhoods, or borgs (from which we get bourgeoisie), ring the top of the hill and have steep sloping roads.

After a rainy and foggy Saturday morning in Perugia, we went to Assisi, "a mythical land like Narnia," that had mostly sunny skies just 30 mins south. It was probably my favorite, and as we drove up you could see it white and gleaming on the side of the mountain. It has two separate Catholic orders, the Franciscans after St. Francis of Assisi and the "Poor Clares," founded by St. Chiara (Clare). The two churches/monasteries were on opposite sides of town and linked by the main street that ran through the original Roman forum, where a church had been built behind the some of the surviving columns. The complexity of the plan and the way it climbed the mountain was, to me, the most fascinating part, although it was tiring climbing up and down through all the levels.

In Spello and Spoleto we experienced more of the same types of spaces, but Spoleto in particular was great because we walked to the top of the town behind the fortress to a 13th century stone bridge that crossed a huge ravine and into the woods. A hike in the woods was the last thing I expected to do this semester, but it was really nice to be out in the wilderness for a bit before we returned to Rome.

I will post some pictures once I go through them all, but I will leave you with this from Spoleto.

Pillar #2: Romans are never in a hurry

I don't know if it's my long legs, fast stride, or my frequent inability to be on time, but I have quickly found that if you are in a hurry to get somewhere, Romans will inadvertently do everything possible to slow you down. Many, many people walk in Rome because people live in such close proximity to the things they need to do, and consequently, the sidewalks (or roads in the central city where there are no sidewalks) are typically packed with groups of old women with shopping buggies, families strolling along with their children, people browsing at sidewalk tents and shop windows, etc. Also, there isn't really designated parking per se in most of central Rome, so people get very creative while parking their cars and mopeds. It's usually less like a casual walk and more like a daily obstacle course. Somehow, it all still works though despite the seeming lack of order.

In my urban design studio, we've been studying what my professor calls urban "armatures," or main arteries that link major buildings and public spaces together within a city. It's fascinating because central Rome is typical of most medieval cities in that it appears to be unplanned and simply grew as needed because of all the winding streets, strange jogs, and irregularly shaped piazzas. Once you really get into it though, you realize that many of these seemingly random roads were usually important processional routes or commercial streets, open spaces usually facilitated church going or markets of all kinds, and that the strange conglomeration of buildings were actually arranged in such a way to make it interesting to walk from place to place. Curving and well defined streets allow buildings to slowly reveal themselves as you approach them, and the view down streets are usually ended at least with a doorway or window bay or at best a church facade. Within all this, you can walk a mile and barely even realize how far you've gone.

An interesting comparison would be to a modern American subdivision, which usually has curving streets because straight streets are too "boring." (They certainly can be, yes.) So we have "exciting" streets, but if the subdivision is filled with the same kind of house, or the same 4 house plans flipped 50 different ways, are you really going to think it's interesting enough to walk through it everyday or even to slow down enough in a car to enjoy it? I think this above all else is why Romans tend to move at a slower pace--there is so much enjoyment to be found in just walking around.

Here are some pictures I took while walking and studying my selected neighborhood armature near the Campo de Fiori (meaning "field of flowers" in Italian), one of the early markets of Rome. (some of you probably remember this being used for different purposes during our last trip to Rome)

Pillar #1: Romans don't clean up after their dogs.

With all the incredible stuff there is here in Rome, you'd think I'd constantly be looking around at all the people, buildings, and ruins spread around throughout the city. Right? Wrong. I've begun to realize that as a resident of greater Trastevere, you have to keep your eyes to the ground to avoid any unexpected...surprises. But I digress.

Yes, this is supposed to be a blog about my architectural studies and travels. So why am I talking about poo? When you live in a place like Rome--I've been told to consider myself a 3 1/2 month "visitor" rather than a tourist. It sits better with the locals--you really gain a totally new perspective that is much different than a "tourist" would get. Last time I was here (In 2004? Was it really that long ago?), I stayed in a hotel, ate out most every meal, traveled in a tour group of 30 every day, and had everything planned out for me. This time around I basically have a normal semester, but it just happens to be in Rome. That means apartment living, cooking, laundry, walking to class, walking around the city, walking to the grocery store, walking to dinner, walking up 125 stairs to my apartment at least once a day, walking, walking, walking... So you can probably imagine, with as much walking as I've been doing in just over a week, why dog poo left on the sidewalk can be problematic.

I live on the Janiculum Hill (Gianicolo to the Italians), which is west of the city and south of the Vatican, and it's a 25-30 minute walk to our school building in the center of town near the Pantheon. At the bottom of the hill is the neighborhood called Trastevere, which is still pretty authentically Roman (fewer tourists here). The best part about it is the view from the top.


The worst part, as I alluded to earlier...Did I mention that we live on a mountain? There are only a couple of direct paths up, and all involve stairs. The grocery stores and open air market, by the way, are about a half mile from the bottom of the stairs.


Despite arriving a day later than planned following what would have been a scenic detour to Newcastle, England had it not been snowing and foggy (for more on this adventure: http://clairescheesegrits.blogspot.com/2010/01/planes-trains-and-automobiles.html), we have already managed to see many of the sites, and are adjusting to our surroundings pretty well.

I will try to keep my pictures updated both on Facebook and here: http://picasaweb.google.com/rsmith31. Until next time...arrivederci!