More Palazzo

This weekend we took a tour with our friend and art historian Nancy de C. who has been living in Rome for 35 years. Nancy told us about her father who is now 104 going on 105, he is on his third pacemaker and it has about a year to go before it needs replacement. He apparently asked the doctor what happens if you don't replace it, the doctor said, well it will stop working. Then what says her father, well the doctor adds you would die, well that would not be so bad really, he says. I suppose not, at 105 you really can say that you have seen it all.

Nancy took us to look at the Church of the Holy Apostles on Piazza SS Apostoli which contains the remains of St-Philip and St-James the less. The church was once connected to the Palace of the Colonna family. A wedding was scheduled for 11:30 that morning so we visited first the remains of the Chapel of Cardinal Giovanni Bessarione who was a Byzantine Orthodox prelate who came to Rome in 1437 with 50 large cases containing rare manuscripts and other works from Constantinople, he gave all of it to the City State of Venice on his death and they remain to this day in a great library, testament to the once great Christian city of Constantinople before it fell to the Ottoman Turks. This small area was recently rediscovered, the chapel was badly damaged during the sack of Rome by Emperor Charles V in 1527 and then floods from the Tiber did further damage. In 1959 while doing some repairs to the main building the historians came upon marvelous frescoes showing St-Hubert at Mont Saint Michel and other fresco of the history of the Archangel Michael in Puglia. Bessarione spent his life trying to convince the Kings and Princes of Europe to come to the rescue of Constantinople to save the city from the Turkish menace, but no one was interested, the 100 years war was on and everyone was much more concerned with petty politics. In 1438, he converted to the Catholic rite and instantly became a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.

The church of S.S. Apostoli also has many tombs of Cardinals and Princes and of Pope Clement XIV and of Queen Maria Clementina Sobieska, Catholic Queen of England, grand daughter of King Jan Sobieski III of Poland, she was the mother of Bonnie Prince Charlie of Scotland and wife of James I of Scotland. She lived most of her life in exile with her husband. She died young at 32 suffering from anorexia which was confused for religious fervor, she was apparently a manic depressive and given to bouts of religious ecstasy. While we were visiting the Church, the organist was practicing for the wedding, the music was splendid and added to the solemn magnificence of the Church.

We then went next door to the Palace of the Colonna Family, one of the great families of Rome, they are related to Royal families of Spain, Austria and Italy. They open the great gallery of their palace to the public on Saturday morning only from 9 am to 1pm. The Colonna have lived in Rome for at least 700 years and their Palace took 400 years to build on the site of the great temple of Serapis at the foot of the Quirinal Hill. Most of the magnificent marble columns and colored marble floors come from that ancient temple. Their claim to fame came from the naval battle of Lepanto when the Admiral of the fleet of the City State of Venice, Prince MarcAntonio Colonna (pictured above) defeated the Turkish navy on 7 October 1571.
The great gallery celebrates the victory of MarcAntonio, the ceiling is painted with great frescos commemorating the Colonna family, it is not modest. At one end you see a scene in Heaven, as MarcAntonio dressed like a Roman General is being led by the hand by a very naked and muscular Hercules to be introduced to the Queen of Heaven, the Virgin Mary who points to a chair on a cloud next to her for MarcAntonio to sit. Other figures in the fresco are Gods of the Roman pantheon mixed in with angels and cherubs. Another fresco shows Christ resurrected ascending into Heaven on judgement day and below the dead rising from their graves being helped by angels. If you look closely you see that all the elected to enter Heaven with Christ are non other than the Colonna family. To make sure you got the message of this painting, note that the Cross of Christ stands in Heaven next to the symbol of the Colonna family, a column. Then another fresco of Pope Martin V, Colonna in ecstasy during the moment of consecration of the Mass, God the Father himself appears to him.
The Colonna Palace is truly beautiful with its great gardens, the Colonna family still lives there, it has been restored by the Italian State at tax payers expense, so great is the importance of the family in Roman and Vatican history.

After the visit we went for lunch on Piazza Skanderbeg, named after the great Albanian hero who also lived for a time in Rome before leading a doomed revolt in Albania against the Turkish Sultan. We had the most delicious Artichoke lasagna in bechamel sauce and my favorite ice cream discovery this week, toasted Almonds and orange ice cream with real almonds and tiny bits of orange.