Romewalks by Anya M. Shetterly

Author:Anya M. Shetterly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

Fragments of antique sculpture on Via del Portico d’Ottavia

Continue down Via del Portico d’Ottavia to the corner of Piazza Costaguti. On your right is a wonderful house called the Casa di Lorenzo Manili that dates back to 1497. The house consists of three sections, one with windows from the 1600s, another with arched windows, and a third with the remains of a crossed window. Lorenzo Manili covered the façade with antique fragments that he took from the Appia Antica. The lion attacking a doe (one of the finest sculptures of a lion in Rome), the relief of a dog and a rabbit (to the right and further down), and the fragments of funerary stelae with four busts are particularly vivid. This work, by a man of modest fortune, is one of the few remaining expressions of the humanistic and archeological passion that seized Rome at the end of the fifteenth century. After three centuries, during which Rome had been reduced to a battlefield, Romans finally sought in the fifteenth century to emphasize their direct connections with the classical past and to revive patriotic feelings for their city. Lorenzo Manili seems to have taken great personal pride in his house. Not satisfied with an inscription bearing his name five times in Latin, he had it repeated as many times in Greek. The inscription also bears the date of the founding of Rome and also the year of the building’s inauguration, 2221 according to the Roman calendar. Around the corner, on the frieze of the window that overlooks Piazza Costaguti, a good Roman descendant of Lorenzo Manili carved the words HAVE ROMA to salute the reascendence of his city to its former splendor. “Urbe Roma in Pristinium formam rinascente … HAVE ROMA.”

The store on the corner of Lorenzo Manili’s house is famous throughout Rome for its pastries. The secret seems to be recipes of ancient Jewish origin, and while heavy, their ricotta pies and turnovers are delicious.

Turn right from Via del Portico d’Ottavia onto Piazza Costaguti. You will come across a small round iron construction known as the Tempietto del Carmello, which was built in 1759. During the period when the Ghetto boundaries were enforced this was the only church within its confines. The Jews were required to come here four or five times a year to listen to Christian sermons. One can imagine the natural feelings of indignation assuaged when the Tempietto was taken over, thirty-five years ago, by the local shoe repairman. He uses all the available space and loves having his shop right in the middle of the piazza where he can chat with everyone going to the bread store across the way.

The Piazza Costaguti demonstrates the variety in form and function of spaces described as “piazzas.” They can be a dead end, as we saw in the Piazza S. Angelo in Pescheria; a juncture of many streets, as at the Piazza Venezia; a mere widening of the street, as at the Piazza Campitelli; or the odd space that just isn’t big enough for yet another building, as it is here.

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