123 parcheggio cani

I love this photo. This is one of the many "parcheggio cani" (dog parking spot) outside the bars and stores of Rome.

My time here in Rome is dwindling quickly. Jason arrives in Rome this evening (yay!!!). The Vatican gave us an appointment at 9:15 am tomorrow to visit the Necropolis under St. Peters. It's a 1 1/2 hour guided tour and I'm really looking forward to it. As a result, I won't be near a computer to update the blog on Friday.

Monday and Tuesday are holidays - Rome celebrates Ferragosto, which roughly translates to "it's hot and I don't want to work in August". The ironic thing is that we have been getting this nice cold front all week so the laugh is on the Italians this time.

For my few but loyal daily readers, this means that there probably won't be blog updates until next Wednesday, so stay tuned until then. And then the Friday after that will be the last day for blog posts and I fly home on Sunday. So my remaining time here is short indeed.

122 metro linea C

(above: detail from one of the many exterior spaces in the fabulous Etruscan Museum)

Unlike most major European cities, Rome does not have a robust metro system: just lines A & B - one north/south and the other east/west. The two lines come together at the Termini station, which is always heavily and unpleasantly congested with people transferring lines.

Because of the rich archeological heritage of the city, neither line is very convenient to the city center. Not only are the underground vibrations damaging to the structures above through (buzz-word alert) soil-structure interaction, but unburied physical artifacts could be destroyed through the excavation process.

Just in the last month, excavations have begun on the new Metro Line C, which has been talked about for years. It still doesn't go quite into the heart of Rome, but it does fills in some of the gaps between lines A and B. The excavations are not the traditional civil engineering type with backhoes and automated equipment - they will be long, slow and tedious archeological excavations. I don't know what the time table is for the project, but I imagine this is going to take years or decades to accomplish.

It's kind of exciting because it's almost guaranteed that they will uncover some interesting structures and artifacts. For example, Nero's Domus Aurea was buried for over 1000 years until a worker found it in the Renaissance. And the Area Sacra Argentina, a site in the Centro with pagan temples pre-dating the Roman Forum, was only discovered in the last century.

This reminds me of something else I have seen often in the museums. The statues usually have a plaque at the base telling who they think the statue represents, how old they think it is, and where it was found. A ridiculous number of these statues were found at the bottom of the Tiber, which really makes me wonder how many thousands of interesting artifacts are still down there in the silt.

121 il passetto

(above: the "Passetto", secret passage between the Vatican, to the left, and Castel Sant'Angelo, to the right)

Crossing the street in Rome is an adventure for a pedestrian. I can't tell you how many times that my survival instinct has kicked in and I have had to sprint out of the way of a motorcycle or car.

This makes me really wonder about these little old ladies that I see slowly crossing the street.
They aren't spry enough to hustle out of the way, but they do glare angrily at uncoming traffic, which is apparently pretty effective.

120 ascensori

(above: my office building)

When I was at the US/ICOMOS orientation in DC, some of my colleagues from abroad had not had a chance to send email to friends and family in their home countries until I offered to let them use the computer in my apartment.

The women from India and Bulgaria were amazed at the elevators my apartment building, which is common an ugly 14-story developer building in downtown DC. First, they were surprised that if you pressed the elevator call button on one side of the lobby, the button on the opposite side would also illuminate. They were both used to pushing both buttons. They also talked about how big the elevators were.

Here in Italy, it was time for me to have the culture shock. My elevator in Diana's condominium is triangular in plan: approximately 2' by 4' by 4.5'. This is very small. The sign says that the capacity is 4 people, but in the few times I have shared the elevator with just 1 other person, I felt uncomfortably cramped. I'm used to it now but looking forward to seeing Jason's reaction later this afternoon.