Slightly off balance

The next day, our last day in Rome, we had left free intending to use it for a day trip by train to either Pompeii, to the south east, or to Pisa, to the north. The forecast the night before had been for all day rain which we decided would make exploring Pompeii fairly miserable so Pisa it was. We woke early to a damp, grey morning, rugged up and trudged, umbrellas in hand, the by now familiar path to the tram then the central station where we bought return tickets from the yellow automated ticket boxes for the not quite three hour trip to Pisa.

Pisa, population about 87 000, manages to feel both quaint and working class at the same time. The twenty minute walk from the station to the world famous Leaning Tower takes you through cobbled pedestrian streets dodging bicycle riding locals, past cafes full of university students, through narrow lanes lined with fabulous doorways, balconys and arches, crosses busy 'main' throughfares where Italians drive Italian made cars at break neck speed ignoring both lights and pedestrian crossings- felt right at home we did!- and over the thick grey Arno River.

Finally at the end of the street we saw this...


...emerging like a fairy tale, out of the mist. The tourists, the rain, the cold all fell away muzzled by the dreamlike scene that was unfolding at the end of the road.

The tower is part of the aptly named Square of Miracles, a world heritage site. It's historical name is the Piazza del Duomo, a walled area inside the city walls of Old Pisa that encompasses the Duomo, the Baptistry, Camposanto and two museums, the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo and Museo del Sinopie and of course the Torre pendente di Pisa. Entry tickets can be bought separately or in combinations. Of course we went for the upsized whoppa combo and booked in for the next time slot, in a not too shabby 45 minutes time, for the tower tour. With time on our hands, after a quick stop at the some of the cleanest toilets in Italy, we headed towards the main door of the Duomo.

The heavily decorated cast bronze doors of the Cathedral are incredible and were made by students after the originals were destroyed by fire in 1595. Each of the six doors is made up of narrative panels of biblical scenes like pages of a story book.

The outside of the church, like it's accompanying campanile (the bell tower we all know better as the Leaning Tower of Pisa) and Baptistry, is embellished in exquisite detail like sugar icing on a wedding cake...

...with the delicate columns and fine rounded arches that are characteristic of the Romanesque style.

Inside the nave is all slim striped arches, tall columns and for the size of the church an abundance of large luminous pieces of Renaissance art, huge golden mosaics and colourful wall frescos.

The bronze chandelier, hanging at the centre of the nave, is known as Galileo's chandelier due to an impossible legend that claims that Galileo Galilei's theories relative to the pendulum, came to him while he was at mass and became distracted by the oscillating chandelier. Unfortunately, although it does paint a fabulous image of a pew bound Galileo eyes heavenward, the story of the chandelier can't possibly be true since the light was hung four years after he went public with his theory. Galileo was, however, born in Pisa and even taught at Pisa University where in his notes he uses the tower to dispute Aristotle's theory that objects fall at a speed proportionate to their weight. While Galileo didn't actually drop anything from the tower, as his experiment described, a student of his did only to find one of the balls did hit the ground slightly faster satisfying Aristotle's smug followers who obviously hadn't read about Galileo's theories of viscosity or wind friction.

Amid all the clean simple lines of the churches interior a heavily ornate piece stands out. The pulpit- just seen in the left of the picture- by Giovanni Pisano took eight long years to complete then, considered a gothic eyesore during the renovations after the fire, was dismantled and stored in a crate for the next 330 years. Rediscovered in 1926 it was painstakingly reassembled (although slightly differently from it's original) and placed further from the altar than its original place on the north side of the nave.


The lower supports are a combination of simple colums and sculptured figures. Pisa or Ecclesia is shown suckling two newborns and the female personification of Fortitude holds a lion. Prudence is depicted as 'Venus pudica', with her modesty intact unlike poor Hercules, seen above, who is shown older than his usual six packed form and with a vaguely resigned look about him I thought.


The platform of Pisano's elaborate rostrum has nine carved panels that lean outwards slightly, towards it's audience. Again they depict biblical stories and are packed tight with animated characters. The undercutting is so deep in places the figures seem to animate right out of the reliefs.



Being inside Italy's churches is like being inside a prism with treasure all around. Walls, floors and ceilings all hold eye candy and food for the soul.

Our next stop in the Square of Miracles was the probably the most famous and the most visited campanile in the world.



You are not allowed to take any bags, purses or 'containers of any kind' up the tower so after depositing our one handbag sized backpack at the bag check we waited, as we'd been instructed, in the warmth of the waiting room for the clock to tick slowly past our ticketed time. The 'guide' our small group had been told would meet us in true Italian style never eventuated so with the intention of clarifying the instructions we approached the two guards at the towers entrance. They checked the ticket time and then simply waved us through the scafolding to the bottom of the 294 helicodal steps. The passageway is not really wide enough for the two way traffic it services although it's definately wider than the climb up to Saint Peter's cupola. The marble steps were wet because of the rain, worn away in the middle by centuries of footfalls and tilted outwards and then inwards with the tower's inclination as we spiraled our way to the top. It was not quite enough to make me dizzy but definately left me with a heady sense of pending nausea. The cool misty air at the top was welcome relief.



The main steps come out at the seventh level, the logge, a viewing platform from where the whole of the grassed area of the square can be clearly seen. It is thought that on festival and market days dignitaries and visitors would climb the tower for the best view of the proceedings below. There is another tunnel like set of steps leading to a circular walkway at the very top of the towers apex where you can see J in the photo above.



The platform area also houses the 'bell theatre'. Five big bells hang in a circle tuned clockwise to a rising musical scale though they haven't been heard for 60 years as there are fears their vibrations could cause a catastrophic collapse. The biggest bell, called L'Assunta, weighs in at 3620kgs. It really is no wonder the tower is slowly sinking into the tundra!

The towers first stone was laid in 1173 but it took twelve years to get as high as the third floor and by then the building was already beginning to lean. Built as a boastful statement to bitter rivals Florence (Genoa) it's construction was a stop start affair due to frequent warring with the neighbouring state. It must have made the Genoans smile to learn the tower skite was in fact sinking into the ground.

The problem was pondered for nearly a century while the ground beneath 'settled' then begun again by Giovanni di Simone, the architect of the nearby Camposanto (which we visited later), who made the subsequent floors higher in an effort to compensate. It didn't.

Over the centuries there have been a number of attempts to correct the lean and thus save the tower from it's eventual collapse. In 1990 the tilt was measured at 13 feet and it was promptly closed off while experts from around the world were called in to find a way to rectify the situation.  Straightening the tower enough to make it safe again without completely removing the character that gave it it's name, defacing the globally recognisable building in any way or adversally affecting any of the area in the famous square was a mammoth task. According to the lego animation of the restoration we watched at one of the museums on site; steel stabilising cables were first attached to the tower in a way such that they could be easily removed without damaging the towers exterior then 870 metric tons of counterweight added to the 'tall' side which not only halted the slippage but pulled the tower gently back towards centre. A wedge of soil was then carefully removed from the side opposite the tilt using a corkscrew like action correcting at the rate of about a degree a month and the existing foundation anchored in place with concrete. A complex system of computerised monitors measures the progress over several more months and eventually the tower is slowly, tenuously bought back to an acceptable lean. All of this took ten years. When the tower was reopened to the public again in 2001 it was 'guaranteed' for the next 200 years. Data from the still imbedded computers has suggested the tower has now actually stopped moving entirely.

All this meddling may have saved the tower but it's lesser tilt meant it lost its place in the Guinness Book of World Records to a German church steeple.

Gelato dreaming

I don't usually eat ice cream, it hurts my teeth and I'm dairy intolerant, but I ate gelato nearly everyday while we were away although some days it was more sorbet than a dairy food. We even ate it in negative temperatures in Milan and on what felt like the coldest day on our trip in Pisa which made my lips turn blue and my insides freeze in horror.

Stories of cold icy desserts can be traced back to ancient Chinese Emperors who flavoured snow with fruit, wine and honey and Nero who added spices, leaves and fruit. In Italy gelato has been made for centuries. Those in the north used a more creamy recipe with milk, cream, sugar and eggs whereas the Sicilians, way down at the bottom of the boot, made a water based mixture but used more sugar calling it sorbetto. Over the years the recipes have been played with and refined to create todays gelato, the milky version, which has between a third and a quarter less fat than ice cream but nearly twice as much sugar the proportions of which are responsible for the gloopyness. It is frozen in small batches to expose more surface area (than in traditional ice cream production) to the air which gives it it's velvety, gossamer texture and intense flavours. The Italians are justifiably proud of their luxurious desert.
Incidently it was the Italians who invented the cone too.

Burning money in clay pots

Chinese New Year and Valentines Day are at the same time this year. The streets of Phnom Penh are full of lolly coloured soft toys, stuffed plush hearts and ribbon wrapped bouquets of flowers and the gutters are stopped with pots of fake burning money.

Although not officially a Cambodian holiday many shops and businesses close for the best part of a week during Chinese New Year as anyone who can afford to goes home to the provinces. Like the Chinese and the Vietnamese the Khmer burn red, gold or green printed paper 'money' in various sizes and often in fantastically large denominations, in clay or tin pots on the footpath or in the gutter outside their homes. It is considered a good omen if the wind blows the smoke inside the house.

Valentine's Day isn't a statutory holiday either but that doesn't stop Cambodians from buying flowers and cheesy gifts- for all their loved ones. This year Valentine's Day has got the government a bit worried. The Ministry of Women's Affairs has broadcast ads on Khmer television warning teenagers against engaging in promiscuity. As is common when western traditions are adopted by non western developing societies, based on their superficial presentation rather than any real understanding as to history or purpose, the meaning and even intention of Valentines day has been misinterpreted. It seems many believe Valentine's day to be the day they must offer up their virginity to their partners- if they haven't already- 'without thinking about their furture and the honor of their family and culture.'

A local NGO is more concerned with the spread of AIDS although if the official statistics are correct Cambodia is a kind of poster child for stemming the spread of AIDS in the region. According to the government's statistics, the prevalence of infection rate has declined from 4% in 1997 to 2% in 2006 then 0.9% in 2008 for adults aged 15 and 49, and it is expected the rate will fall even further by 2010. UNAIDS attributes the drop to a political commitment that has seen the prime minister's wife, Bun Rany, personally champion the cause and the Ministry of Health, over the years, implement a wide range of activities and campaigns including a '100% condom use program' which means many of J's staff can attest to having sold or given away condoms during their working lives. AIDS and the affects of AIDS are still major issues in the kingdom with the government coming under frequent fire for their treatment and discriminition of suffers and their families. Late last year Bun Rany was awarded special recognition by the UN for her role which, truth be told, revolves mainly around orphans and the less dirty tasks of supporting access to retrovirals and positive (hands off) PR to help reduce stigma and community prejudice. At the same time her husbands government has evicted and forcibly relocated AIDS suffers to squats outside of town often with no water or toilet facilities making it nigh on impossible for them to get to clinics for daily drugs or markets for food.

This year is the year of the tiger on the Chinese calendar. Sadly Cambodia's wild tiger population is all but gone due to logging activities and the illegal and completely unnecessary poaching of these beautiful majestic big cats for their meat, bones, skin and other organs. WWF has launched the 'Year of the Tiger Campaign- Double or Nothing' aimed at doubling the wild population by 2022. I really hope they can get the active support they need from countries like Cambodia which forms part of the habitat of the Indochinese tiger.

But as George Bernard Shaw once said:

'When a man wants to murder a tiger, he calls it sport; when the tiger wants to murder him, he calls it ferocity. The distinction between crime and justice is no greater.'


He was a wise man, George...

The Living Room of Rome

A short ride in the metro from near the Trevi Fountain is another Roman location often seen in movies. The confusingly named Spanish Steps, officially called Scalinata di Trinita dei Monti, were funded by the French and built to aid access to the twin towered church at the top.


The steps get their nickname from the Spanish Embassy in the piazza at the bottom which also houses the headquarters of some of Italy's high fashion houses and Italy's first MacDonalds- which was opened amid much controversy and protest. Also at the bottom is one of the most understated Baroque fountains I had seen in Rome designed by a teenage Bernini and his father. It seems more than a little odd that Fontana della Barcaccia, meaning the old boat, sits in the middle of a landlocked piazza. The best explanation I could find was that the Pope at the time had it modelled after a boat he admired that had become stranded after flooding on the river Tiber.


Also at the bottom of the steps is the house the poet John Keats lived in for a short time before he died of consumption in 1821. He had made the journey to Rome by boat, as you did in those days, already weak and very, very sick, hoping the milder Italian weather would help. Not long after arrival his doctor began aggressive treatment that included a stingy diet of 'an anchovy and a piece of bread' a day and the common practise of blood letting which may well have hastened his end. Sadly the only thing he managed to write while living in the pink house at the bottom of the steps was a line for his tombstone- Here lies one whose name was writ in water.

The outside of the house is still much the same as it was then although inside is now the Shelley Keats Museum with such treasures as a lock of Keats hair and his death mask.


The top of the 138 steps is littered with portrait artists. It was fun to sit on the balustrade with back to the view and the sun and watch them for a while. Look at all the people, a slowly advancing sea of black winter coats and hats, in the street directly opposite!

The wee church at the top is known as Trinita dei Monte- Trinity on the hill- or more specifically Santissima Trinità al Monte Pincio- Holy Trinity on Pincio hill. Begun by Louis XII, to accompany the monestary beside it, in the 16th century it was 80 years before it was finally consecrated.

Inside is a small simple interior with a wide congressional belly full of wooden pews and niches with canvases...



..a marble sculpture by one of Michelangelo's proteges and some intricate frescos.


Outside, the pièce de résistance is of course the view which stretches all the way to the horizon, a jigsaw of roofs and spires, domes and windowed arches- the shapes of Rome.


On our way back to the metro I could't resist snapping this shot of a Roman fortune teller. It was hard to tell if the news was good or not.

The city of echoes, the city of illusions, and the city of yearning-Giotto di Bondone

Although we had already seen Vittorio Emanuel II's monument it is here that his body is buried. The Pantheon, the 'best preserved' of Rome's ancient buildings, has survived 20 centuries of war, plunder, pillage and the occasional remodel. It was originally built, and looked very different, as a Roman Temple to 'pan theos'- meaning all the gods- in 20 to 25 CE.




The portico is the only part left of the rectangular building, built by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, son-in-law of Augustus, first Emperor of Rome, that would look anything like it did back then. Sometime between 118 and 125 CE Haddrian rebuilt the structure that can still, almost two thousand years later, claim to be the largest unreinforced dome in the world.


The giant dome that dominates the interior quite simply takes your breath away. At 43m in around the dome completely dominates the inside of the building, in fact once inside it becomes the building. They say if you could find a soccer ball(that's football for those of you not familiar with Kiwispeak) big enough it would fit exactly in the perfectly round space- for the distance from the floor to the top of the dome is exactly equal to its diameter.


The recesses in the dome, apart from making it lighter on the eye, reduce it's actual weight as does the pumice cement used closer to the middle. The oculus, the hole in the top of the dome, is the main light source for the interior and yes sometimes it rains inside too and slips down the cleverly slanted floor into unobtrusive drains.


Converted into a Christian church in the 17th century and dedicated to the Virgin Mary,the main altar holds a 7th century icon featuring the Madonna and child. The apse above it features a golden mosaic decorated with crosses.

There are, in fact, many examples of the Madonna and child found in other recesses around the churches interior.


Detail from another Baroque Madonna and child probably an 'adoration' where Mary is painted with the baby Jesus in the middle of a group of, in this case, either the shepherds or magi I can't remember which. (It would be cool to have a place to put wee notes on the camera next to each picture sometimes dont you think?)

Another Madonna and child above the tomb of the artist Raphael.


Madonna of the Girdle and St Nicholas of Bari painted in 1686 by an unknown artist.


A sculpture by Il Lorenzone of St Anne and the Blessed Virgin.

After visiting the Pantheon in 2005 a New Zealand writer and expert in timekeeping suggested the building could have a secret identity as a giant ancient sundial of sorts. He had observed, apart from the path it traces around the dome, down the wall and across the floor during the year, that the light that comes through the oculus during the two equinoxes, in March and September, strikes the grille directly above the Pantheon's huge heavy northern doors. The grille allows just a slither to escape and mark a spot on the courtyard in front. Coincidence? Maybe not if you take into account the perfect celestial hemisphere the dome forms inside, an integrated actualisation of the Greeks mathematically conceptualized theory of the cosmos, in a building that bears a remarkable resemblance to the general composition of sundials of the time albeit on a majestic scale. It's name, Pantheon meaning 'all of the gods', adds further weight to the theory that it at least presents a mirror image of the home of the gods especially during the equinox when the sun is on the celestial equator (where Earth's equator would lie if projected into space), the most stable part of the sky and thus the assumed home of the myriad of Greek and Roman gods.

The building certainly does have a special aura about it and the effort it must have taken to not only design and build such a magnificent dome, that despite its immense size seems to lightly hover on its supporting walls, but to have it centuries later, still stand omnipotent in all its silent grandeur really does inspire awe a reaction I would consider apt for a Heaven on Earth.

In the plaza outside the Pantheon is a fountain topped by an ancient Egyptian obelisk erected by Pope Clement XI.

The next stop was Trevi Fountain, probably the most famous fountain in Rome. Most of the pictures you see are like this...

and I guess I just assumed it would be, like many of the other fountains and 'go-to' sites we had seen in both Rome and Venice, in a sprawlling piazza or at the very least an open space but it's not.


Much of the approach to Rome's biggest fountain is like this...


... which pops out at the top left hand corner of this photo.

Oddly familiar in that 'I can't quite place where I've seen you before' kind of way the lavish fountain is a grand 26 meters high and 20 meters wide and has been around since the middle of the 15th century when the tradition of building fountains to mark the end point of an acqueduct was rekindled. The aqueduct it marks, the Acqua Vergine, however, predates the beginning of the Common Era although it was destroyed by invaders in the 6th century. The fountain you see today was finished in 1762 after years of false starts and is now a culmination of many diverted springs rather than the one pure spring that inspired it's legend.

The story goes that a bunch of Roman soldiers were dispatched to find a source of spring water closest to Rome. They were met by a young and beautiful girl who led them to the purest of springs which they christened the 'Acqua Vergine', Virgin water.

Until about 40 years ago visitors would drink the fountain water, some would even collect it for tea.


This is the other side of the fountain...squashed into a tiny space that barely copes with the hordes drawn to the cascading water not the bulging biceps or chiseled abdominals of it's star, Oceanus, but by a story that has compelled everyone from Marylin Monroe to the Olsen twins to do this...


Another well told legend, one that motivated a movie called 'Three coins in the Fountain' (1954), holds that if visitors to the fountain throw a coin (in the movie three women each throw a coin hence the 'three coins'), with your right hand over your left shoulder, into the fountain, they are ensured a return Rome.

Approximately $3500 is thrown into the now heavily chlorinated waters of the Trevi Fountain each day. The coins are collected at night and used to subsidize a supermarket for Rome's poor population.

I ask no monument, proud and high, to arrest the gaze of passersby.

After retracing our steps back to the station we caught the train to Colosseo station to begin our walk to Rome's three most visited free attractions. The ring road around the Colosseum was closed off to traffic and there was a festive atmosphere brewing. There were street performers everywhere.

The 'I bet I can do this longer than you can' artist. I bet he can too!

The 'We're a long way from home, please buy our CD' artists.

The ever popular 'Boys from the Global Ghetto'.

And this guy who used a few cans of spray paint, some stencils, crushed up newspaper, cardboard and about 15 minutes to create these... right in front of an appreciative and growing audience.

Not far from the Colosseum is Rome's enormous tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The monument is actually the Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II, the National Monument of Victor Emmanuel II, the first King of unified Italy. Designed by Giuseppe Sacconi in 1895 it wasn't finished until 1935 which isn't surprising considering its size and grandeur. It's a staggering 135m wide and 70 m high not including the bronzed winged victories.


If you walk up the steps at the front you can see that it is also Rome's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier a practice used throughout the world to memorialise unidentified soldiers who have died in modern wars.


Experts believe the tradition was begun with a simple ceremony during the Peloponnesian Wars in Ancient Greece where an empty stretcher was carried in recognition of the fallen. A silent tribute was introduced on Armistice Day, at 11am on the 11th day of the 11th month 1918 as part of a commemorative ceremony at Whitehall. King George V had requested that all Britons suspend what they were doing for 2 minutes as a mark of respect for those that had died during WWI.


The first actual burial of an unknown soldier representing all those whose remains were buried unidentified was thought to have taken place at Westminster Abbey a year later when the actual remains of a returned soldier from the battlefields on the Western Front were interred with full military honours in what is known as the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior. This was followed closely by a similar ceremony in France at the Arc de Triomphe in 1920 and most other Allied Nations in the following years. Advances in DNA identification over the years has meant that many of the unknown have been given back their identities which for some has meant a request by the families to rebury their relative in family graves, leaving some of the world's Unknown Soldier tombs empty.

Up until 2004 New Zealand had War Memorials to remember our dead.


This part of a commemorative wall, on the top floor of the Auckland Museum, has two of my mother's uncles names on it. One was killed in front of her father- his brother- by 'friendly fire' something that affected my Grandad so badly after the war, he only ever spoke of it once to my father, years later.

Of the 250 000 New Zealanders who have served in armed forces 30 000 died overseas, 9000 of those remains have either never been found or they have no known grave. On the 11th November 2004 a World War I Digger, a Kiwi, was returned home for burial in the new Tomb of the Unknown Warrior at the National War Memorial, Wellington. The ceremonial programme was probably the largest commemorative programme ever undertaken in New Zealand.

He is one of 30,000 who died in service. One of over 9000 who have no known grave or whose remains could never be recovered. His remains were chosen by the Commission from the First World War Caterpillar Valley Cemetery in the Somme, France, an area where the greatest number of the various New Zealand regiments and battalions are known to have fought. The soldier, whose name, rank, regiment, race, religion and other details are unknown, represents and honours all New Zealanders who became lost to their families in war.

The body of the unknown soldier in Rome's memorial was chosen from 11 unknown remains on October 26, 1921 by Maria Bergamas, whose only child was killed during World War I. His body was never recovered. The selected soldier was moved from Aquileia, where the ceremony with Bergamas had taken place, to Rome and buried in a state funeral on November 4, 1921

The full quote I used for the title of this post reads:
'I ask no monument, proud and high, to arrest the gaze of passersby. All that my yearning spirit craves, is bury me not in a land of slaves.'Attributed to Frances Ellen Watkins Harper; Pacifist; Abolitionist; Feminist; Poet (1825-1911)