In I Monti especially the Subura.

all photos can be enlarged by clicking on them

This is a photo tour of the rione [district]  in which we are staying: I Monti, literally, The Hills.

I record this for our own memories, no intention of attracting more visitors... :-)

Our part of Monti was, two thousand years ago, the Subura, a place of some family homes but also low and wilder life, outside the walls around the forums. Caesar's family home was here, Nero came here incognito, to listen to gossip about... um, Nero. Nero built his great self indulgent folly, the Golden House, the Domus Aurea, here, for private entertainment, a gigantic golden palace with lake and park, all for himself and associates, using public funds and lands cleared, where had been large numbers of homes, after the great fire. The Domus Aurea: buried by Nero's successors, who drained his lake and built there what we today call the Colosseum, for public entertainment.

During the renaissance some youth fell accidentally into the buried Golden House, then Raphael and other guys went in and [a] did graffiti and [b] learned some art skills. I mention this in case you are troubled by graffiti in photos below.

Today if you search the web for Subura your search results will be drowning in references to a Netflix series Suburra. Just as, if you search for information on the Spanish priest who became Pope Alex 6, and his notorious kids Cesare and Lucrezia (I still think she needs credit for her contribution to the development of the Italian language) you will be buried under another TV series, The Borgias. Truth is what you watch, not what happened.

We did not go out today just to tour Monti. We did normal things. We went out in the first instance for Helen to get a haircut but could not find the place where reservation made, entering another and getting a fine haircut there.

We went out to visit the Elite Supermarket, across Via Cavour, which we happily recommend. To get, among other things, picnic food for a visit to Villa Alobrandini, just up the hill. We later went out without the picnic to get my walking stick, bastone, left in the Osteria della Suburra last night, where it had become Romanaccio-ised: no longer a bastone, but "ah yes, er bastur" in Roman dialect.

Then we headed up for the Aldobrandini, to walk and come back for lunch. But we didn't get there because in the ongoing humid stillness in Rome Helen needed, very sensibly, to buy a shirt. Which she did. This action also has had the useful consequence of being followed by a weather forecast for cooler air to arrive from the Balkans by Sunday.

The Aldobrandini we repeatedly miss, in dark of evening, in shady morning, and now today, by negligence.

In 2010, living in Soriano nel Cimino, outside Viterbo, we had similar problems getting to the seductively named Montefiascone, which we took to calling Francofonte, from John Turturro's movie Illuminata which made constant reference to an elusive place featured in an over-rehearsed line

"I was in Francofonte if you must know..." [try it out: a thousand ways to say it]

 A film which went past many people... but we got cheerfully stuck.

So the Aldobrandini is our new Francofonte. The Villa Aldobrandini is in Monti. But we didn't get there today, as I may have mentioned. I only add here that Villa here means park, as also with the Villa Borghese a large park containing the Galleria Borghese.

But enough of what-not, here are some photos of this area. I wrote several paragraphs back that "Truth is what you watch, not what happened." Well, here, then... this happened today and is true: watch!!

our street, with the district market at the top

In Via della Madonna dei Monti

view from door of an orthodox chapel

Entrance to Cavour Metro

In Via Baccina: "shit king" is the anti-establishment or anarchic label
added to a wall ornament of unknown former intention.

In Via Panisperma

rusted-on art; Helen, proof of foot 

along and up Via Panisperma to Santa Maria Maggiore

From Via Panisperma, turn into Via Ciancaleone, no cars, just charm

perhaps the insurance would be too much, this 911, the 911 from long before 9/11, never moves

This is much more moving, the original Fiat 500,
the car into which Italy moved when it came indoors from the motor scooter around 1960

and over there the modern 500, with dog

did I mention?

Yes, that is a nice motorbike too

heading now up Snake Street --- Via dei Serpenti

All the beer halls will look like this when climate change destroys the barley

Villa Aldobrandini one street to the left, we have arrived in Via Nazionale in search of shirts

This was supposed to be a photo of the Palazzo delle Esposizioni,
where currently a thirtieth anniversary exhibition of Pixar (wow, already!).
Larger-than-life got in the way.

the army emerged from morning coffee

We bought shirts, we had a sit and lunch in what seemed an interesting office-worker-lunch place,

which wasn't, although they did a good carrot-apple-ginger juice, centrifuga, 

and headed back, into life

past the Banca d'Italia

and the parking area for workers at the Banca d'Italia—how neatly they park

again along Via dei Serpenti, nice glimpse of landmark down the end

Turn into Via Baccina from the very popular Piazza di Santa Maria dei Monti
noting that because of the crowds every night and day the trash problem insoluble
— and we take our trash there too.

hardware and locksmith closed for siesta hours

Life is ephemeral
Paint on Roman walls does not contain fixatives and so fades and runs; hence the beauty.
The car and moto will rot too. Those who find the walls strange and the vehicles clean and tidy fail to think of that.
Beauty? We like the walls.

...and the people

This: https://www.facebook.com/ciclofficinacentrale/

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