Roma

Cast of Characters

Campo dé Fiori

Caffè San Pietro

Colosseo

Foro Romano

Chiesa del Gesu

Pantheon

P. Navona

S. Pietro

Il Papa

S. Eustachio

S. Maria Trastevere

Trastevere

Bocca Verità

Fontana di Trevi

Museo Vaticani

Villa Borghese

Vittorie

Mangia!

Loose Ends

Desktops

The Campo dé Fiori (field of flowers), a lively medieval marketplace in the middle of Old Rome, is now one of the most active spots in the city. In the mornings it's home to a fruit, vegetable, and flower market. In the evenings it's a social center, where visitors and residents congregate in the cafés and restaurants which line the square.

The piazza is cleaned after the market and then again late at night, after the partying. The sound of broken glass being swept up and the emptying of the garbage dumpsters were the only sounds we could hear from our third-floor hotel room.

This is a picture of Rose watching Isaac run up and down the hotel hallway, over the two "little steps" (as opposed to the "big steps" which led to the upper floors or down to the street. Isaac was very, very happy to run back and forth while describing what he was doing. We stayed at the Hotel Campo dé Fiori, Via del Bisione 6, a ten-second walk from the Campo dé Fiori. One couldn't ask for a more convenient (or a more pleasant) Italian hotel. Each floor shares a large bathroom. There's a rather large breakfast dining room in the basement (which we visited only once, preferring to start the day in a café around the corner).

This panorama of Campo dé Fiori shows Rebecca, Rose, and Devin sitting at the Caffè San Pietro, our wake-up spot, where we'd meet Cicki each morning.

In the middle of the panorama you can make out the back of a statue of Giordano Bruno standing in the middle of the piazza. Bruno, a philosopher, writer, and scientist, was a central figure of the European Renaissance. The major part of his works is nowadays lost or (as it is rumored) kept secret in Vatican archives. Born in Nola (near Naples) around 1548, completed his studies in Naples and in Geneva and taught philosophy and other subjects in Genoa, Toulouse, Paris (at la Sorbonne University and at the Collège Royal), Oxford, London, Wittemberg, and Prague. Both a traveller and an exile - due to his beliefs - he spent time in Rome, Helmstadt, Frankfurt, Zurich, and Venice.

In Venice he was arrested and extradited to Rome, where he remained in jail for seven years before being sentenced to death. On 17 February 1600, naked, with a nail piercing his tongue (so that he would not speak his heresy), he was burnt at the stake in Camo dé Fiori. In the twentieth century the Roman Catholic church tried to prevent a statue of a heretic being erected in Rome, but the Romans proceeded nonetheless.

The 400th anniversary of Giordano Bruno's death was celebrated earlier this year, and from what we heard it was quite a party.

There's even more to see at the Campo dé Fiori.