by Doris Gregory
On that stifling July day, the elevator was packed with hot, sweaty people. We had just come down, by spiral staircase and then the elevator, after viewing the Eternal City from the top of St. Peter’s.
The elevator door opened and the crowd surged past nine-year old Wayne, out into the corridor. My son just stood there, with a strange look on his face. “Come on, Wayne,” I ordered, “Move!” “I can’t,” he said. “My arm’s stuck!”
Evidently his arm had been resting on the elevator door. When the door opened and slid into its pocket, it had taken his arm with it.
The elevator operator shouted something in his native Italian and pulled Wayne’s arm free. Then he grabbed him by the other hand, muttered something like “dottoro” to me and the ticket taker outside, and then took off at top speed with Wayne, while I and Linda and Brian, my other two children, one on each side of me, ran behind. We had all we could do to keep up, but had a brief pause for breath when the man stopped at a drinking fountain with the comforting sign “Aqua Pura” and shoved Wayne’s gashed and bleeding hand into the water. Then on we raced down the corridor to a short wide flight of stairs leading to heavy double doors, fronted by two colourfully uniformed Swiss Guards. As we approached, our escort shouted something to them, they moved aside, and the doors flew open. On we rushed, down another long corridor, around a corner, then up one more short wide flight of stairs, where another set of Swiss Guards moved aside and one more pair of doors flew open. One last long corridor and we arrived at what appeared to be the infirmary.
The white-coated doctor shoved a printed sheet in front of me and handed me a pen. I didn’t know a word of Italian, other than “Parla Inglesi?” (to which his answer would obviously have been “no”) but assumed that this lengthy document was one absolving any responsibility of the Vatican for my son’s unhappy plight. I signed it “Can’t read a word of this Doris Gregory” all on one line, not that I had any hope of winning a lawsuit against the Vatican.
The good doctor washed and disinfected and bandaged the hand, after first pulling on the fingers to make sure nothing was broken, which fact he somehow communicated to me by pantomime. And then he held up a bottle labeled “tetano”, at the same time holding up four fingers of his other hand. Since the children and I had all had tetanus boosters just before leaving Canada, I nodded my head. At that time, the boosters were considered to last only four months.
I have absolutely no recollection of how we got out of that maze of corridors. Presumably the elevator operator had remained with us and escorted us back the way we had come.
Footnote: Wayne’s hand healed well and he grew up to be a surgeon.
Private Tour: Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel and St Peters Basilica Guided Tour
If You Go:
ROME and VATICAN TOURS
VATICAN
About the author:
Doris Gregory was born in Vancouver, but spent almost half her life elsewhere, first as a Servicewoman in England during World War 2, then pursuing a career in psychology in the USA and Ontario. Now she is enjoying a happy retirement back in Vancouver, volunteering at Brock House and writing her war memoir, which she hopes to publish during the coming year.
Photo credit:
Image by Michael Siebert from Pixabay
Leave the theatre and cross the Piazza del Plebicito to the Church of San Francesco di Paola. Its design is based on that of the Pantheon in Rome. At 53 meters in height, the dome is 10 meters higher than its Roman counterpart. While the San Francesco oculus is covered, the Pantheon’s is not. The white marble church interior features thirty two Corinthian columns circling the perimeter and an altar inlaid with lapis lazuli and precious stones.
Returning to the Piazza del Plebicito, cross the Via San Carlo to the 19th century Galleria Umberto I. The refined galleria is an octagonal structure, enclosed under a glass and iron dome. Stylish shops and businesses fill this indoor mall.
After lunch, ride the Funicalare Centrale back down to the bottom and follow Via Toledo through the heart of old Napoli – the Spaccanapoli district. Naples earns its reputation from these chaotic, unkept streets. Common sights include laundry hanging from balconies above the colorful shops and street vendors hawking goods with their operatic voices and theatrical gestures. Enjoy some window shopping as you walk between tightly parked cars and dodge oncoming vespas on your way to the National Museum of Archeology.
After passing your afternoon at the museum, continue your tour at the 14th century Gothic Duomo. Displayed within the Chapel of San Gennaro, a silver reliquary bust of the saint holds his skull and two vials of his congealed blood. Tradition holds that if this blood fails to liquefy on each of three festival days during the year (the first Saturday in May, September 19 and December 16), disaster will strike the city. Remember that Mount Vesuvius is a short distance from Naples.
Dinner time is likely upon you as you walk back to the train station. And this is your opportunity to enjoy original Neapolitan pizza. At the train station, board the R2 bus and experience a genuine Neapolitan traffic jam as you ride to the first stop on the route. Exit the bus and walk through the maze to L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele.
by Jane Parlane
The bus back dropped us at the Piazza Indipendenza, the site of one of Europe’s most beautiful castles. The Royal Palace of Palermo, dating from the ninth century for many centuries housed Sicily’s rulers and even today it’s the seat of regional government. Local politicians are lucky enough to govern from such an architectural gem with its beautiful mosaics, painted roof and marble walls.
In our rental car it was an easy one-hour drive east to Cefalu, originally a fishing port. Now it’s an attractive cobblestoned tourist town with a sandy beach – not completely lined with recliners. Our accommodation was in an old stone house just a minute from the cathedral and main square. It was easy to find a restaurant table overlooking the sea and over a chilled Sicilian wine watch the bright pink sunset explode while families paraded past.
Taormina has many bars where you can sip a Marsala or Campari martini and just people watch. Most evenings you’ll see Sicilians decked out in their finery strutting the streets. Alternatively book an opera or concert at the Ancient Theatre dating from Greek and Roman times – sadly the opera was cancelled during our stay. But the swordfish at a trattoria washed down by a local wine and tiramisu to follow eased the pain.
It was an easy day trip the next day to the ancient limestone towns of Modica, Ragusa and Noto, the latter famously rebuilt in 18th century in the baroque style after an earthquake destroyed the town in 1693.
Our final destination for the day was Agrigento, famous for its Valley of the Temples. It was exhilarating to look out of our hotel window and see Greek temples standing there. This once ancient city, Akragus, was dominated by seven great Doric Greek temples built in the sixth and seventh centuries BC. Today several are still wonderfully preserved making the area one of the world’s most important archeological sites. It’s easy to spend two hours with a guide wandering the site, especially in late afternoon when the sun lights up the temples. A bonus for us was the spectacular exhibition by world-renowned Polish sculptor Igor Mitoraj cleverly placed among the ancient structures.
It was an easy drive on the autoroute to catch our flight from Palermo airport the next morning – just over an hour.
Cistercian monks built the round chapel of Montesiepi around the “cross” in the stone. The domed roof is built of concentric circles of alternating white stone and terracotta and frescos by Sienese painter Ambrogio Lorenzetti decorate the walls. It has been claimed that the chapel itself is a “book in stone” hiding the location of The Holy Grail.
Italian scholars claim that Galgano’s Sword in The Stone precedes Arthurian legends and the original story may well be Italian. The first stories of King Arthur appear decades after Galgano’s canonization, in a poem by Burgundian poet Robert de Bron. It has been suggested tales of The Round Table may have been inspired by the round chapel and the name Galgano was altered to become Gawain. Claims that the Italian sword was a fake, made to echo Celtic legends of King Arthur, have been recently disproved. The skeletal arms in the chapel have been carbon-dated to the 12th Century, and metal dating research in 2001, by the University of Siena, indicates the Italian sword has medieval origins. Could it be that the stories of King Arthur are really based on Italian history?
Every summer the company Opera Festival Firenze holds classical music concerts and operas in this splendid setting. Performed annually, a spine-tingling rendition of “Carmina Burana “ under the Tuscan stars, is unforgettable. Other favourites include Vivaldi’s ”Four Seasons, “Swan Lake” and “La Traviata.”
When I first approach, the exterior seems unremarkable, a rather austere, two-storey, peach-coloured building on the edge of a small square that serves mainly as a parking lot. This is the pride of Cesena? I can’t say I’m impressed so far. I enter a long, echoing hallway with a display of photos of brilliantly illuminated pages from Plutarch’s Lives. It feels so modern and barren. I wonder where the actual books are.
‘The elephant is the symbol of the Malatesta family,’ Alberto tells me, ‘because elephants are powerful and have good memories. The Malatestas haughtily regarded their enemies as merely annoying ‘mosquitoes’. They also were known for deformities of their heads and their very long noses. In fact, Malatesta means bad head. Portraits of them are always in profile to show their good side.’
The more I look around this hushed, ancient space, and the more Alberto tells me, the more awestruck I become. In the 15th century, one large book would have been worth about the same as a country home with all its livestock, and 343 manuscripts are kept here. All are hand-printed by the Franciscan monks on pages made of goat and sheep vellum. The covers are leather-bound wood, with metal studs so the leather doesn’t rub on the shelf. A perfect micro-climate, unheated and with air circulation from the vaulted ceiling, has protected the books. In fact, the Malatesta Library is recognized throughout the world as the only humanist library whose buildings, furnishings, and book collection are fully and perfectly preserved.
Because this library was so well lit, it was one of the first where books could be read in the same room in which they were shelved. The circular rosette window faces east and the sunlight pouring though is the main light source. Along the south and north walls are also numerous arched Venetian-style windows. The panes consist of many circular bottle bottoms tinged pink and green, which act as lens to magnify and radiate the light onto each row of desks. I squint my eyes and can imagine robed Franciscan monks toiling to copy manuscripts in fine, painstaking calligraphy, illuminating the margins with brilliant colours. As the sun and shadows shift, the monks pick up their pages and pens and follow the daylight around the room.
Numerous books are open and on display in glass cases. One, from 1444, is a book of legal trials and sentences from Florence. Another, from 1496, is a book of liturgies, a different one for each Sunday’s mass for a year. I’m especially drawn to seven huge choral books, made large enough for a whole choir to view. The capital letters and borders are amazingly intricate, illuminated with real gold leaf and brilliant green, pink, blue, red, and purple. Many also have postcard-sized illustrations, of strange beasts, birds, flowers. I even notice that pictured inside some of the capital letters are toiling monks.
