peterbirks (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
peterbirks) wrote2010-06-16 10:37 pm
peterbirks) wrote2010-06-16 10:37 pm
Four car crashes and a shooting (but not in that order)
Perhaps seeing four car crashes in a day in Rome isn't that unusual, but surely coming across a shooting would be considered a bit askew. Hell, I live in south-east London, and I never actually come across them there.
The first car crash was while I was on the bus to the centre of town. Ah-hah, I thought, an opportunity to prove what crap drivers these Italians are.
The interesting thing is, all of these crashes are at slow speeds. You never seem to see the real totally smashed up car upside-down "there's no way anyone got out of that alive" kind of smash. And the crashes that you see in London, though rarer, seem to cause more damage to the car. Conclusion? That these crashes are a form of male posturing, peacock-strutting, antlers locking horns. No-one dies, but no-one wants to lose face. The question is, what if there was a real risk of physical injury? The cars are a kind of extension -- damage to them is not the same as damage to the self.
How much GDP does Italy lose from these crashes? Well, you've got the time taken up for the people involved -- let's say, 10 hours each. Then let's suppose that 500 people are delayed by an average of five minutes each. That's another 2,500 minutes or 40 hours. So let's go for about 50 hours of GDP lost per crash. I saw two of these today (plus another two where the drivers just swore at each other, but then drove on without calling the police). What if there are 40 per day in Rome? That's 2,000 hours of GDP lost per day, which you could value at, say, an average of E20 per hour. That makes E40,000 a day lost because of the way Italians drive, which pans out at more than E12m in Rome alone, every year.
My initial plan was to walk up to the Santa Maria del Popolo, before heading up to the Villa Borghese. I started walking along Via Bancha Nuovi.
As I reached nearly the far end, I heard a motorcycle start up and begin moving at speed, which is unusual in these narrow cobbled streets. Possibly a police bike responding to a call, I thought. So I turned round. I had just been about to take a picture of the Piazza in front of me, so I actually had my camera ready.
This is what happened. Some shots from a repeating gun/rifle rang out.
Old lady in distance is looking on in horror.
Guy falls to ground.
Motorbike comes into view. You can see the tip of the gun on the left hand side.
Full view of bike driver, but not of pillion passenger. Gun can be seen quite clearly.
This is the guy.
Well, that was a rather exciting start to the afternoon.
Except that, of course, it wasn't precisely like that. What I had managed to do was walk into the middle of a film set, and no-one thought fit to ask me to leave.
"Did I die okay?"
Guy tries to keep general public off the set. I had arrived from the other "untouristy" direction, and no-one had stopped me. In fact, as I had entered the streets, I had seen the "assassins", their bike, and two other guys, and one of them was swinging the "weapon" used for the shooting (a carabinieri-type repeater rifle) around in a rather cavalier fashion. Even for Rome, I thought this a bit odd, but decided that they were probably plain-clothes carabinieri.
Gun being taken away and prepared for take two, probably more than 90 minutes away, so I wasn't going to hang around to try to get a better shot.
More pictures of the bloke what got killed.
Preparing for the next take.
So, I continued my walk. By now it was getting uncomfortably hot. There was little shade because the sun was virtually directly overhead. But I stopped off at the Augustus Museum (completed, I noted, in 2006).
By the time I got to the Popolare church it was, of course, shut. I seem to have spent much time this trip travelling from A to B to C, without enough times actually being at A, B or C. So I walked up the hill to the Park Borghese, and I promptly took off my shoes, lay down on my back and had a half-hour's rest in the shade.
Thence there was more walking about. I thought that I had found the Carlo Bilotti Museum, but the door appeared to be locked. This was, I later discovered, because it was the back door.
A little further wandering brought me (getting hotter by the minute) to the Piazza di Siena, given over to a giant TV screen for the duration of the World Cup.
As you can see, there was less than manic enthusiasm for the Honduras v Chile game. There was a group of about 8 Honduras fans behind me, and during my later walk I discovered a number of Spanish fans heading up to the Piazza. One big plus. Lots of free toilets.
One danger in the Borgese Park is that you get lost, and I did. But this did at least get me to the road on which the front of the Carlo Bilotti Museum is situated, and in I went.
The temporary exhibition, with accompanying 45 minute video, is Philip Guston, what one might call a top-tier of the second division of the New York school, slightly behind Pollock and Roth. He knew Pollock from a very young age, and took an odd artistic route, heading through an abstract phase before, in the 1960s, he returned to painting "real things". This made him unpoopular with many of his contemporaries.
Guston of the period in the exhibition. The "hoods" in these paintings are reminiscent of de Chirico's manneuquins, and de Chirico is the main artist in this gallery. They also recall Guston's early work on the Ku Klux Klan.
One odd thing about touring this gallery is that (it being a relatively minor and small gallery), you get your own personal security attendant, who tries to follow you unobtrusively as you walk around, the only person there who doesn't work there. Quite touching, really. I mean, she couldn't have stopped me if I wanted to vandalize any of these pictures, but you could get up close and personal to all of them. No glass or yellow lines you have to stand behind here.
And all of a sudden, the day was rushing away. I headed towards a route that I knew would get me back to the Popola Santa maria Church. This took me past this statue of Enrico Toti, a one-legged Italian war hero. In the First World War he was taken on by the Italian Army, despite being a "unidexter", as Peter Cook might have termed it. Then, As Wikipedia states:
"He was killed in the Sixth Battle of the Isonzo. Fatally wounded in a clash, he hurled his crutch at the enemy. He was posthumously awarded the Gold Medal of Military Valor (Italy's highest award for valour)."
Clearly this was the kind of hero that Mussolini wanted, and this Fascist-era statue shows Toti in full flow.
And this is the actual man:
I continued my stroll through the park -- it really was a beautiful day, provided I could keep in the shade!
As I was walking down the hill back to the Plaza del Popolo, I looked down to the main traffic artery (just on the other side of the main city wall). And, yes, another minor car crash, albeit involving four cars.
From this point on most of my pictures are of paintings. Caravaggio in particular.
I got in three churches in two hours that had Caravaggios in them --
The Santa Maria del Popolo has two, the conversion of St Paul and the brilliant Crucifixion of St Peter. But there is a strict "No Photos" rule on that. But here it is from the Interweb
And here is the conversioon of St Paul
Caravaggio is by far the biggest pull in Rome when it comes to artists, presumably because he touches a modern chord. But let that not detract from how great these pictures are. And the two above fade, if such a word can ever be applied to Caravaggio, when you see his three pictures in the San Luigi dei Francesi, the official French church in Rome. I hadn't had this on my list, but now I was on a Caravaggio hunt.
There's so much that one could write about this picture, and the church, to its credit, gives a marvellous explanation of the protagonists. Matthew is on the left, starting at his money. St Peter looks on behind him. But look at the hands! The echo of Michaelangelo's "hand of God", the echo of the echo in other participants' hands.
Partnering this picture are two more, St Matthew being visited by an angel as he writes the Gospel, and his martyrdom. These pictures must have been sensational when they were first seen.
And that will have to do for now. I'm knackered.
I continued my walk after these visits and stopped off for a quick two-course meal and capuccino. There I took notes of things that I wanted to do in the next two days.
Well, the Vatican is out. Colosseum is in. That ties in with a few things nearby. A bus to the Trastevere tomorrow night. I had hoped to get to the MAXXI museum, but its on Via Guido Reni, off Via Flaminia, which I could actually best get to if I bypassed central Rome via Via Anastassio II and Via Ciprio, which go round the west and north of Vatican City. Has to be doubtful.
I'd like to head a bit south of the Colosseum to get to the Catacombs.
Perhaps if I started early tomorrow? Well, I did make it out of here by 11.30 this morning!
__________________
The first car crash was while I was on the bus to the centre of town. Ah-hah, I thought, an opportunity to prove what crap drivers these Italians are.
The interesting thing is, all of these crashes are at slow speeds. You never seem to see the real totally smashed up car upside-down "there's no way anyone got out of that alive" kind of smash. And the crashes that you see in London, though rarer, seem to cause more damage to the car. Conclusion? That these crashes are a form of male posturing, peacock-strutting, antlers locking horns. No-one dies, but no-one wants to lose face. The question is, what if there was a real risk of physical injury? The cars are a kind of extension -- damage to them is not the same as damage to the self.
How much GDP does Italy lose from these crashes? Well, you've got the time taken up for the people involved -- let's say, 10 hours each. Then let's suppose that 500 people are delayed by an average of five minutes each. That's another 2,500 minutes or 40 hours. So let's go for about 50 hours of GDP lost per crash. I saw two of these today (plus another two where the drivers just swore at each other, but then drove on without calling the police). What if there are 40 per day in Rome? That's 2,000 hours of GDP lost per day, which you could value at, say, an average of E20 per hour. That makes E40,000 a day lost because of the way Italians drive, which pans out at more than E12m in Rome alone, every year.
My initial plan was to walk up to the Santa Maria del Popolo, before heading up to the Villa Borghese. I started walking along Via Bancha Nuovi.
As I reached nearly the far end, I heard a motorcycle start up and begin moving at speed, which is unusual in these narrow cobbled streets. Possibly a police bike responding to a call, I thought. So I turned round. I had just been about to take a picture of the Piazza in front of me, so I actually had my camera ready.
This is what happened. Some shots from a repeating gun/rifle rang out.
Old lady in distance is looking on in horror.
Guy falls to ground.
Motorbike comes into view. You can see the tip of the gun on the left hand side.
Full view of bike driver, but not of pillion passenger. Gun can be seen quite clearly.
This is the guy.
Well, that was a rather exciting start to the afternoon.
Except that, of course, it wasn't precisely like that. What I had managed to do was walk into the middle of a film set, and no-one thought fit to ask me to leave.
"Did I die okay?"
Guy tries to keep general public off the set. I had arrived from the other "untouristy" direction, and no-one had stopped me. In fact, as I had entered the streets, I had seen the "assassins", their bike, and two other guys, and one of them was swinging the "weapon" used for the shooting (a carabinieri-type repeater rifle) around in a rather cavalier fashion. Even for Rome, I thought this a bit odd, but decided that they were probably plain-clothes carabinieri.
Gun being taken away and prepared for take two, probably more than 90 minutes away, so I wasn't going to hang around to try to get a better shot.
More pictures of the bloke what got killed.
Preparing for the next take.
So, I continued my walk. By now it was getting uncomfortably hot. There was little shade because the sun was virtually directly overhead. But I stopped off at the Augustus Museum (completed, I noted, in 2006).
By the time I got to the Popolare church it was, of course, shut. I seem to have spent much time this trip travelling from A to B to C, without enough times actually being at A, B or C. So I walked up the hill to the Park Borghese, and I promptly took off my shoes, lay down on my back and had a half-hour's rest in the shade.
Thence there was more walking about. I thought that I had found the Carlo Bilotti Museum, but the door appeared to be locked. This was, I later discovered, because it was the back door.
A little further wandering brought me (getting hotter by the minute) to the Piazza di Siena, given over to a giant TV screen for the duration of the World Cup.
As you can see, there was less than manic enthusiasm for the Honduras v Chile game. There was a group of about 8 Honduras fans behind me, and during my later walk I discovered a number of Spanish fans heading up to the Piazza. One big plus. Lots of free toilets.
One danger in the Borgese Park is that you get lost, and I did. But this did at least get me to the road on which the front of the Carlo Bilotti Museum is situated, and in I went.
The temporary exhibition, with accompanying 45 minute video, is Philip Guston, what one might call a top-tier of the second division of the New York school, slightly behind Pollock and Roth. He knew Pollock from a very young age, and took an odd artistic route, heading through an abstract phase before, in the 1960s, he returned to painting "real things". This made him unpoopular with many of his contemporaries.
Guston of the period in the exhibition. The "hoods" in these paintings are reminiscent of de Chirico's manneuquins, and de Chirico is the main artist in this gallery. They also recall Guston's early work on the Ku Klux Klan.
One odd thing about touring this gallery is that (it being a relatively minor and small gallery), you get your own personal security attendant, who tries to follow you unobtrusively as you walk around, the only person there who doesn't work there. Quite touching, really. I mean, she couldn't have stopped me if I wanted to vandalize any of these pictures, but you could get up close and personal to all of them. No glass or yellow lines you have to stand behind here.
And all of a sudden, the day was rushing away. I headed towards a route that I knew would get me back to the Popola Santa maria Church. This took me past this statue of Enrico Toti, a one-legged Italian war hero. In the First World War he was taken on by the Italian Army, despite being a "unidexter", as Peter Cook might have termed it. Then, As Wikipedia states:
"He was killed in the Sixth Battle of the Isonzo. Fatally wounded in a clash, he hurled his crutch at the enemy. He was posthumously awarded the Gold Medal of Military Valor (Italy's highest award for valour)."
Clearly this was the kind of hero that Mussolini wanted, and this Fascist-era statue shows Toti in full flow.
And this is the actual man:
I continued my stroll through the park -- it really was a beautiful day, provided I could keep in the shade!
As I was walking down the hill back to the Plaza del Popolo, I looked down to the main traffic artery (just on the other side of the main city wall). And, yes, another minor car crash, albeit involving four cars.
From this point on most of my pictures are of paintings. Caravaggio in particular.
I got in three churches in two hours that had Caravaggios in them --
The Santa Maria del Popolo has two, the conversion of St Paul and the brilliant Crucifixion of St Peter. But there is a strict "No Photos" rule on that. But here it is from the Interweb
And here is the conversioon of St Paul
Caravaggio is by far the biggest pull in Rome when it comes to artists, presumably because he touches a modern chord. But let that not detract from how great these pictures are. And the two above fade, if such a word can ever be applied to Caravaggio, when you see his three pictures in the San Luigi dei Francesi, the official French church in Rome. I hadn't had this on my list, but now I was on a Caravaggio hunt.
There's so much that one could write about this picture, and the church, to its credit, gives a marvellous explanation of the protagonists. Matthew is on the left, starting at his money. St Peter looks on behind him. But look at the hands! The echo of Michaelangelo's "hand of God", the echo of the echo in other participants' hands.
Partnering this picture are two more, St Matthew being visited by an angel as he writes the Gospel, and his martyrdom. These pictures must have been sensational when they were first seen.
And that will have to do for now. I'm knackered.
I continued my walk after these visits and stopped off for a quick two-course meal and capuccino. There I took notes of things that I wanted to do in the next two days.
Well, the Vatican is out. Colosseum is in. That ties in with a few things nearby. A bus to the Trastevere tomorrow night. I had hoped to get to the MAXXI museum, but its on Via Guido Reni, off Via Flaminia, which I could actually best get to if I bypassed central Rome via Via Anastassio II and Via Ciprio, which go round the west and north of Vatican City. Has to be doubtful.
I'd like to head a bit south of the Colosseum to get to the Catacombs.
Perhaps if I started early tomorrow? Well, I did make it out of here by 11.30 this morning!
__________________