The museum gift shop

 

Poised, as I am, on the brink of an exciting two week vacation to Nice, France with my delightful wife, the subject of gift shops came up. 

Because we construct a mini reality around our fairly rare vacations, in which we are for a time pretty rich (by our standards), we spend a good amount of our trip in the gift shops of foreign lands. We have been in the pottery shops of Lisbon, the leather shops of Florence, the cookware stores of Paris, and all 1,158 glass shops of Venice, Italy. But as I look around our somewhat aesthetically minimal home I am struck by how much we have from one particular shop- The Doria Pamphilj Museum Gift Shop, in central Rome, Italy.

I mean, we also have some really pretty porcelain from a craftsperson's shop in Rome, and a couple of decorative glass things from Venice's 1,158 glass shops, and my cappuccino cup here comes from a favorite shop in Duluth, but

let us not be diverted.

Half of everything hanging on our walls is from The Doria Pamphilj Museum Gift Shop!

If the Matisse Museum, or the Chagall Museum, in Nice, have gift shops half as good as The Doria Pamphilj Museum Gift Shop, we will be coming home with absolute sacks of stuff. We will be buying a rolly suitcase just for the purpose of transporting all our Chagall and Matisse gifts home. You yourself will probably be receiving some kind of Matisse or Chagall themed gift from me as a souvenir of our journey.

But this probably won't happen. 

And this is because few gift shops are anywhere near as good as The Doria Pamphilj Museum Gift Shop.

And yet, like with so many excellent things, it is not a matter of The Doria Pamphilj Museum Gift Shop being some outlandish, from out of nowhere, unimaginable invention. Instead it is more like: oh, why aren't all museum gift shops like this?

The Doria Pamphilj Museum Gift Shop is mostly, not entirely, but mostly, products derived from, or celebrating the art items in, their collection. That's really all there is to it. There is some creativity involved. For instance what we have in our home are highly decorative and charmingly framed reproductions of two of their paintings. But I still have, and at the time of the trip, handed out many gifts of simple bookmarks, heavily, sturdily, and nicely laminated, depicting excellent details from some their best paintings.

Contrast this with, as an example, the gift shop of my town's quite nice museum, The Mia in Saint Minneapolis. It is surely four times the size of The Doria Pamphilj Museum Gift Shop. But while it may have a couple racks of postcards reflecting their collection, and perhaps a small portion of its books are about current or past shows, the vast majority of their gifts have only a tangential relation to the museum's wonderful collection of art. It is a gift shop not of The Mia so much as a gift shop of, I don't know, the idea of art in general? And it's products are, I don't know, lightly mass produced, arty, crafty, witty takes on... art? Design? Crafts?

That sounds pretty harsh. It's a perfectly nice gift shop. And one could transplant it into any museum in America, exactly as is, and I doubt any customer would notice anything the least bit wrong.

But it could be in any museum!

Of course, there is a third kind of gift shop, probably even worse than the Mia, and more common to European and large tourist city Museums. That is the cheap souvenirs style gift shop. It may have a few postcards, books, and representations from whatever stunning collection of art it is situated in or near, but beyond that it will mainly provide a selection of all the generic City souvenir garbage one can find everywhere else. Waiting for your entrance time at the Borghese in Rome, where the greatest collection of Bernini Statues in the world is? Well it's probably a great place to get a 3D cardboard make-it-yourself model of the Coliseum.

Which brings us back to Nice.

I am writing this roughly three weeks before it appears on clerkmanifesto. It is my last preparatory blog post. In the next one, tomorrow's, I will be writing as a person who has been to Nice, and been to the gift shops of Nice. I will or won't have Matisse souvenirs. And I will be able to tell you all about it.

But I probably won't. Because The World Cup will have started.

 Tomorrow, tomorrow, is Argentina's first game, against Saudi Arabia, at four in the morning!

Set your alarms.

Museum review: The Bargello

Name of Museum:

Bargello

or

Museo Nazionale del Bargello if you like



Tagline:

If they kept The David by Michelangelo here The David would be more improved by it than the Bargello.

or, similarly

Oh shit, Bernini actually is better than Michelangelo!

or even:

The best sculpture museum.

No, that's all, just... the... best... sculpture... museum, you know, on Earth.


Overall rating (not a strict average of the below) out of 100:

100, but I'm being pretty nitpicky to score it so low. Sorry. I'm working on being less critical.


Hours:

Okay, these are a bit weird, and though I'm usually pretty organized about things like museum times, we for some reason decided to assume this would have fairly normal museum hours and approached it casually. So even though I had their hours in my pocket, we had to go here three times before it was open because we never bothered to consult them. Still, the Bargello's extraordinarily central location made this hit and miss approach the sort of thing we were content to indulge.

Also I'm pretty sure they love to change and have special hours regularly so take the below with a grain of salt. There can be better or worse hours at the drop of a hat. It's also cute how when they are closed they look kind of like they've never been opened and will never open again. They look positively boarded up!

Closed Monday.
Tu-Th: 8:15 to 1:50
F: 8:15 to 5:20 (Wooo! Live it up Bargello!)
Sat.: 8:15 to 1:50
Sun.: 8:15 to 1:20 (you can't possibly expect them to keep those late night party hours on Sunday like they do on Saturday!)


Quality of building architecture:

Oddly... perfect. Some of that is simply a tribute to it being 750 years old, which is the kind of thing that improves nearly any building. Basically (from the outside) it's like a single great castle tower, plopped down charmingly in the middle of town.


Quality of interior design and display:

Oh. Am I supposed to score this? Er, many stars! Twenty? More than everywhere else? I'm not sure I've ever enjoyed a museum layout/interior more. Compact yet deceptively large, it's built around a courtyard and it's not like anywhere I've ever been, except maybe it's a little like a ruined castle? Except it's not ruined and it's full of wonders. I kept thinking: well, that must be it for the museum, when suddenly there was a whole other warren of rooms, another floor, or a hallway full of bronze animals, including a turkey. A turkey!


General location in the World:

Where, as the fable goes, Europe woke up from the dark ages: Florence. In The Bargello go ahead and believe this as you will. It's easy enough to do.


More specific location in city:

800 feet from the best gelateria in town, Dei Neri, as the crow flies. But giving you directions between the two would take hours. Just look for the crenelated tower with a crenelated tower. No, not that one. That one.


Cost and entrance fees:

8 euros. This is probably the most unreasonably cheap thing in Florence. The sort of thing that causes the director of The Met in New York to wake up in the middle of the night with a feeling of burning shame.


Ease of access:

I think by this I mean more "How hard is it to get here?" The answer is sort of: get to Florence and you're done. So, pretty easy.


Best work:

Despite actually working as a portrait painter, and loving portraiture in painting, I've never entirely taken to it in sculpture. The sculptural bust has generally been of passing interest to me, but perhaps the best sculptors have some responsibility for that feeling. When the giants of the field wanted to make their mark they've tended towards grand figures, magnificent, affecting tableaus, and dynamic, twisting compositions. There are plenty of those in the Bargello, some of them astonishing.

But I heard they had a Bernini here. So we dutifully checked it out because, you know, Bernini.

It's a portrait bust, of Costanza Bonarelli.

Yes, it's the best work here, and maybe the most magical turn of sculpture I've ever seen.


Signature collection:

I guess the sculpture? I probably should have mentioned this somewhere earlier?


Revolving collections and shows:

It actually seems like they might do stuff like this in some rooms, but it's pure gravy.


Ambiance:

Quiet, cool, castley, mellow, firm, and curiously uncrowded.


Staff:

Er, unobtrusive? Works for me.


Cafes:

Nope. Oh well. Oddly I feel tolerant of this since the space seems so fully and well used.


Gift shop:

Yes, at the entrance. It's about average as far as museum gift shops go, which is a shame really because they could sell some... stuff. If only it weren't all the same... stuff.

200 Reviews of Rome: The Barberini

One of the curious misadventures of this blog is that I might tell the same story twice, or thrice, or even 50 times. I don't know. I have decided not to fuss with it, feeling that each time I tell the same story it says something new. Let the Doctoral candidates sort it all out in their dissertations a thousand years hence. 

Or, more realistically, let the sweet vast tides of the Universe wash it all away. I have plenty of self-regard here, but incalculable constellations of more beautiful articulations than this have been broken back down into meaningless atoms. But let's keep a chin up. Everything that has ever been beautiful is written down somewhere. And who on earth has time to go through all that?

Which is to say that I am pretty sure I have already written a review of The Barberini in Rome. I know there is this review of the second best painting in The Barberini. And I have also tracked down in my archives this review of the cafe in The Barberini. But as to whether there is a 

Oh.

Ooops.

I found it.

For the original, this.

I didn't mean to find it. But I do have an addendum:

Should you go?

The Barberini is now officially the most forgotten great museum in Rome. While we were there my wife and I wanted to go to it yet again. We looked it up in an up to date guide book in our room, written by Rick Steeves, and we couldn't even find mention of the place. I am pretty sure it is disappearing before our eyes. We went there and it took us hours to track it down even though it's ten minutes from The Spanish Steps. It's slowly being taken over entirely by cats. It was nearly empty. They keep closing more and more of it.

The Barberini is being washed away.

Don't go.

Isn't it enough already all the beautiful things you do know and that will soon be gone? 

200 Reviews of Rome: Bar del Fico

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐


5 Stars!





Bar del Fico, where have you been all our lives!


Okay, well, not all our lives. We've only been to Rome five times over the many years, and I'm not sure Bar del Fico would have been quite what we were looking for the first couple of times we were there. But located as it is in the general heart of our (and most travelers) stomping grounds, just outside of Piazza Navona in the twisty warren of streets a skootch towards the Tiber, it seems both sad and happy that we missed it over our last few trips. Sad because it would have rescued a few wandering nights of not quite being able to settle on where to go, but happy for the obvious reason of finding it and the slightly less obvious reason of giving the sense that in every way Rome has its endless layers, willing to reveal more things to one the longer one pours over those same streets.

Bar del Fico is the perfect sort of evening, drink and a snack, shabby chic (it even says so on the google map!), find a seat in Rome and soak it all in kind of place. We got a nice couple seats in the loungey bar area and had (probably) a Negroni and wine, but I might be wrong because I vaguely remember mint in my drink. We got nuts with it all, as is proper. We ordered some nice cheese and I had a fried pizza aperitif thing that I liked an awful lot. The price was reasonable. Everyone was nice to us. And that's about it, except for the context, which follows:

In thinking I would dash off a review of Bar del Fico, almost a month after going there just one time, I figured I should do some basic research, so I looked up Bar del Fico and got an eyeful of the reviews. It was chaos, just like Rome! To start with Bar del Fico is, as is common in Rome, kind of three or four things at once, consisting of several different rooms. It seems to be a cafe, something converting to a lounge, a cocktail bar, and also partly a more straight up restaurant. The pictures all look like they're from seven different places (though there are a couple of cocktails with fresh mint which supports the theory I had one of those). The reviews also encompass this diversity with people enraptured over the friendliness and wonderful food to the point where they moved into a local hotel and went to Bar del Fico twice a day, all the way to a minority who are still wounded by the staff's cruelty and the possibility they were cheated. I am not here to dispute any of these sorts of takes on the place. Rome can be like this. We have but our singular experience. There is no place with so many stars that you don't take your chances. 

We took ours at Bar del Fico.

It worked out.

200 Reviews of Rome: The Sistene Chapel

Name of Museum: 

The Sistine Chapel (Part of The Vatican Museums, but reviewed here as a specific element just because I'm feeling like it).


Overall rating (not a strict average of the below) out of 100:

85! Yes, I'm aware this rating is insane!


Hours:

9-4 M through Sa. plus other expensive, dedicated visits by arrangement. Closed for awhile after Popes die.
Not bad for Rome, 3 stars.


Quality of building architecture: 

Fine, bland, old, and you are unlikely to be able to see it unless you're in a helicopter because it's positively crammed in with the Vatican buildings. That said, it's in Rome. Everything is pretty in Rome!
3 stars.


Quality of interior design and display:

This gets complicated. It's all pretty bare and barnlike except some dead guys painted stuff over all the walls, and especially on the ceiling, which must have been really hard, and some of these paintings turn out to be the among the most brilliant painting ever created. This is where a conflicted rating for the place comes in. Like, the ceiling paintings are amazing, and yet viewable only in crowds with yelling guards, from a terrible angle, and at too great a distance. The best way to enjoy it I think would be to become a Cardinal and wait for a Pope to die.
4 stars.


General location in the World:

Rome. Rome, Rome, Rome, bella Roma.
5 stars


More specific location in city:

Vatican City is easy to get to. It can be an interesting neighborhood of Rome, though a lot of it is either crowded, requires a wait in line to access, involves tedious airport check like security, and involves running a carnival gauntlet of bric a brac vendors, but I'm being a bit jaded. I mean, another way of looking at the Sistene Ceiling location is that it's in the same area as the Vatican Museums, since it's just a part of it, and that museum holds possibly the single greatest painting I've ever seen, Caravaggio's The Deposition, among not a few other treasures of the human soul. 
3 stars


Cost and entrance fees:

17 Euros. Free to Catholics.
Naw, I'm just messing with you. 17 Euros even to Catholics. So I will continue to be an atheist. Well, a pantheathiest. Well, more of a polypantheatheist. And alas, I don't think there's a discount for that either.
2 stars.


Ease of access:

Complicated, sucky, full of lines and security and vaguely complicated optional reservation systems and scamming bookers. I can't entirely blame them for all of this though. It's a popular... thing! You can have a nice walk there though.
2 stars


Best work:

Vocation of the Apostles by Ghirlandaio. Okay, I'm kidding, but it's not like the other frescoes are bad or something what with Botticelli and the like. And one could make a legit preference for Michelangelo's later Last Judgement on the back wall, which is, at least, easier to see. Still, I don't buy it, in the end it's the Sistene ceiling that's the best, and it's really really good. Really good. Good. Really something. If only I could get a good look. I brought binoculars. It didn't help much. And it turns out you're not allowed to lie on the floor. Sorry. They let me do that in the Barberini!
5 stars.


Signature collection:

Naturally it's the frescoes of Michelangelo, who complained the whole time he was painting them that he's a sculptor! And, weird thing, he is! This ceiling stuff is gorgeous, especially, alas, in pictures, but the sculpture, oh lord, though, sorry, none of that is in here.  You'll have to pop over to the main church for that.
Nevertheless, 5 stars


Revolving collections and shows:

Nope, none that I know of.
5 stars (because it would be silly if they did).


Ambiance:

Noisy, crowded, uncomfortable, disappointing, but not really allowed to be disappointing. Yes you should see it, but if you can resist, I really respect that.
1 star


Staff:

Power mad, overdressed monsters on their best day. Watch out for their angry staffs!
1 star


Cafes:

You're not even allowed to think about food in there. I guess that's okay. It's not a convivial hangout anyway.
3 stars 

Trump's end times

At midnight, New Year's Eve, the whole north of town was laid at our feet like we were masterminds or millionaires. We could see fireworks go off from our high-rise aerie, marking the perfectly balanced fulcrum of the time to come and the time past. A green burst blooms at the foot of downtown, small against the horizon, then little white flashes erupt through some trees up a distant hill, the hard, blunt sounds of the explosions following well after the blossoms of light.

Burst of light...
one-two-three-four--boom

Burst of light...
one-two-three--boom

Burst of light...
one-two--boom

The fireworks are getting close.
The fireworks are coming closer.

I don't know what they'll do when they get here.

You know the saying about living in interesting times?

You and I we live in interesting times.

I'm sorry.

Brace yourself.

200 Reviews of Rome: Stadium of Domitian (Piazza Navona Underground)

Stadium of Domitian, Piazza Navona


Negative 11 stars out of 5 stars.




Rome is my favorite city in the world, and when it comes to amazing sites, museums, history, and the glories of the human craft, surely there is no place so rich with them as gorgeous Rome. So I don't easily hand out negative 11 stars to any museum in such an amazing place. I also am vastly more inclined to become unhinged in my love for a place in Rome, and so unable to provide accurate information, and it is a unique situation wherein I dislike a place so much that I cannot not speak in a review with the proper scholarly dispassion.

That said: don't go to the Stadium of Domitian.

My God! I beg of you! Don't go to the Stadium of Domitian!

Don't go if you have only three days in Rome, and don't go if you have been born in Rome and will live there for 120 years.

"Wow", you exclaim. "It must be terrifying and horrible."

No, it's fine, you know, in its evil way. It's a small bit of ruins of what used to be a stadium a couple thousand years ago in the place that is now Piazza Navona. If you walk by this, I guess you call it a museum, along the North exterior of Piazza Navona you can look down through a pretty neat window there and see the museum and some of the ruins. Looking through this window you have now seen pretty much everything worth seeing in the museum.

But you want to go in? We wanted to go in too. It's only 145 euros per person. The audio guide is free with the admission. One of the things that drew us in was a dignified mention somewhere near the entrance that this was a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

That sounded neat.

After our visit I was going to do an expose' on how there was something terribly wrong with the whole UNESCO World Heritage Site thing.

There is nothing wrong with the UNESCO World Heritage Site thing! 

As far as I can tell the whole of Central Rome is, quite appropriately, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Stadium of Domitian is as much a UNESCO World Heritage Site as the Tiger Store where I bought a hand crank personal fan for one euro.

I'm pretty sure I gave that Tiger store five stars. And why not, it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site. So was the Apartment we stayed in, and our toilet. Yes, our toilet was a UNESCO World Heritage Site! But our stupid, crappy apartment shower was not. I simply refuse to say our funky, decrepit, handheld shower was a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Even if it was.

Just like The Stadium of Domitian.

The exhibits are well labeled and full of information. The gift store is pretty good. Which saved it from getting minus 12 stars. But only just.

Don't go.

I'm not suggesting or asking...

Don't go.

200 Reviews of Rome: Orso 80

Orso 80


🌟🌟✩✩✩

2 Stars



First of all, I'd like to apologize to Orso 80. I had a really lovely five days off from work and it was so great hanging out with my wife and going for long walks that when it came time to go back to work I just felt...

mad.

Just, you know, generally, mad.

So I needed someone quick to take it out on. But probably it would be better if it wasn't a co-worker, or a patron, or someone like that. And what more is there to say about Republicans, even if they richly deserve it. And if I take it out on the Refs of La Liga, the Spanish Soccer League, it'll all get too emotional.

And that's when Orso 80 popped into my mind.

The sad thing about Orso 80 is we went there more than a decade ago, and though it wasn't great, or even terribly good, they brought all these large bowls of food to our table, vegetables, meatballs, stuffed things, tomatoey things, and it was charming. It was like our own personal buffet on our own personal table. A buffet without shuffling around and mixing with the hoi polloi! We were delighted.

I'm not big on the hoi polloi.

So one night in Rome last year I said "Let's go to Orso 80 for dinner." It was down the street from us, sort of, and just opening for the night. Lots of people were waiting to get in. Almost all at once we were all seated, and almost all at once we filled the restaurant. There was even a strange sense of occasion to it.

They brought us water, wine, menus.

Do you ever go to a restaurant and you look at the menu and absolutely nothing appeals to you? But then, just before you start to panic, just before you have to start inventing an interest in something, you see it. Right there on the menu is exactly what you want but didn't even know you wanted. Unanticipated, unexpected, it is exactly what you were dreaming of eating, the perfect thing for dinner.

This happened to me at Orso 80!

It was the swordfish, cooked Sicilian style. That sounds good doesn't it? I don't remember what "Sicilian Style" meant. I think maybe it had to do with lemons and pine nuts, maybe? Whatever. I was very excited, and unusually certain about my perfect choice.

My wife had lamb, I think. I got some appetizer that I thought would precede the exciting swordfish in a complimentary way. The waiter brought the antipasti, and then the waiter said "We don't have any swordfish. What would you like instead?"

What would I like instead?

What would I like instead?

I would like to give Orso 80 two out of five stars.

And I'd like to be spending today at home with my wife.

Thank you for asking.

200 Reviews of Rome: Beppe E i Suoi Formaggi

Beppe E i Suoi Formaggi



🌟🌟✷✷✷

Two Stars




So, as this review about Rome gets posted on the Internet I am off in Paris. And since that means a year has gone by since my month in Rome, and I am already off on another trip, I thought I should try and make some more headway on my minor epic: The 200 Reviews of Rome, which isn't exactly an epic, I just call it that so everyone on the Internet will be impressed, which I'm pretty sure is working so far. I also thought I'd review some place that would assuage some of my family's pre Paris trip feelings of sadness that we are not returning to Rome. And what better place to review to bolster our spirits than ol' Beppe Suoi Formaggi!

This place is a cheese shop with a cafe restaurant and it is really nice. It's pretty inside and comfortable. The cheeses all look very cozy behind their glass cases. We managed some apparently oddball time to go in the afternoon and were the only customers, but they were still nice to us. It's a pleasant place. When I went to the back to use their bathroom there was someone at a table doing all the restaurant's bills or something. Professional, homey, nicely located, charming, five stars!

Oh, wait, we should have some food before we go handing out stars.

We got ourselves a nice big cheese plate, with a bit of charcuterie on it, some water, and some wine.

What in all of that could possibly bring this pleasant five star eatery plummeting down to a mere two stars? Was the cheese riddled with maggots? The wine soured? Did the meats make us ill for four days?

No. Wow, no, nothing like that. Boy, I feel like I'm being all churlish now what with dropping it down three whole stars. It, uh, it just wasn't very good.

Wasn't very good? Wasn't very good! You dare to come onto the sacred and holy font of all judgement known as the Internet and toss off a mere "Wasn't very good"?

Yeah. I guess. Is that a problem?

Er, no. Go ahead.

Well, so I don't think they quite get cheese there in Rome, I mean, outside of the mozzarellas and maybe ricotta, the fresh cheeses, the cooking cheeses.  I saw the same cheeses on our plate at Beppe that I saw everywhere else in town; a weird greyish blue cheese that always felt like it had been improperly stored, then a bunch of mild sheep cheeses that were hard to tell apart. The charcuterie included a usual salami or two and something so truly horrifying I decided to eat a bite in order to see what it would be like to be the sort of person who does that. It was like pieces of innards and brains in aspic. I had a bite. I didn't like it, but I may have been too subsumed in horror to even taste it.

Anyway, maybe one needs proper cold weather to make proper cheese. Northern Italy maybe? Mountains? Winter?

So, should you go to Beppe E i Suoi Formaggi?

Yeah, sure, it looks great, and the Internet is totally unreliable.

Impossible dream

In the course of writing 200 reviews of Rome I have also been posting those reviews to Google. Why shouldn't the people researching their trips to Rome benefit from all this, this, from my, from all the, well, I'm at a loss for words. Anyway, if people are toodling about on the Google maps of Rome, as I was doing obsessively a year or more ago, they can now see what I had to say about many of the cafes and museums and stores and sights of Rome. And if they like my exhaustive analysis they can click on a little thumbs up to indicate their approval and, by extension, make my review more visible.

So today Google robot sent me an email.

Congratulations, they cried. You have a new record of 50 likes. I have fifty fans of my reviews!

Unfortunately they neglect to mention that 47 of those people are me. 

200 Views of Rome: Palazzo Barberini

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

5 Stars





Okay, so, The Palazzo Barberini is also known as the Galleria Nazionale di Arte Antica. It is weird and confusing to be in Rome, ancient Rome, and have them refer to a Baroque Palace full of 16th, 17th and 18th Century art as "Ancient". But I'm not here to complain. I'm also not here to complain about how the third floor, with the 18th Century art, was closed when we were there. Even if that meant missing out on seeing a Boucher. And aren't there period rooms up there too? I remember some from a trip a decade ago to the Barberini. I'm pretty sure one could view some rooms just as the family lived in them in the 1800s or something. Not when I was there this time. Oh I loved those rooms, but I'm not complaining about them either.  I'm also not here to complain about their lack of a cafe, especially since their exquisite vending machine (mostly producing vile espresso based drinks) was a more than adequate compensation, if not, perhaps, in the quality of the refreshments, but rather in their sheer entertainment value.

And that concludes my list of things not to complain about.


On the plus side are:


1. Staircase ecstasy.

Do you like staircases? Well, I never much thought about that either. But the Barberini has two compare-and-contrast staircases by the preeminent architects of their day. Luckily these staircases also express these brilliant artists' stature and prowess. Bernini's is big, very nice, prominent, and you will walk up it to get to the collection. Borromini's is an exquisite work of intimate, mindblowing genius, hidden in a closet, that you probably won't be allowed to set foot in (but you can look).


2. Ceiling ecstasy.

Oh man, they have some nice ceilings in there! I think most of the fame goes to a da Cortona one? It's in a big empty room. Let's face it, there are a universe of good ceilings in Rome, but this is the only one where I felt like I could get away with lying on the floor. It made all the difference. If I could have laid down in the Sistene Chapel my view of it would have gone from "Well, that was an annoying, but interesting experience." to "Holy mother of god I am now Catholic!"


3. The Raphael.

My opinion on Raphael was nonplussed. I'd seen some. I had nothing against him. He was like the Renaissance George Harrison to Leonardo's "John" and Michelangelo's "Paul". So, not really of huge interest to me. And then I saw his radiant jewel portrait here and understood I am a Beatles fan. Am I making any sense? This was like "Something" or "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". I'm just saying it's one amazing painting.


4. The grounds.

It's all kind of a small, walled, little city estate, full of interesting and peaceful gardens, curious surprises, places to poke about, and even entertaining basements (where the toilets are!).


5. Fun painting collection.

With the level of painting so high in Rome it is tempting to focus on the big names and masterpieces. But there are quite a few galleries, like this one, where the general level is just so high that it's fun to cast the edification and checklists aside and just look at whatever paintings one likes, because, mostly they are beautiful.


6. One of the greatest paintings ever created.

(Spoiler Alert) This painting is "Judith cuts off Holofernes head" though that may not be its official name. It's just my translation. It's by Caravaggio. If you don't like it you're in the wrong city. It is crowded in this city so please leave and don't take up our valuable space. Might I suggest maybe something more like Dallas?


Should you go to this Palazzo? I can't speak for your tastes and the nature of your...


Ha ha ha! Yes! It would be morally wrong not to.


And so in conclusion I, I, I have nothing left to say.


   

200 Reviews of Rome: The Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, or National Gallery of Modern Art

🌟🌟🌟🌟☆


4 Stars




Let's start what will generally be a favorable review with a petty criticism: The front stairs of this museum are way too sunny!

If one is approaching this museum in the way I firmly believe one should, one will be descending from out of the Borghese Park. It is a long way down a lovely, but mostly decrepit and shadeless, set of weed and garbage fields, crumbling marble staircases, and occasional dead fountains and obscure parking lots. At the bottom of that hill is one of those 20 lane Roman Roads that are ever roaring with muffler free traffic. After one manages to cross that insane breadth of roadway one finally meets up with the white stairs up to The Modern Museum.

These are the stairs I'm complaining about. Nowhere in all of this is any shade. There are 619 stairs up to the museum. I speak as a person who visited in early fall. Imagine it in the Summer!

I am not here to provide a solution. I am just here to tear beautiful things down on the Internet. I will say though that if Rome would just do something about its SUN maybe everyone who goes there in the Summer wouldn't hate it so.

I don't want anyone to hate Rome. It's so wonderful.

However, once one has made it up the stairs I have no real complaints. The Roman Modern is a big place full of interesting art. It is not the sort of museum one should go to to see all one's favorite modern artists, rather it is a place to see a lot of very good and interesting art from all over the 20th Century. Yes, one will occasionally come upon work by people one knows, but mostly one won't. And if one is prepared for this one won't mind too much because there is a good high standard in this collection.

It is housed in a hundred or so year old building, which by Roman standard is hilariously modern, but it sure doesn't look it. It's a big place and very comfortable to roam around in. In the general crush of Rome and all its staggering sights, this one is a pleasurable and low key relief of quiet and space. I also love its cafe, though, curiously one has to leave and go around to it from the outside for some strange reason. The museum store isn't great, but it's interesting enough, and yes, I'm afraid this museum costs some money. I almost gave the Modern five stars, but that just seems perverse against what all else is in Rome, plus there are the stairs.

In conclusion I would like to relate a mostly irrelevant story. Early in our trip to Rome my wife and I went to this museum and though the building and lobby were open, the museum was undergoing, um, some paintings being moved around or something. We asked when it would open again and they gave a date that was more than two weeks hence! So we said "Okay, we'll see you then." Because we were in Rome for a month!

It was wonderful.

Please don't be jealous.

200 Reviews of Rome: The MACRO (Museum of Contemporary Art)

🌟🌟🌟☆☆


3 Stars



There are many ways to approach an Internet review. Generally the most appreciated is a knowledgeable, well-informed, and yet concise as possible look at the thing or place being reviewed. A personal response to the subject of the review is appreciated so long as it is tempered and composed and most of the opinion is invested into the authorial, informed, and godlike voice of the overall review.

Another approach to an Internet review is one in which the reviewer takes his or her sometimes short term and limited experience to be of profound and essential importance. Basing their review strictly and passionately upon themselves they trust the mosaic of other reviews to provide the wide ranging picture that their isolated interaction cannot.

A third approach to an Internet review is one in which the reviewer uses their review, and his or her experiences with the subject of the review, as an opportunity to express themselves and their relationship to the world, and through that wider lens give a feeling of what the subject of the review might more fully be. This can also give a reader an insight into what their own experience with the review subject could, and might, be. 

All of these approaches to an Internet review can be valid and of great value to the wider community of the Internet. Indeed, there is probably only one kind of Internet review that is utterly reprehensible, and that is one in which the author of the review never even mentions the subject of the review and instead mysteriously expounds at great length about the very nature of Internet reviews themselves.

Fortunately, as far as I understand it, this last type of reprehensible Internet review is phenomenally rare, and I know of only one that exists on the whole of the Internet.

Unfortunately you have found it.

200 Views of Rome: Gelateria dei Gracchi

🌟🌟🌟🌟☆



4 Stars




So here I am doing archeology on yet another one of these Roman Gelaterias, trying to trace back what I had and how it tasted. Reserving 5 stars for my 3 favorite gelaterias in Rome, this one, not being among that exalted trinity, only gets 4 stars. But what kind of 4 stars?

The good kind!

You can get here pretty easily from Piazza Del Popolo, and though you may have any number of reasons for passing this by I am personally incapable of imagining them. Standing at a clothes display table in a store called A'GACI, in The Mall of America, writing the draft of this review on some post it notes I had in my pocket, I so desperately wish for a nice three (or four!) flavor cup of dei Gracchi gelato that my judgment is impaired. And the idea that there are people right now, walking past Gelateria dei Gracchi without getting any gelato, is utterly bewildering.

In Rome, back when I could do so last Fall, I often got fruit flavors. At dei Gracchi I am pretty sure I got apple and fig. But then I also have this weird sense that I went to Gelateria dei Gracchi ten years ago as well and also got apple and fig. And though I know you want a clearheaded review of this gelateria, what I am trying to tell you is that there is a small possibility that I am imagining everything.

Well, everything except that they have some pretty good gelato, which I believe should be adequate for you to go on. But I'll add this: There was something slightly rough around the edges about their gelato that, while making it less perfect, also made it more distinct, and real seeming.

So I apologize for the 4 stars. I'd give it a fifth if I could have some now.

200 Views of Rome: Cinzia Vestiti Usati, Used Clothes

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟


5 Stars




The problem here is making sure I got the store right. Close to each other in this area, just west of Piazza Navona, are two narrow, close packed used clothing stores. I liked one, this one, better. How could I not? This is where I found a purple satin lined, pinstripe, velvet jacket of dazzling resplendency. If you go to this chill, crowded, funky, smelly, fascinating used clothing store with excellent music playing, will you find something as amazing as my purple satin lined, velvet pinstriped jacket?

I'm not sure it's technically possible, but it's worth a shot.

200 Views of Rome: Grano Frutta e Farina

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟


5 Stars




"Hey." You cry out in wonder. "Why is the cruelest, most acid-tongued reviewer on the Internet giving this unassuming little Spanish Steps area bistro a full five stars?"

And I would answer if I weren't so insulted at your characterization of me as "the cruelest, most acid-tongued reviewer on the Internet".

Have you so quickly forgotten my five star review of The Cafe in Palazzo Barberini, which is merely a vending machine? I gave five stars to a vending machine! Well, an espresso making vending machine, and one of a magnetic complexity and glory, but nevertheless...

But we're not talking about the Palazzo Barberini espresso vending machine. We're talking about Grano Frutta e Farina, and about why I gave it five stars, and why you think I'm acid-tongued when I'm really not, and why I'm so defensive about it all.

I AM NOT DEFENSIVE!

Well maybe a little. Because having given my extraordinary, and rare, and sought after five star seal of approval to the sweet garden patio themed cafe/restaurant, with some pleasant light food and drinks, that I don't that clearly remember, I am not sure what I could say about Grano Frutta e Farina that would support my elaborate rating. So, um...

It was nice.

Five stars.

I was not paid for this review.