This is Rome .......... from 1960

I have never lost my fascination for Rome.

I have friends who long ago fell in love with Venice, others who keep going back to Florence and yet more who never cease talking about Paris, but for me it is Rome.

It started with an all consuming interest in Roman history and has been cemented over the years by visits to the Eternal City.

The place always amazes me and you never quite get away from that feeling that down every street there is a ruin, and around every corner a piazza.

And despite its magnificent buildings, wide avenues and frenetic pace it remains on a human scale.

Over the years I have invested in guide books, scholarly accounts of the city and picked up those free little maps full of adverts for pizzerias, car hire firms and taxis and recently I added This is Rome to the collection and it is one of my favourites.

Unlike the others it is aimed at children, was first published in 1960 and comes from a series written and illustrated by Miroslav Sasek.

Now I am a great fan of the books of Mr Sasek, partly because they are informative and written with a degree of wit but also because of the illustrations which are bold bright and imaginative.

So on one page there is a fine picture of the Pantheon with a bit of history, while on another a mix of motorbikes with the caption, “Rome is full of statues, but full of motorcycles too.  We prefer the statues, they are so much quieter.”

And it is those illustrations which do it for me.

The style is one you saw a lot of in the 1950s and 60s, which still look fresh today.

In the same series are books on Venice, London, New York, Paris and Edinburgh as well as Hong Kong San Francisco and Texas.

In time I think I will collect the lot after all if the ones on Rome and London are representative of the rest they will not only be fun to read, very informative but will provide me with some excellent pictures to look at.

Picture; Rome, 2009 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, remaining images from This is Italy, Miroslav Sasek, 1960, reprinted 2007

The luggage label, a view of the Grand Canal and the story of a hotel

There is always something special about coming across a place that has a link to your family.

In the case of  The Westin Europa & Regina Hotel in Venice it was where Dad stayed in the 1950s and this I know because we have the luggage label.

I say the label but it is one of a ten that he took away from Venice and never used along with a selection from other hotels across Europe.

Not that he ever stuck them on his suit case; he just brought them home which may have been an earlier version of the tourist habit of collecting the soap and shampoo from the bathroom.

He was at the luxury end of the motor holiday trade and his passengers would be whisked on a seven, nine or fifteen day tour of mainland Europe from the Benelux countries as far as the Swiss Alps and the Italian Lakes.

They would be fed and accommodated at good hotels, provided with a first class guide and had time off to wander as they wished.

And once, and possibly quite a few times the end route for one of those holiday tours was Venice and the Regina Hotel.

I can’t be sure when dad was there but I am fairly confident it will be the 1950s or early ‘60s.

We almost stayed there, but on a whim chose not to head into Venice and so missed the opportunity to pass through the hotel lobby that he would have occupied over a half century before.

The hotel has a long history and was once two palaces, one of which became first a theatre where Rossini’s first opera was performed and later still as a cinema shoed the first projection of the Lumière Brothers' films.

Now I have no idea how much of that history Dad knew but as a good tour guide, he and his courier would have done their homework.

So one day we will get to Venice, stand in the hotel lobby and give a nod to Dad as we gaze down at the Grand Canal which acts as a backdrop.

Location; The Westin Europa & Regina Hotel, Venice

Pictures; The Westin Europa & Regina Hotel, Venice, 2017 courtesy of the hotel and a luggage label circa 1950s from the collection of Andrew Simpson

A key ring .......a war memorial ........ and memories of a father in law

Now I must have seen this key ring countless times and never given it much thought.

But then as it was constantly in use by Simone I dare say the details missed me by.

One side carries an image of an angel over a field of crosses with the dates 1915-1918, and the other the words “SACRARRIO DEI CADUTI DI REDIPUGLIA”.

My Wikipedia tell me that "The military shrine of Redipuglia is a monumental military cemetery located in Friuli-Venezia Giulia , in Redi Puglia , in the province of Gorizia . Built in the Fascist era and inaugurated in the presence of Benito Mussolini on 18 September 1938 , it contains the remains of over 100,000 Italian soldiers who died during the First World War . 

It is the centrepiece of a commemorative park of over 100 hectares which includes a part of the Gorizia - Monfalconese Karst (theatre during the Great War of the hard battles of the Isonzo ) with the enormous dimensions of the area involved which make it the largest military shrine in Italy and one of the largest in the world".*

Not that Simone was a supporter of Fascism or Mussolini, quite the reverse, but the link is that Simone did his military service in Redipuglia in the late 1950s and must have picked up the key ring around then.

Its worn and chipped state is testimony to the fact that it was in constant use for over 60 years.

Talking to Simone years ago, he reflected that Redi Puglia which is high up on the northeast of Italy was a shock for a young 18-year-old who had been born and grew up in Naples.

It was where he first encountered snow, an experience he never forgot.

Location; Redipuglia

Pictures, Simone’s key ring, circa 1956

*Military memorial of Redipuglia, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrario_militare_di_Redipuglia

When in Naples …………… My Brilliant Friend ... the book and now the TV series

Naples is a city which both fascinates me and leaves me uneasy.

It is noisy, busy and fun to be in.

But it is also a place where you know things do not always go to plan, and where even now poverty has a tendency to busy itself.

Step off the main streets into those back alleys where the buildings rise from the ground into the sky and the light fights hard to penetrate, and it is easy to get lost.

Often the narrow streets lead off into even narrower streets and the blocks of apartments seem to challenge gravity.

The first time we visited, Simone and Rosa who were born there warned us to be careful, a warning it turned out to be without substance.

And yet like any city, you know where not to go, and which groups are best to avoid.

That said I love the city, and today I am rereading My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, about two young girls growing up in a working class neighbourhood on the outskirts of Naples.

Those who have never lived in such areas, or experienced the uncertainties of life where an accident or an illness to the main earner, can pitch a family into poverty or destitution, do sometimes romanticise life in such places.

But not so My Brilliant Friend which chronicles the violence, the hardships and the pettiness which was the backdrop to everyday life.  “I feel no nostalgia for our childhood” writes Elena, “it was full of violence.  Every sort of thing happened at home and outside, everyday".

And "It was a world full of words that killed,: croup, tetanus, typhus, gas, war lathe, rubble, work, bombardment, tuberculosis, infection”

And while this was the 1950s, the memories of those who had died during the war along with those who succumbed to disease or accidents were everywhere.

Now, as a historian I find it a powerful account of that period in post war Italy when the prosperity of the North is still only a dream, and when many are driven to head for the great industrial cities of Milan and Turin to escape the grinding poverty.

But it is also a wonderful description of how people interacted, and in particular the two young girls Lila and Elena.

The translation is easy to read and just like the first time I am struggling to put it down.

Added to which I have just ordered up the TV series by the same name, the first of which was produced in 2018, and the follow up a year later.  As it happened we watched the series sometime ago, and it will be fun to look at it all over again.

Location; Naples,

Pictures; Naples, 2018-20, from the collection of Saul Simpson and Balzano

* My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, 2012, translated by Ann Goldstein