Revealed Rome: Tips, tricks and things not to miss for travel to Rome and Italy.

Il Tajut: For Italian Food that’s Far from Rome

September 25, 2010 No Comments

When Il Tajut, my local cultural association, restaurant and wine bar, moved to the Parco degli Acquedotti this summer, I was despondent. When I wanted Italian food — but couldn't face another night of pasta amatriciana, gruff Roman service, and loud, packed restaurants — where would I go?

Thankfully, Il Tajut has returned from exile. And for a restaurant experience unlike Rome's usual offerings, it's as reliable as ever.

From the start, your experience at Tajut will be a little, well, different. Its door will be closed. You won't be sure if it's really a restaurant, or open, or not. Sometimes, you may have to ring the buzzer. And if it's your first time there, you'll also be asked to fill out a membership card with your name and details. That's because Tajut is a cultural association. (More on what that means in an upcoming post). Everyone who dines here has to be a "member."

The good news is, it's a good club to be in…even if, looking around you, you might notice few other members. On a recent Saturday when the restaurant had just reopened, only half of the tables were full. Usually, I take this as a bad omen. In Tajut's case, though, I think the place hasn't really been discovered yet. (Except for a review in Corriere della Sera last year that ripped them apart, particularly for not having many of their dishes on the menu. Oops).

So why recommend them? Because the food is reliably good, if not perfect. (And yes, the limited staff — the owner's always the chef, a blond woman's always the server — is often out of dishes). Most importantly, though, Il Tajut is different.

The menu features cuisine from Friuli, a small, northern Italian region that borders Slovenia and Austria. There's no amatriciana here; instead, specialties include frico, a flat cake made with potatoes, onions, and cheese (€9), shown at left; spatzli, a kind of pasta well-known to Swiss and Germans (€9); canederli, dumplings that here are made out of bread and mixed with butter and ricotta (€10); and goulash, that hearty stew usually credited with Hungarian origins (€10). The last time I was there, I had a delicious tagliolini with venison ragu and ricotta affumicata (€10). And the wine list is extensive, boasting a number of northern Italian wines that are hard to find elsewhere in Rome.

The place isn't perfect. A dish of sausage and potatoes (shown at top) was swimming in even more oil than you'd expect, most of the food is fairly heavy, and the prices are a little high for what's essentially peasant fare. The service (as in, the one waitress) isn't always particularly fast.

But for super-friendly, personalized service, a quiet, whimsical atmosphere, and a taste of something different, Il Tajut is just right.

Il Tajut. Via San Giovanni in Laterano 244, in Celio, near San Giovanni in Laterano and a 10-minute walk from the Colosseum. Dinner only; open from 7pm daily. For a map and more information, click here.

Art, Events, Museums

Rome’s Best Fall Events, from Art to Aperitivo

September 24, 2010 No Comments

Rome has so many exciting events coming up this autumn, I decided not to fit it all in one post. I will be updating this one, though (unlike my early-autumn events list), so bookmark this and check back. Last updated: November 11.

Lots of these events involve the extended, or free, openings of old favorites — so plan ahead to save a buck and miss the crowds.

September 21-25. Archeojazz, with a guided tour followed by a live jazz performance at the Mausoleo di Cecilia Metella.

September 25-26. European Heritage Days are here!

Until October 3. Oktoberfest in Rome, with music and lots of beers on tap from 6pm each night. Located on Via Appia here. (It’s not in the center).

Until October 29. The Vatican museums open at night. And each Friday in October, they’ll have live concerts, too.

Until October 28. The Villa Farnesina, usually open only weekdays from 9am-1pm, is open every Thursday evening, with free guided tours, from 7:30pm-10pm.

November 17. Budapest Bar-Urban Gipsy concert at the Museo dell’Ara Pacis at 9:30pm. Reservations are required (call 060608), and the concert is free.

November 20. Musei in Musica, with free live concerts (and a couple of dance performances) in 47 different museums and institutes in Rome.

November 27. Jazz Noir at the Museo di Roma in Trastevere, a free performance of music and noir lit reading at 5pm (with your €5 ticket to the museum).

Until December 2. RomaEuropa Festival. The annual festival, now in its 25th year, boasts a series of music, dance and theater performances. Highlights this year include a production of “Orpheus” with hip-hop music and music by Monteverdi and Philip Glass, the British rock group “The Irrepressibles,” and Laurie Anderson’s “Delusion,” a multimedia series of mystery plays that include violin, puppetry, and visuals.

Until December 28. On the last Tuesday of each month, some museums and sites in Rome, including the Borghese, Barberini and Baths of Diocletian, will be open from 7pm-11pm for free.

Until January 8. Each weekend except for the Christmas holidays, the Centrale Montemartini hosts its “Central Notes” concerts. The food and wine tasting, plus concert, costs €8. The showings are on Fridays at 8pm and Saturdays at 10pm.

Until January 9, 2011. “The Two Empires: The Eagle and the Dragon,” an exhibit comparing the ancient Roman and Chinese empires, is on at the Roman curia and, after November, Palazzo Venezia.

Until February 6. “Vincent Van Gogh: Campagna senza tempo e città moderna,” an exhibit of Van Gogh’s works, will be on at the Vittoriano.

Until February 13. Lucas Cranach: The Other Renaissance, an exhibit of Cranach’s work in the Borghese gallery.

Explainers, Tips & tricks

How to Dial Internationally To, and From, Italy

September 23, 2010 5 Comments

It seems like it should be simple, but it stumps otherwise-intelligent people every day: How the heck do you call Italy from home — and call home from Italy?

Here it is, broken down in simple steps. Of course, for every phone call, keep time zones in mind; Italy’s one hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, so it’s one hour ahead of (i.e., later than) London, six hours ahead of New York City, and nine hours ahead of California.

Also, if you’re bringing your cell phone from home to use in Italy (and I hope you looked at your plans with your cell phone company, and your other options for international dialing, first — as well as made sure that your network will work in Europe!) know that when you call an Italian number, you’ll call it like an Italian, no country-codes gobbledygook needed. But if you’ll be calling home, you’ll have to dial home as if you were calling from an Italian landline — i.e., with all those dialing codes.

Of course, you could always just make it easy for yourself and download Skype, the free voice-over-internet program. (You can add credit to your account to call internationally, often at very cheap rates). But if you don’t, here goes.

Dial an Italian phone number from the U.S.

1. Dial 011. That’s the international access code that you need to dial out of the U.S. to another country. If the number you’ve been given says something like +39 0123456789, then the + is what you replace with the 011.

Or, if you’re dialing from a cell phone, you can often just dial the +. No access code needed, since it knows where you are. (Creepy…)

2. Dial 39. That’s Italy’s country code.

3. Dial the rest of the number. Include the first 0. (For other countries, you drop that 0).

So: If someone hands you a card that says their Italian number is 0123456789, then, from the U.S., you dial 011 plus 39 plus 0123456789. Got it?

Dial an Italian phone number from another country outside of Italy

1. Dial your country’s international access code. For England and Ireland, it’s 00; for Australia, it’s 0011; from Canada, it’s 011 (yes, the same as the U.S.). You can easily find out your international access code here.Again, if the number you’ve been given says something like +39 0123456789, then the + is what you replace with this code.

Or, if you’re dialing from a cell phone, you can often just dial the +.

2. Dial 39.

3. Dial the rest of the number, with the first 0.

If you’re calling Italy from Australia, therefore, you’d dial 0011 plus 39 plus 0123456789.

Dial a U.S. phone number from Italy

1. Dial 00. That’s Italy’s international access code. If you’re dialing from a cell phone, you can often just dial the +. No access code needed.

2. Dial 1. (That’s the “1” as in, 1 (202) 123-4567).

3. Dial the rest of the number. (In the example above, that would be (202) 123-4567).

So for the example above, you would dial 00 plus 1 plus 202 123 4567, and you’re done.

Dial another country from Italy

1. Dial 00, Italy’s international access code. Or, if you’re dialing from a cell phone, you can often just dial the +. No access code needed.

2. Dial your country’s code. For Australia, that’s 61; for England, that’s 44; Ireland is 353; and Canada is 00.

3. Dial the rest of the number.

You might also like: the worst e tiquette mistakes to make at an Italian meal, how to decide if a Roma Pass is worth it and how safe is Rome… really?

Want more tips and tricks for travel in Italy? Check out The Revealed Rome Handbook: Tips and Tricks for Exploring the Eternal City, available for purchase on Amazon, below, or through my site here.

Archaeological sites, Art, Beyond Rome, Events, Museums, Rome

On Tuesday Nights, Free Art Across Italy

September 21, 2010 3 Comments

Just in case all of the fun events and free entrances on European Heritage Day (September 25-26) weren't enough for you, mark the last Tuesday of the month in your calendar, too.

That's because, on the last Tuesday each month through December 28, a series of state-run museums and sites will have late openings and free entrances. It's called "Martedi in Arte" and takes place across Italy. In Rome and Lazio, the following sites will be open from 7pm-11pm and will be free:

Palazzo Barberini, with its reopened archaeological exhibit, Via Quattro Fontane 13
Pantheon
Borghese Museum
Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Viale delle Belle Arti 131
Baths of Diocletian, Via Romita 8
Crypta Balbi, Via delle Botteghe Oscure 31
Museo Nazionale Romano and Palazzo Massimo, Largo di Villa Peretti 1
Palazzo Altemps, Via di S. Apollinare 44
Museum of Castel Sant’Angelo, Lungotevere Castello 50
Villa d’Este, Tivoli (shown above)
Hadrian's Villa, Tivoli
Necropoli, Strada Provinciale Monterozzi Marina, Tarquinia

To see which sites will be open elsewhere in Italy, check out this list on MiBAC's site (in Italian, but pretty self-explanatory).

Archaeological sites, Events, Rome

Night Tours of the Baths of Caracalla, in the Guardian

September 21, 2010 No Comments

After posting about the opportunity to take night tours of the Colosseum and the Baths of Caracalla, I took a night tour of the baths myself — and wrote about it for the Guardian newspaper. You can read my piece, which posted today, here.

And let me tell you, grabbing night photos of those ruins while following a tour guide around was not the easiest….I’m glad my forgiving editor decided that at least one of the snaps was up to snuff. Here are a couple more..

Events, Rome

European Heritage Day=Free Events and Entrances

September 20, 2010 No Comments

On Sunday, September 26, On Saturday and Sunday, September 25-26, every state-run museum and site in Rome, and across Italy, will be free — including such big-time sites as the Colosseum, Borghese gallery, and Capitoline museums (shown above).

But free entrance is far from the only perk. Many sites are offering (mostly free) events. And those events sure do range. They include:

a series of guided tours of the National Gallery of Modern Art, including one tour aimed at children (it focuses on animals, yay!)
the international Nordic Walking Festival, with a route that goes past the Spanish Steps, Colosseum, and St. Peter’s Basilica
aperitivo at the Jewish Museum of Rome, in Rome’s synagogue; this one costs €7.50, but includes museum entrance and open bar, from 6pm-9pm on Sunday
“Twenty-Four Hours of Rome,” a mountain-bike endurance contest in which masochists bikers pedal the same 7.5km course for 24 hours straight, starting at noon on Saturday

I beg you, as much as I’d love to see a Nordic-Walking mountain-biker who’s spouting modern art knowledge and staggering from too much kosher wine, please don’t do all four of these in one weekend.

The events and free entrances are all part of European Heritage Days, which the Council of Europe launched in 1991 to promote European art and culture. And while it’s exciting, do keep in mind that at the highly-trafficked sites (like the Colosseum), lines are likely to be looong. Let me repeat that: looong.

So unless it’s worth it to you to stand in a 3-hour line to save €12, I’d recommend hitting up the lesser-known galleries, instead. Think: the Palazzo Barberini (which just unveiled its refurbished archaeological wing and newly-restored Pietro da Cortona fresco), the Palazzo Massimo with its incredible archaeological collection, the MAXXI with its modern art and cutting-edge architecture…

The list goes on, so take advantage! It’s not every day that you can do so much, while spending so little. At least in Rome.

Archaeological sites, Art, Events, Rome

Tonight, the Colosseum Will Go Up in Flames

September 17, 2010 No Comments

If you see the Colosseum burning this weekend, don't call the fire brigade: The flames are virtual.

Artists Thyra Hilden and Pio Diaz, from Denmark and Argentina, respectively, are putting on the show by using a pre-recorded video of real fire and projecting it onto the structure. Their digital manipulations of the film mean that they even can recreate the effect of wind fanning the flames — and the result is so realistic that, in the past, people have called emergency services.

The Colosseum show is part of their project "City on Fire: Burning the Roots of Western Culture." The two artists have been "burning" monuments since 2005, including the Trevi Fountain, Copenhagen Cathedral, and Seoul Museum.

The show will take place on the nights of September 17, 18, and 19, from 8:30pm to 2am. Given the recent announcement that Rome is looking for sponsors to restore the Colosseum and keep it from, well, crumbling to the ground, seems like kind of an odd choice.

Or, perhaps, an appropriate reminder that these monuments won't simply stand on their own forever.

Beyond Rome

One Kilometer Above Cappadocia, Only Air In Between

September 17, 2010 No Comments

This post isn’t strictly about Istanbul. Or Rome. But it is about hot air balloons.

And who doesn’t like hot air balloons?

(Well, except for those with height phobias. Or small bladders. But still.)

I was given a very special present for a particularly big birthday: a hot-air balloon ride in Cappadocia.

A remote region in central Turkey known for its fantasy-world rock formations and unique cultural sites (including underground cities, churches, monasteries and homes carved into the soft rock, sometimes with frescoes dating back as early as the 4th century), Cappadocia also happens to be the place in Turkey to go hot-air ballooning.

While the vast majority of travelers book with big companies like Kapadokya Balloons, we decided that for an experience this once-in-a-lifetime, smaller and more-tailored would be better. Horror stories were rife of 25 or 30 people being packed into a balloon basket, and we didn’t want to be among them. Not to mention that Kapadokya Balloons had had an accident last year and one man, a British scientist, was killed.

Enter Butterfly Balloons. The company promised no more than 12 people in one basket, 16 in the other (it runs only two balloons), and, with its higher price, a higher-quality experience.

It definitely delivered.

Like those flying with almost all of the companies, we had to get up before sunrise for our 5:15am pickup. Why so early? Because the wind conditions are (usually) perfect in the early morning — and the weather is still cool, so you don’t bake in the sun. We ate breakfast at the company’s office as the others straggled in; the two pilots, Mike and Mustafa, hurried around in their pilot uniforms, exuding an air of calm amidst their clients’ nervous anticipation.

Coffee downed, it was off to the launch site. We drove to a remote valley and watched the sun begin its rise over the mountains as the two balloons were readied. In the distance, more than a dozen other balloons all were being pumped up, side by side. Alone in our valley, our flight seemed extra-special.

After an awkward, grappling climb into the basket, and some noisy firing-up, we were off.

There’s nothing quite like the sensation of feeling where your feet just were float away beneath you — and knowing that there’s absolutely nothing between you and the ground, not even a big tube of metal that most reasonable people somehow trust to rocket them through the air.

After ten minutes, we were a kilometer high. All of the monumental rock formations, the fairy chimneys, the canyons, the Goreme Open Air Museum, seemed like toys. The sky turned strawberry-milkshake pink behind the line of volcanoes. Farther I could see the other balloons, 20, 30 of them, rising into the sky.

And I could see that many of those balloons were, indeed, packed. But I found myself with tons of room — to shift around, take pictures, look about, nobody in the way. As if that didn’t sell us enough on this particular company, it turned out that Mike, a veteran pilot, had worked for Kapadokya Balloons for years; he left after last year’s accident, frustrated both by the tragedy and by how the company didn’t seem to be learning from the crash or improving its procedures. Go figure.

We were in the air for about an hour and a half, floating up and down, “playing” (as Mike called in) in the canyons and dips of the land, coming so close to the ground that, twice, we scraped past trees, leaves shaking off into our basket. And then, with the sun already high and the other balloons dropping from the sky, one by one, like particularly fat snowflakes, it was time for us to land.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever return to Cappadocia. But if I ever know of anyone going there, I’ll tell them two things: The hot-air balloon ride is worth it. Do it with Butterfly Balloons.

Oh, and use the bathroom before you go. Once you’re in a basket in the air, there’s absolutely nothing you can do.

You might also like:

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Beyond Rome, Churches & holy sites

The Hagia Sophia of Istanbul: A Stunning Roman Ruin

September 16, 2010 1 Comment

There’s a reason why the Hagia Sophia (or Hagia Sofia) is so evocative of all of Istanbul. It’s a microcosm of the city’s entire history, from Roman origins to Ottoman Islam to today’s (relatively) secular nationalism.

The site initially held an ancient temple, some remnants of
which remain in the current structure — like the dolphin design on the column to the right.

The first Christian cathedral was built
on the site in 360 A.D. It was rebuilt twice, both times after being destroyed by riots. (To see what the older Hagia Sophia(s) would have looked like, check out Byzantium 1200’s digital reconstructions).

The current building, which dates back to 537, was the largest church in the Roman empire. It also remained the biggest cathedral in the world for almost a millennium, beat out only by the Seville Cathedral in 1520.

In 1453, with Constantinople’s seizure by the Ottomans, the Hagia Sophia was turned into a mosque. And in 1935, at the height of Turkey’s secularization under Ataturk, it became a museum.

See what I mean about it being a microcosm of Istanbul — and Turkey — in general?

You could write a book on the Hagia Sophia. (Many have). But among the many treasures not to miss are its gorgeous Byzantine mosaics, which date back as far as the 9^th century. Also
make sure you check out the seraphim (above) who was only recently uncovered. Although
his three compatriots are still plastered over, his face was revealed in 2010 after
being hidden for centuries by the Ottomans.

For a clear tie to the city of Rome, meanwhile, look no further than the gray granite disk set into the floor, on the right of the middle of the church (left). Placed here by Justinian in the 530s, this is where the Byzantine emperors knelt to be crowned as early as 641. If you’ve visited St. Peter’s Basilica, you know that the Roman basilica boasts a similar disk in red porphyry. That’s the rota porphyretica, set into the old St. Peter’s Basilica and the spot where the pope crowned Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor in 800.

The similarity in the two stones is no mistake. Charlemagne was setting himself up in direct opposition to the “other” successors to the Roman empire, the Byzantines. By crowning him, Pope Leo III was showing that the papacy had wriggled from Byzantine control and was choosing the Holy Roman Empire as its protector instead. It’s also no mistake that the St. Peter’s Basilica disk is red porphyry, a precious stone that “one-upped” its sister stone in the Hagia Sophia. (Take that, Byzantines!)

On a broader, architectural note, of course, it’s no surprise that the Hagia Sophia looks — almost — reminiscent of that seemingly divinely-inspired building in Rome: the Pantheon. Both structures innovated in setting a circular dome on a square, rather than circular, shape. And both awed contemporaries by building domes on such a large scale. The Hagia Sophia’s original dome, which collapsed in 559, was thought to be slightly bigger in diameter but shallower than the current one, built in 563. Even so, the Hagia Sophia’s dome today is 102 feet in diameter — just 40 feet smaller than the Pantheon’s. (Check out the difference between the two in the images, below).

Don’t miss the garden of the church, either. There, in an unassuming tumble that reminded me of abandoned bits of column in Rome’s Forum, lie several marble blocks from the second church, dating back to 415. The most striking among them depicts twelve lambs, each symbolizing one of the twelve apostles. Many more remnants of the ancient church remain in the area — but they’re still buried underneath the ground, excavations ending in the 1930s after it was realized that continued work could harm the current structure.

Even without that, though, there are enough treasures in the Hagia Sophia to keep a history or archaeology geek satisfied — and maybe a little bit awed.

Archaeological sites, Beyond Rome, Churches & holy sites, Museums

The Ancient, and Roman, Ruins of Istanbul: Part II

September 15, 2010 1 Comment

We’ve got the basilica cistern and the Hippodrome, the Column of Constantine and the Valens Aqueduct. But there are other not-to-miss ancient Roman (or Byzantine) sites in Istanbul, too. Below, three others not to miss — and one more (perhaps the most major!) coming tomorrow.

5. Walls of Constantinople. One line of fortifications was
built by Constantine in the fourth century; a second row of walls was added by
Theodosius II in the fifth century. Although they saved the city from some eleven
invasions, they couldn’t withstand the invention of gunpowder and the Ottoman
conquest of 1453. Remnants of both the walls remain visible along their
original lines. (To see what the walls would have looked like, check out the great reconstruction done by Byzantium 1200).

6. Archaeological Museum. If you’re searching for antiquities in Istanbul, there’s no missing the Archaeological Museum. One of the world’s preeminent archaeological collections, the museum is replete with some 60,000 artifacts from a swath of ancient empires, from Greek to Egyptian, Phoenician to Hittite — and yes, Roman too. Some of the stars of the Roman collection include a series of beautiful sarcophagi, including this tomb with elaborate carvings of the story of Phaedra-Hippolita, dating to the second century A.D. (left).

The museum’s absolute show-stopper, though, is a Hellenistic piece: the Alexander sarcophagus. Because photos simply don’t do it justice, I considered not posting one. But to give you an idea of what the piece looks like, here’s just one detail of part of the sarcophagus. Seriously, though: This is something you have to see in person.
Dating back to 332 B.C., the sarcophagus comes from Sidon, a successful Phoenician city-state that today lies about 25 miles away from Beirut. Despite the name, it belonged not to Alexander (we don’t think), but probably to Abdalonymos, who Alexander made the king of Sidon in 332 B.C. Alexander, though, is prominent on the tomb, immediately recognizable for his curly and once-blond locks. The scenes that sprawl across the sarcophagus — two war scenes, two hunting scenes — tumble with vigorous action and expression. Not until the Renaissance, more than 1,000 years later, would sculptors reach this level of skill. To top it off, the sarcophagus is still scattered with the paint traces of its once-colorful past, giving the viewer a real sense of how this piece — and all Hellenistic sculpture — would have looked. That’s pretty rare.

All of this leaves out, by the way, hundreds of other treasures in the museums: the Sarcophagus of the Crying Women, also taken from the necropolis at Sidon; animal reliefs taken from Babylon’s Gate of Ishtar, built by Nebuchadnezzar in the 6th century B.C.; and the Treaty of Kadesh, the world’s oldest known recorded peace treaty, signed in the 13th century B.C. by Ramses II and the Hittites.

Not bad.

7. Hagia Eirene. A bit sightseeing-weary after three full days in Istanbul, I almost didn’t go into this church. But I’m glad I did. Today part of the Topkapi Palace, the Hagia Eirene (top of the post) stands on the oldest spot of Christian worship in Istanbul.

The first church, built here in the fourth century by Constantine, burned to the ground; the current one dates back to an 8th-century restoration. (Not bad, really, as far as longevity goes). And, incredibly, it somehow missed the Ottoman sweep of turning churches into mosques — meaning even its 8th-century mosaic, depicting a black cross, was left intact.

And it has nothing to do with St. Irene. Instead, its name meant
the “Basilica of Holy Peace.” (It was designed in harmony with the
“Church of the Holy Wisdom,” or the Hagia Sofia, and the “Church of the
Holy Apostles”).

There’s another major ancient Roman site in Istanbul that I’m still missing. Any guesses?

Check back tomorrow for the final installment of this three-post series.

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