Collapse on the Oppian Hill

Those of you who have never seen the Domus Aurea are now out of luck (again) for what is bound to be a minimum of two years. I've been inside three times and it is really well worth the visit, especially if you have the imagination to conjure up in your mind what this basically empty structure must once have looked like. Now, the collapse of a portion of the hill covering of the magnificent palace built by the Emperor Nero after a fire (that legend says may have been set by him) burned much of ancient Rome in 64 A.D. has once again put the palace out of bounds for the lovers of ancient Rome. Clearly, the restoration work announced last June when the Domus Aurea (Golden House) was closed to visitors for the third time in as many years because of water leaks were too little and too late.

Officials said the cave in did not involve the Domus itself but an area of between 60 and 70 square meters covering one of the tunnels built by the Emperor Trajan in 106 A.D. . After Nero's murder in 68 A.D., his successor, Hadrian, sacked the palace and covered it over to build a Roman Bath on the Roman hill known as Colle Oppio. After Hadrian, Trajan did further work which involved a series of tunnels. But the effect is the same.

After being shut for decades because of structural problems, the Domus was reopened to visitors in 1999, closed again in 2005 because of water damage and reopened once more in January, 2006. More water damage caused another shut down in December 2008 that was supposed to last until 2011. European and Italian funds amounting to 3.2 million euros were allocated for restoration and water-proofing to protect against spillage through the hilltop above but before this was well underway, a large portion of the covering fell in on itself.

Domus Aurea interior

Originally decorated with copious gold leaf and other luxurious furnishings, the imperial residence was so big - 300 rooms, mostly, experts say, for parties and other receptions - that it reached the Palatine and Celian hills, reportedly covering 2.5 square kilometres of terrain. Its gardens were monumental, surrounding an artificial lake which in the place where the Coliseum was subsequently constructed. Nero had also commissioned a gigantic bronze state of himself, some 37 meters tall, dressed as the god Apollo, a Colossus that later gave its name to the massive amphitheatre built between 70 and 80 A.D by the Flavian Emperors Vespasian and Titus.

One of its most famous rooms is the Octagonal Hall which is said to have a mechanism that allowed a star-studded ceiling to revolve while rose petals and perfume fell on the emperor and his guests.

The Octagonal Room

Throughout the palace there were frescoes everywhere high up on the walls, either geometrical or others depicting monsters and other strange creatures. During the Renaissance, artists like Michelangelo used to gain access to these upper portions from caves or grottoes in the Oppian Hill . They don't seem to have had any idea that there was much, much more below and, in fact, the small paintings came to be known as grotteschi.

Berlusconi with Renata Polverini

Umberto Bossi of the Lega

Opposition leader Bersani

Despite the predictions of many (but not me), the governing coalition led by Prime minister Silvio Berlusconi emerged from regional and local elections earlier this week with significant gains which, though nuanced, make it clear that a series of scandals and criminal charges in several different cases have barely dented the popularity of the, silver-tongued controversial real estate and TV mogul who entered politics in 1994 and has dominated it in one way or the other ever since then.

The elections involved no national posts but were widely seen as a test of the ongoing strength of the center-right coalition government that won a massive majority for a five-year term in March 2008 and, even more, of the 73-year old Berlusconi's ongoing appeal. Like it or not, and despite a significant increase in abstentionism, a majority of Italians still seem to approve of (or even like) Berlusconi's bombastic style and divisive methods of communication and, even more significantly, to disregard the fact that his government, which took power at the onset of a major world economic crisis, has accomplished relatively little.

Although he himself has a long and ongoing history of saying extremely hateful things about his opponents, Berlusconi's choice of a slogan for this year - "A party for love, and against hatred and envy", nevertheless seems to have won many Italians over, making it clear - once again - that this a country where appearances and style count much more than substance.

The vote, held on Sunday and Monday, was to elect the presidents of 13 of Italy's 20 regions and mayors in 462 of its 8000 municipalities. Before the election, 11 of those regions were governed by center-left coalitions and only two by the center-right. With the Berlusconi coalition taking back four of these (Piedmont, Campania, Lazio and Calabria), the center-left's lead has now shifted downward to only seven to six.

As I said above, the results were nuanced. The center-left held onto seven regions and won the mayoralties of several important cities including Venice, where one of Berlusconi's cabinet ministers was defeated in a bid to become mayor. Pierluigi Bersani, head of the major opposition party, the PD, said his party had held onto significant positions and was not discouraged.

Furthermore, one reason for the center-right coalition's success in several northern regions was because of the gains made not by Berlusconi's party, the PDL, but by the federalist Northern League, la Lega Nord, which also has a hard line on immigration. The Veneto, governed for ten years by a Berlusconi stalwart, now will be ruled by a "leghista". And another Northern League up-and-comer won the presidency of Piedmont, narrowly defeating the incumbent, center-left woman president who Berlusconi had said was so ugly (not at all true) he didn't know how she could look at herself in the mirror in the mornings. And several of the PDL victors, like the neo-president of Lazio, Renata Polverini, came from Alleanza Nazionale, the right-wing party that last year merged with Berlusconi's Forza Italia, and may have other loyalties.

So it may be that in the future Berlusconi himself will have less manoeuvring room within the coalition but it's not sure how much this really matters as far as government efficacy is concerned. Following this week's vote, Berlusconi said he would now press on with sweeping reforms of the tax system, of the justice system and of the political system. But he's been saying this for years and so far none of these reforms have materialized....just like the much-touted bridge over the Straits of Messina, linking Sicily to the Italian mainland. He first promised that after becoming prime minister for the first time in 1994. But there ain't no bridge there and probably never will be!

On Sunday, over 15,000 contestants showed up to run in Rome's 16th Marathon (the winner, once again, an African, Ethiopian, Siraj Gena, finished the 42 kilometer course in slightly over two hours and eight minutes) and another 50,000 turned out in Milan to run in a shorter, ten kilometre race for non-professional athletes (this one won by a Kenyan). Here in the Italian capital, it was a good reason to stick close to home as I decided to do, changing a lunch reservation downtown to one in my neighbourhood of Trastevere; a journalist for the Italian daily, Corriere della Sera, reported it took her over an hour and a half to drive her Vespa from the Ara Pacis monument on the Lungotevere to the Testaccio neighbourhood down river. Generally, she said, it took her five minutes! Yikes!

But if Sunday was for fun, Saturday was spent by people marching for more serious causes. In Milan, 200,000 people turned out in an anti-Mafia demonstration, in Potenza, in the Italian south, thousands joined the family of Elisa Claps, a 16 year old high school student who disappeared in 1993 and whose partly mummified body was discovered Friday (17 years later!!!!1) in the attic of the church where she was last seen. In Rome, tens of thousands rallied in and around Piazza Navona to protest the center-right government's plan to facilitate the privatization of water supply services in some Italian cities.

And across town in Piazza San Giovanni, huge crowds turned out for an election rally organized by prime minister Silvio Berlusconi to help his PDL party in next weekend's regional elections, or rather to help the PDL's candidate for the regional presidency, since the party's ticket has been excluded from the vote here on technical grounds.

Estimates of the number of people gathered in Rome's San Giovanni square to listen to Berlusconi and to cheer candidate Renata Polverini, who is also running on her own ticket, along with the PDL's candidates for the other 12 regions where the presidency is up for grabs, ranged from the 150,000 on the part of the police to the one million claimed by the rally's organizers. In any event, it was indeed a massive turnout of ordinary Italians, young and old, who seemed to be enjoying the spring-like weather, the music provided by a band hired for the occasion and the bombastic words of the remarkably popular Mr. Berlusconi.
Sadly, for those of us who are not so easily dazzled, his speech was an collection of grossly-exaggerated claims for his government's policies, attacks on the center-left opposition and aggressive comments regarding left-leaning Italian magistrates some of whom, he ludicrously claimed, have pictures of Che Guevara in their offices.
Berlusconi, who is under investigation here on a variety of charges, including a recent inquiry into his purported attempts to convince television authorities to help quash two very aggressive political talk-shows, claimed once again to be a victim of activist magistrates (there may be some truth to this but no way as much as he says). The response of the crowd - who followed his lead in every turn of his speech - was unstinting and, quite frankly, embarrassing. Indeed, at the end of the rally these tens of thousands of hard-core supporters joined him in singing the PDL campaign song, the refrain of which is, unbelievably, "meno male che Silvio c'è" (thank goodness that Silvio exists).

The Italian national statistics agency, ISTAT, recently published a document called Noi Italia , which provides a snapshot of Italy as it was at the end of 2008. I have aleady published Part One of this portrait of a nation. Here, now, are some other interesting dacts about Italy that can help the visitor have a better idea of what the lives of ordinary Italians are like.

It seems incredible, but only two weeks away from elections scheduled for March 28/29th in 13 of Italy's 20 regions, a bizarre (even for Italy) brouhaha over candidate filing procedures has raised political tempers and raised the question of whether in the Lazio region (that surounding the Italian capital) the election will even be held and if so in what conditions. 

Repeated rulings by a series of Rome election commissions and administrative courts  - the most recent today, Saturday, March 13th,  by the Council of State - have upheld the ineligibility of the list of candidates presented by prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's Popolo della Libertà party (PDL), currently Italy's major political party. This means that if Berlusconi wants the PDL's candidate for regional president, Renata Polverini, to win, he will have to ask his supporters to vote for her personal slate of candidates, meaning that many seats in the regional assembly may end up occupied by Polverini supporters, not by PDL members.

Judith beheading Holofernes

Exactly 400 years ago, Michelangelo Merisi , today known to us all as Caravaggio (the name of the town from which his parents came), died alone, penniless and ill in a poor man's hospital at Porto Ercole in Tuscany. Celebrating the centenaries of an esteemed artist's death has now become the fashion, so it is hardly surprising that celebrations have been planned for 2010, with the keynote being the small but intense exhibit in Rome that opened at the Scuderie del Quirinale on February 20, 2010 and will last until June 13th.

Bertolaso: Et tu, Guido?

As we write it is hard to know exactly how the latest scandal - that which some of the country's least imaginative journalists have dubbed Bertolaso-Gate - will actually play out. We don't know if Civil Protection chief Guido Bertolaso, despite the ongoing support of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, will be forced to resign. We don't know of what, if anything, the country's most-admired high-profile official is actually guilty. What we do know is that the preliminary results of an investigation into collusion, corruption and bribery by high-ranking civil servants and a group of unscrupulous "costruttori" or builders, that was carried on over the last 18 months by the ROS Carabinieri on orders from the district attorney's office (la Procura) of Florence has left a sour taste in many people's mouths that will be difficult and perhaps impossible to eliminate.

The Italian cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, met last week in the southern Italian city of Reggio Calabria and approved a ten-point plan to speed up the fight against the Mafia. At the same time, the Italian manufacturers' association, Confindustria, announced that from here on any member who pays protection money to any of Italy's criminal associations will be asked to resign from the organization. The so called "pizzo" is estimated to affect at least 160,000 Italian companies and businesses.

The government's new plan calls for the establishment of a national Agency that would manage the wealth confiscated from captured and convicted criminals and which will be based in Reggio Calabria, the capital of the crime-riddled Calabria region. A codex of anti-Mafia legislation from as far back as 1965, together with a detailed map of the country's criminal organizations, will also be compiled to help police combat them, along with an interforce desk that will share information among Italy's diverse police forces. In addition, the country's anti-Mafia task forces will now be given authority over illegal waste management. Given the recent riots in nearby Rosarno, attempts to limit illegal immigration, thought to swell the ranks of criminals employed by the Mafia, will be stepped up as will a long-overdue crackdown in the area on enterprises that use illegal labor.

Over the last year or two, Italian police appear to have made significant strides against organized crime, capturing many of the "most wanted" leaders of Cosa Nostra (Sicily), the Camorra (Campania) and the N'dranghete (Calabria). But the hold of the Mafia (or, rather, Mafias) on the Italian economy remains enormous. According to a report, released last week, by Confesercenti, the Italian association of small businesses (primarily tourism, commerce and refreshments), the estimated financial turnover last year for Italian organized crime - a business the association's authors dub Mafia Inc - in Italy was 135 billion euros, equal to 7% of Italian GNP.

Furthermore, the present Italian government has made some decisions that appear likely to weaken progress against organized crime, namely that of sharply limiting police and magistrates in their use of telephone tapping, by attempting to shorten the length of trials, and by giving arrested criminals the possibility of choosing a form of trial - the so-called rito abbreviato -which allows mafiosi to end up with jail terms that experts say are too short, that is, not long enough to make working with for for organized crime a real risk.

The plan for a new Agency to deal with confiscated wealth - estimated at over five billion euros worth - could make a difference but not, critics say, if the instrument used is that of auctioning off homes, cars, factories, inventories and so on, as in a public auction is it not hard for a mafioso to use an intermediary to buy assets back.

According to the Confesercenti report, organized crime's major earnings come from narcotics, estimated at E 60 billion, the protection racket (E24) and waste disposal and related activities, accounting for some E16 billion. Subcontracts in building and revenue from "normal" investments make up the rest. The report also says that while Italian GNP as a whole dropped last year by 5%, organized crime increased its turnover by some 3.7% (how they are able to calculate this is beyond me, but this is what the report says, speaking of a sharp increase in usury because of reduced lending by banks.). It says that organized crime is much more flexible in its largely cash-based operations than legitimate businesses.