Rhodes Scholar

 

Today I am revisiting the island of Rhodes.Our visit last fall was crowded and hurried, and although there was history magic all around, I haven't taken time to process what I saw until today. Thanks to a couple of hours this afternoon with a new history by John Julius Norwich (The Four Princes, 2016) I have fallen under the spell of the city and the time, and have returned to my photos - aided by other sites and contributors - to delve more deeply into what I saw, and make more meaning. 

We arrived in Rhodes by ship before 8am, a rainbow floating above the medieval walls of the UNESCO world heritage city. After the usual uber-efficient ship to shore shuffling, we made our way by foot to the 14th century D'Amboise Gates leading to the Grand Master's Palace just inside.

We were kept waiting for 15 minutes or so, as a movie shoot was taking place inside. Not a problem as the views were pretty amazing. Later I learned that it was The Raja Saab a piece of cinematic horror/comedy sure to last as long as these walls, that deprived us of ten minutes inside the walls on this tightly timed dance that is a guided tour. Ah well, maybe I'll catch the movie somewhere. 

What we were standing on was a drawbridge over a moat, now a linear park I could have spent hours in. Among its attractions were neat stacks of cannonballs used with great effectiveness by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent's Ottoman forces in their 1522 assault and eventual capture of the site. 

The residents of the walled palace were Knights - the stuff of video games - but real enough. This is the D'Amboise Gate, considered the most historically significant among the ancient gates of the 1309 CE walls. This gate was named for that Grand Master, led directly to his Palace and was a key defensive structure in those challenging times. Above the gate is the coat of arms of the legendary Knights Hospitaller and D'Amboise. A bit of green accentuates  the living history. 

This site features all of the gates.

How about those Knights? Again, too much to go into here, but I'll put down a bit of what I am learning, so it doesn't disappear like my glasses and that crossword I was working on. 

Think back to the Crusades. Too far? There were different branches of monk-knights from many countries who came into being as protectors of pilgrims to the Holy Land. We're most familiar with the Knights Templar (who became fabulously wealthy and fell afoul of the French king in 1307) and the Knights Hospitaller, or order of St. John (who provided care to poor and sick pilgrims.) 

It's this latter group whose sometime home we visited on Rhodes. (I say 'sometime' because eventually they were defeated by Ottoman invaders, and relocated to Malta.) The Christian Knights were well-organized, governed by a Grand Master, and answerable only to the Pope.

And for some of the atrocities they committed over time against non-Christians, they are answerable to a higher power.

The marvellously crenellated medieval castle was built in 1309, when the Knights Hospitaller conquered Rhodes, and reworked the structures on the site.  I read it's one of the few examples of Gothic architecture in Greece. What they don't tell you is that you're looking at a facsimile. Of the 14th century Palace of the Grand Master only sections of main floor rooms and some of the fortifications remained after a gunpowder explosion destroyed much of the palace in 1856. 

Later, under Italian rule (1912-1945) Ottoman structures that had been added were removed, and a medieval architecture expert led the rebuilding of the palace and the nearby Street of the Knights. 

Here's the story from the official website.

 

These photos were taken as we travelled down the Street of the Knights, on our way to the Sea Gate through which we exited on our way back to the pier. I did my best to capture intriguing visual details along this, one of the best preserved medieval streets in Europe for later study (that would be today) while keeping up with my group and avoiding a mishap on the diabically slippery cobblestone streets.

Here's the official site again. The Street of the Knights was lined with the fine homes, or 'auberges,' each belonging to a 'langue' -" a regional division within the Knights Hospitaller representing a shared language, culture and administrative identity" including Provence, Auvergne, Aragon, Castile and Leon, Italy, France, Germany and England (until Henry VIII changed everything.) An absolutely fascinating bit of history. 

The building to the left is the Hospital of the Knights Hospitaller; it now houses the Archeological Museum. This is a wonderfully informative site - ViaGallica.com (it'll ask you to disconnect your ad blocker.)

Hope I can save it, and all these other links, helpful for reliving the walking tour and learning more about what we saw that day. If you're reading this,  you might enjoy clicking on one or two.

Perky little walking tour I enjoyed taking with the walkers- their curiousity and the photo captures that resulted are delightful

Palace of the Grand Master Palace Highlights official site. Tickets, anyone? Great photos of spots we didn't have time for.

I like this Armchair Traveller video, should you rather listen than read. She does a terrific job of explaining the revolving door of history on the island of Rhodes (the auto-generated captions struggled though, cringeworthy.)

Rob Coldwell's video gives attention to the emblems on the walls that identify the Knights of each country. Incidentally, the video describes the walk uphill from the hospital to the Palace of the Grand Master. We entered from a different gate, and walked downhill!

Et Tu Brute?

 Today marks the Ides of March. I won't go into detail - you either know or you'll look it up. What is delighting me about the day is that, despite it not being a good one for Julius Caesar, I was there.  In the Area Sacra of Largo di Torre Argentina, Rome, where the Roman senate was meeting, when Julius Caesar met his death at the hands of political opponents. Only I was a tad late, having arrived in 2024. 

One of the things I love about travelling is the "being there," the realization that one is standing in the exact spot where in real life, a long time ago, something that you'd known forever as dusty history, actually happened.

Which is why today sent me running to my photo files and Rome and my 'discovery' by twilight along Corso Vittorio Emanuele II after a long day at the Vatican, of the awe-inspiring Largo di Torre Argentina. I will direct you to my delight at the discovery. And its inhabitants.

And what I was looking for in those photos was this, the area between Temples B and C, where  I have it on good authority, the dastardly deed took place. 

My Man Hadrian

 

I've been wanting to write about my visit to Hadrian's Villa since returning from my week in Rome in 2024! Recently, something prompted me to take a look at my photos, and begin browsing for useful sites. Looking at the photos takes me right back to the day and the place.

 I remember the long walk (always more reliable than buses when one doesn't know the system) from my digs near the Pantheon to the point along Via Cavour where we were to meet the bus. I met two other solo senior women travellers, a pleasant thing. True to form we didn't group, but drifted comfortably in and out of each other's day.  

The hour coach trip from Rome to Tivoli was fascinating, every moment a bonus tour. We arrived, landed and began the walk up to the villa through ancient olive trees. Such old souls they were. I could gladly have spent the day under their gnarled branches, listening to their stories. 

We had a terrific guide, and the vast place cast a spell immediately. Perhaps the best way to begin is with this 15-year old video with then British Museum Director Neil MacGregor.

 He explains that the estate covered around 300 acres, of which around 100 are accessible today. And villa is a misnomer; the place was "the summer administration centre for the whole of the Empire" with room for the emperor and his court, the officials, administrators, the army, and all the servants and slaves needed to make things run smoothly. MacGregor describes the complex as the Empire in miniature, caryatids and crocodiles equally at home, as the architect/artist Emperor brought home ideas from his extensive travels around his empire.

The Philosopher's Hall

I continue to be awed at the age of the place. Hadrian started work here when he became emperor in CE 117. I read somewhere that he didn't like the accommodations on Palatine Hill. On his death in 138, he bequeathed it to another emperor, but over time interest waned (as did the Empire) and the decline began. One source paints an evocative scene of vegetation and layers of earth gradually overrunning the once-proud site and it was lost to memory. 

The site of Villa Adriana was identified by humanist scholar Biondo Flavia* in 1461; he shared news of the discovery with Pope Pius II. A classic case of the 'Renaissance' on the ground. When I later visited the Villa d'Este in nearby Tivoli I heard that one Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este pillaged the Villa Adiana site of marble and statues to aggrandize his palace during the 16th century. A simple cleric.

 In 1870 the Italian state took over management and scholarship of the site and it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1999.

 (*In a post from last December I tried to explain what that time must have looked like to those who lived it. Messy, exciting, confusing, dangerous. The neat modern term 'Renaissance' was first used in France in the 1850s - although Vasari gave him a hint. ) 

Credit: Wikipedia. Thanks guys.

This ProWalk video is an hour and fifty minutes of well filmed, captioned exploration of all sectors on the huge site. I'd suggest turning off the sound, as the crunching of footsteps on the gravel can be distracting. The camera took me (and will again) to places not featured on our tour, which wisely concentrated on some of the most well-known and unique features.

I'll pop up a few of my photos with captions and invite you to learn more about places that interest you, not from me, but from this link, an absolutely monumental project by the University of Virginia and partners, called The Digital Hadrian's Villa Project. Seriously good: 360 degree photos, aerial photos, interviews, a virtual tour, text about each area of the complex and places I haven't even visited yet. I know, pretty nerdy stuff, but impresssive for enthusiasts. Mark? Well done UVA!

The Maritime Theatre

The Maritime Theatre was fascinating. On this round island, Hadrian built a sumptuous private retreat, with drawbridge yet.

Three Exedras

I'm not going to talk about each of these photos. Let's face it, this walk was in 2024, memory fails, and there are loads of experts in the links. 

Here are art historians I enjoy, Beth Harris and Steven Zucker of SmartHistory, talking about the Maritime Theatre. Nice photos.

a Roman road, the 100 Chambers built into the Pecile elevation

the Large Baths

Dome with oculus

The Canopus

Egypt fascinated Hadrian. The Canopus is the most outstanding creation in this place of wonders. It's said he had it built to evoke the town of Canopus, linked by a canal to the Nile, where his young lover Antinous drowned. 

The site is majestic today, imagine what it would have been when the perimeter of the pool was bordered with marble colonnades, Egyptian and Greek sculpture, and beautifully dressed guests strolling to a festive banquet . The Serapeum, a domed artificial grotto at the far end was a dining complex featuring sumptuous fittings and a curtain fountain. 

I'm going to list a few more sites here (just for me). I have enjoyed researching this site so much, that I want to retain what I've learned in one spot. And this is it!

Here's a fun blog with loads of great photos.

This Live Virtual Guide link is a keeper, both for the curious name and the delightful Italian woman who shares her enthusiasm for the place.

I've lost track of a quirky virtual tour, created by Dr. Bernie Fisher and the Khan Academy, a walkthrough with 'Hadrian' hosting and explaining the rooms and their uses. 

And finally, I discovered to my delight that the entire Yale University course I took non-credit as a MOOC on the edX platform a few years ago, An Introduction to Roman Architecture, is available now on YouTube. What a wonderful world. The prof, Diana Kleiner also produced the text for the course, Roman Architecture: A Visual Guide, which I purchased on Kindle. Full of photos! Would cost a million dollars to publish traditionally. Here's a link to lecture #15, on the Pantheon and Villa Adriana; she gets to the villa at about the 48 minute mark. The other lectures of the course are readily accessible on YouTube.

Incidentally, why the title My Man Hadrian? Not a perfect being, so much power often creates issues. But he is considered 'one of the five good emperors' in many sources I read. But why I call him 'my man' is because of what we have in common - a love of  architecture. 

Hadrian was an amateur architect, designing some of the structures on the Villa Adriana complex - he loved his pumpkin domes, I read. And he also gets top marks because he commissioned two of the world's great gifts to architecture, the Pantheon (although some give credit to his adoptive father Emperor Trajan) and Hadrian's incomparable wall across England.

I wrote about my love affair with the Pantheon last January and again in April.

 Derek and Marjorie who introduced me to  Hadrian's wall

I'll do a post about Hadrian's wall at another time. In 1995 Denis and I visited Hadrian's wall with family living in nearby Carlisle. In 2019 we revisited a couple of favourite forts, and toured the massive excavations at Vindolanda. 

I'm speechless.

Layer Cake

In October 2023, declining the bus trip back to our hotel, travel friends Sandra, Mary and I set out on an ambitious hike from central Rome to our hotel some 4 miles distant. And we made it thanks to Sandra's GPS prowess. It was hot, it was noisy and dirty, it was...Rome! But what we saw! The hazy day photos are from that walk - I managed this sunny photo in 2024 on my return visit.

Just as travel and history interweave, so did the fortunes and failures of states in the early centuries. Indeed, as we know, borders are fluid and nationhood a sometime thing. Reading the history this magnificent structure has seen is a fine case in point.

When I spent my solo week in Rome in 2024, one of the many admission tickets I purchased was one to Castel Sant'Angelo.  The visit was astounding.  I entered at the level of the bridge in the photo above and over the course of the day trudged uphill through history. Literally, as we say. 

Given that there are so many websites available to an interested reader, I won't write its long story; you can explore at leisure sites like this official website. There's a link to book your tickets if you really get enthused. I started with my favourite SmartHistory site - they too allude to the layered history of the place.  In fact, the more online resources I explore, the more I see that it's inescapable - the layered look lives here. I'll just park a few other links here and there, for reference and future armchair travels.

At the risk of restating myself, this blog is for me, primarily (though I am delighted to have you along on the read.) I'm just going to  post my favourite photos of the visit and recapture the feelings the place. Okay with you?

Visiting Castel Sant'Angelo involves a circular tour of the structure, one layer at a time, with soaring views over the city, architectural detail at one's fingertips and escapes into vastly different history-filled interiors at each level.

 I'm really struggling to capture the feelings the visit gave me - my heart was racing throughout. I'm copping out a bit and including a  walking tour video. I'll go there again, and you are warmly invited. It's not narrated, so you can enjoy the background noise and pretend you're there in person. 

Here's a link to the official site again, for more description.

Art, historical fragments, interpretive panels lead the traveller onward.

The bottom circuit of the building is the base of the second century Mausoleum of Hadrian. The structure became part of the defensive system of the city in the 400s. The circular corridor was comissioned by a Renaissance pope. In places, the original Roman walls of the mausoleum are visible, all once clad in marble, pinched by Roman citizens in the 14th century. Sensible reuse policy carried on through history, evident all around you in Rome.

Niches in the massive walls contain architectural bits, removed from context, most still unidentified.

The road rises before you, and you enter, awe not optional, the vaulted corridor, 12 metres high leading to the 'Helicoidal Ramp' processing up to the hall of urns, the resting place (at one time) of the Emperor and his people.

Above, an evocative empty niche, where the remains of Hadrian and his family were once at rest. The holes in the stone mark the location of iron clamps which held sumptuous marble wall panels.

More stairs - Roman brick! - and a niche of indeterminate age (to me, anyway) and this quote from Henry James on a panel nearby: "At last for the first time I live. It beats everything! It leaves the Rome of your fancy, your education, nowhere. It makes Venice-Florence-Oxford- London seem like little cities made of paste-board. I went reeling and moaning thro' the streets in a fever of enjoyment."  

Now that may be overstating it a bit, but I was pretty overwhelmed at this point. And looking back, even with photos, I've lost the continuity of the day's wandering. So many layers of history in one spot...I've had to do a lot of reading and viewing to get it somewhat clear in my head.

After this point, I entered a museum floor, chocka with images and  artefactsand medieval weapons. 

 Two fascinating models had this time traveller zooming. Above, a recreation of the medieval edifice, become part of the city's defensive system in the 400s; to the right an educated guess as to the appearance of Hadrian's mausoleum. 

And then suddenly, I was outdoors, in a closed courtyard on the fourth level overlooked by a delicious patchwork of stucco and stone walls attesting to many alterations over many centuries.

 This somewhat neglected-feeling space was the 16th century Court of Honour, or Angel's courtyard (for the presence of  Archangel Michael in his 1544 iteration.)  This space is described as the central hub to the upper residential areas of the castle and was designed as a reception area for the papal apartments. Not especially splendid now; some decorative elements removed over time, is my guess.

I walked through an unassuming door and entered the stunning white and gold Hall of Apollo. There are ten fresco panels depicting mythological scenes and floral designs. Grotesques are a recurring theme, the style Renaissance with lots of classical references. 

Pope Nicholas V had the room built and decorated (by a student of Raphael's, I see) in the mid-1400s as a reception area. Dressed to impress. This room marks the moment when Castel evolved from strictly a defensive function to a comfy papal residence, AI tells me.

And from there, it just keeps getting more splendid. Room leads to room and my brain was quickly full, but my phone kept clicking away. Which is why I do this. In my Febuary free time, I am loving researching and putting myself back into the moment via photos.

These rooms feature decorative elements dating

from Clement VII's 1527 sojourn. Although some features were replaced over time, his name shows up on the coffered ceiling.

And this photo, I love. It affirms the multilayered history I'm struggling with. The room is called La Salla delle Giustizia, or Hall of Justice. This is where trials for such notables as the philosopher Giordano Bruno, whose statue I sought out in Campo de'Fiore later, at the urging of my friend Larry. I skipped the display of torture instruments involved in the pursuit of justice at the time.

And on the topic of multilayered! The stone blocks  are some  of the actual interior walls of Hadrian's Mausoleum. The  fresco above the door depicting St. Michael the Archangel with the symbols of justice dates from the 1550's. And the long view is a peek into the next room featuring a black and white photo exhibit celebrating the centenary of the birth of the beloved Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni. 

If I remember correctly, at this point my brain was chocka and I found an exit onto the circular walkway atop the battlements. The Marcia Ronda (patrol path) changes in nature as you walk around the top, marvelling at the stupendous views of Rome. At various points around the circumference one enters the domain of different Renaissance popes and their decorating self-expression.

The walk varies in character from heavy masonry passages open to the sky, to arbour-covered stretches. Here and there, stairs lead up and down to other levels and new discoveries. 

At various points, you can enter the apartments of the popes who sheltered there over the years in times of trouble, like the Sack of Rome in 1527. 

There's even an elevated passage called the Passetto di Borgo (c. 1280) that leads from the Vatican to the Castel Sant'Angelo. It  was re-opened in 2025, the year after my visit. (As if there weren't already enough reasons to get back here.)

Outside each apartment, the adjacent section of the walkway was done up in the style of the day. So, while distracted by the views one also has to take in sumptuous ceilings, floors and wall treatments. Fortunately there were marble benches here and there upon which to regain one's composure.

The most sumptuous apartments were those of Paul III, the Counter-Reformation pope, with that 'back-atcha Luther' over- the-top Baroque style . 

The frescoes feature scenes of Alexander the Great and his exploits, an association the triumphant pope appreciated.

This apartment truly has 'the best view from a balcony'. Exiting the sumptuous interior, I was drawn into the brilliant sunshine, onto the colonnaded walkway and out along the entrance bridge leading back across the Tiber. I've enlarged the photo so you can be there too.

As if that sublime moment were not enough, there was still another layer to experience. A peak experience, the roof of Castel Sant'Angelo.  

A last opportunity to take in the wonder of the Tiber flowing through Rome, the same presence the writers made no attempt to bring to life, in my high school Living Latin textbook.

To follow with my eyes the route of the Via della Conciliazione to St. Peter's Basilica, which I'd walked on my long way home a few days ago..

To play 'where's Waldo' with the Pantheon and the Vittoriano floating in the haze.

To feel the robust ancient stone under my elbows as I leaned to drink in the Tiber and its bridges.

 

And to exchange a word with St. Michael the Archangel (1753 version)  sheathing his sword after calling 'game' on the 590 AD plague - God's wrath had been appeased. The legend has it that Pope Gregory I was leading a procession to the Mausoleum of Hadrian when he experienced the vision. 

From that point onward this place became known as  The Church of the Holy Angel - Castel Sant'Angelo.