A Return to the Scene of Conquest : Major Norman Exhibition Opens in Rome 910 Years After Viking Invasion

Exactly 910 years after they came to pillage this city, the heirs of fierce Viking pirates have returned to enchant it.

In 1084, the Northmen sacked parts of the Eternal City in a terror campaign of conquest that included Southern Italy and Sicily, which they ruled for two centuries. Now they have returned as “The Normans, People of Europe,” in a groundbreaking exhibition that is drawing enthusiastic crowds to the Palazzo Venezia in the heart of the city.

“This is the first major Norman exhibition, and we will have succeeded if it makes the people of a united Europe realize that they are not products of one single culture but of many,” said Mario D’Onofrio, organizer of the exhibition that will remain in Rome through April, then move to Venice’s Palazzo Ducale from mid-May until September.

D’Onofrio, a professor of medieval art at Rome University, spent six years assembling a show of intriguing glimpses of a warrior race better known across the centuries as conquerors than for their prowess as builders and governors.

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The result is engrossing, if uneven--tools, weapons, clothing, jewelry, 1,000-year-old shoes for small horses, knights’ armor, scale models and manuscripts. The works are drawn from collections in 11 countries, including pieces from museums in New York and Boston.

The exhibition was assembled with the support of patrons, including the presidents of France and Italy and the Queen of England. All three countries once feared the Northmen’s tread. Vikings sweeping down from what is now Scandinavia rooted themselves in Northern France. They learned French, adopted Catholicism and rowed across the Channel under William the Conqueror to vanquish England.

They then marched south through the Holy Roman Empire and around it by sea. They sent armed expeditions down to the shores of North Africa, and east as far as Antioch and Ankara. They mounted the Crusades under knights such as England’s King Richard I, known as the Lion-Hearted.

With that as background, note that Rome’s thoughtful new exhibition is not for the jet-lagged. There is much to absorb.

The show--predictably--opens stressing the Norman’s war-tossed ascendancy. There are dented war helmets, lovingly hewn battle axes and swords, spurs and chain-mail armor that passed reverently from father to son--all tools of the invaders’ trade in the mid-11th Century.

The exhibition is organized topically. But there is an element of eclecticism. One portion focuses on a medical school in Salerno founded under Norman rule by the Jew Helinus, the Greek Pontus, the Arab Adela and the Latin Salernus; it survived into the 19th Century. Replicas of 1,000-year-old surgeons’ and dentists’ tools--gruesome drills, saws, pliers, knives--will, uh, make you glad you floss.

Spare a moment for the forest as you stroll among the Norman trees. The Palazzo Venezia, built partially of stones from the nearby Colosseum, was the first Renaissance palace in Rome. It was the palace of Popes, the Venetian Embassy and, in this century, the headquarters-cum-balcony for Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

One crowd-stopping Norman work in the breathtaking museum-palace is a six-meter square diorama, painstakingly detailed and historically accurate: 1,600 painted, lead soldiers nervously await trumpet’s blare to begin the Battle of Hastings, which sealed Norman victory over England in 1066.

That and other Norman triumphs are also portrayed in a reproduction of a long segment of the Bayeux Tapestry--the 11th-Century’s anticipation of the modern comic book--a bloody narration of Norman prowess in battle which, legend has it, was stitched with the help of William’s wife, Queen Matilda.

But there was more to the Normans than war. While that is the least-known part of their story, it is perhaps the most alluring part of the exhibition. “In marching across England, France and Italy, they created a territorial, juridical and cultural unity that in some cases survived into the 19th Century,” D’Onofrio said.

The Normans--militant Christians who defended the Pope and sprang forth as Crusaders in vain attempts to conquer the Holy Land--never cultivated the arts. But they did establish some of their era’s best governments, systematizing feudalism and introducing stability as remedy to Medieval anarchy.

They also were remarkable architects: Scale-models feature their fortified towns, their high-towered defensive castles (like the Tower of London) and their splendid cathedrals.

Norman churches are still European landmarks in places as diverse as Winchester, England; Caen, France, and in Sicily, where the Norman style melded with Arab and Byzantine to produce masterpieces like the cathedral of Monreale.

(Here in Rome, the Normans built fires, not buildings. In fact, the burn marks of their sack are still visible at the ancient basilica of the Santissimi Coronati, titular church of Los Angeles’ Cardinal Roger Mahony.)

Norman King Roger II wore a gorgeous red and gold silk coronation cape in 1130 to become the first king of Sicily; his soldiers wagered on dice forged from a stag’s horn.

Both are there--the cape a striking reproduction--in engaging sections of the show that examine the bric-a-brac of daily and ceremonial life and death: marble statues and capitals, illuminated Bibles, coins, brooches, cups, reliquaries, mosaics, stained glass, household implements and terra cotta jars for storing oil and grain.

The exhibition also includes an ambitious but unconvincing multimedia introduction to the Normans, and--change of pace--a high-tech salon where the Normans and their civilization come to life from press-the-screen computers.

* “I Normanni, Popolo d’ Europa,” is open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., 8:30 p.m. on weekends, in Palazzo Venezia at the Piazza Venezia in the center of Rome until April 30. Admission is about $6. The same exhibition reopens at Palazzo Ducale in Venice on May 20 until Sept. 17.