Rome Renewed

Of the many schemes the cities of the world have devised to mark the new millennium, Rome’s offers some of the most permanent benefits. The marble of its churches, palazzos and monuments has been scrubbed clean, glowing with sugar-cube brightness.

The face lifts are just the beginning. Old museums have been refurbished, and new ones have opened. And in some places, Rome has managed the all but unthinkable: It has banned traffic, turning about 100 piazzas into oases of calm.

My wife, Liet, and I discovered these changes on a June visit. Whenever we’re here, we are drawn to the Roman Forum to dream away an hour or two wandering among the ruins. But this time we found something new: In the most expensive of the city’s Holy Year projects, archeologists have been busy digging out the later Imperial Forums of the emperors Caesar, Augustus, Nerva and Trajan just next door. Visitors now don hard hats and enter the site, where they are escorted by archeologists.

Mussolini, in a rush to drive a grand new avenue from the Piazza Venezia to the Colosseum, ran roughshod over the area in the 1930s. In creating the Via dei Fori Imperiali, he ordered dozens of medieval and Renaissance buildings torn down to make way for the boulevard, which sliced the Imperial Forums in two, and even had some of the Roman remains covered over; they were rediscovered as the structures were removed.

When the excavation is complete in 2001 at a cost of $10.5 million, the reconnected forums on both sides of the avenue will be the world’s largest archeological park. (The Roman Forum is already a public space, now free to anyone who wishes to wander through it.)

It’s humbling to enter the imperial complex through an ancient sewer that’s big enough to walk through. It took us under Via dei Fori to the end of the long and narrow Forum of Nerva. Ahead, we could see a segment of the road that once led into town.

Farther on, in the Forum of Trajan, we came across archeologists sifting the dust, searching for clues about the place. To build his forum and the adjacent market, Trajan ordered much of one of Rome’s seven hills carted away. It was a thrill to stand on the flattened site--on the pavement the emperor had put down--and to see Trajan’s name carved on a broken piece of entablature that the archeologists recently unearthed and left where it had fallen during an earthquake in the 9th century.

Other archeologists have unearthed the remnants of the 2,000-year-old Balbi Crypt, in its heyday a vast arched courtyard. The finds made during the 20-year excavation and restoration have been installed in a newly opened complex that dates back to the Middle Ages. These offer vivid insights into the evolution of the city from Roman times to the 20th century.

The Colosseum has also undergone a make-over. Its interior walls were strengthened and brought back to their original color, and a segment of the arena floor was rebuilt in oak and will double as a stage for evening performances of drama and music.

Out on the Appian Way, the Tomb of Cecilia Metella has been readied for visits. An exhibition has been mounted in the adjacent Caetani Castle showing examples of rich funeral decorations from some of the other magnificent tombs erected beside the famous roadway.

The restored treasure that truly captured our imagination was the Domus Aurea, the Golden House of the Emperor Nero, near the Colosseum. Closed for 17 years, it reopened in April after a million-dollar restoration. In Nero’s day it had 250 rooms and numerous gardens on 125 acres that a fire (the one that supposedly started Nero fiddling) cleared. When Nero died, much of the original structure was demolished and the surviving chambers were filled with--and buried under--rubble, most of which has since been removed.

Descending a ramp into the Domus Aurea is like entering a cool, dim cave. It was an eerie feeling as we moved from one shadow-filled chamber to another, taking in what Nero’s debauched revelers had once seen in a drunken haze. The emperor’s octagonal dining room, illuminated by a round skylight, is still largely intact. A marvel of its age, the original ceiling revolved.

Not content to retrieve its ancient past from the clutch of time, Rome has also lavished money on some of its great cultural institutions. Atop the hill of the same name, the Capitoline Museums--the Palazzos Nuovo, Senatorio and Caffarelli--have been architecturally renewed. An underground passageway now links the Nuovo and Caffarelli, with a stairway rising to the Tabularium, an ancient archive, which offers outstanding views of the Forum and Palatine Hill from its arched walkway.

As part of the make-over, the Capitoline art galleries have been spiffed up, some interiors painted a pale aqua that fairly glows. The statue of “The Dying Gaul” now expires under a Venetian glass chandelier. The very symbol of Rome itself, the 6th century BC bronze she-wolf--along with Romulus and Remus, the city’s legendary founders--has undergone the ministrations of conservators and is on display, minus the corrosion and grime that obscured some of its most subtle details.

A fter a good night’s sleep (we stayed at the Hotel Portoghesi because of its location near the Piazza Navona), we were ready for an early morning visit to another of Rome’s refurbished museums, the Borghese Gallery. The dust has been brushed away, the layers of dirt lifted. Painted walls and ceilings have recovered their lively colors, and trompe l’oeil effects once again trick the eye into believing that the moldings and cornices are real--when they’re actually the inventions of clever painters.

But the real magic here is the work of 17th century sculptor Giovanni Bernini. His works--positioned in the center of several of the rooms for maximum effect--have never looked better, now under the soft, dramatic light the museum has installed. How Bernini could turn Psyche into an olive tree as Cupid reaches out to touch her is beyond me, but her legs become bark and her fingers spring into leafy branches, the marble carved so daringly thin in places that light shines through.

The Altemps Museum--which we happened upon almost by accident--has undergone a similar restoration. Fragments of several centuries of frescoes have come into focus on the walls of this Renaissance palazzo, and the coffered wooden ceilings bear the softly muted designs of the artisans who created them. The Altemps contains several collections of antique statues assembled by some of Rome’s most noble families, and they are displayed in the rooms as their owners might have placed them, with plenty of space around each to encourage viewing. Two of the standouts are “The Gaul Slaying His Wife,” which Julius Caesar had copied from a Greek work, and the 5th century BC “Birth of Aphrodite,” a poetic rendering of the newborn goddess of love emerging from the sea, with two attendants gently drawing a towel up over her naked body.

Near the railway station, the 19th century Palazzo Massimo, a former Jesuit school, is renewed as well. Its spruced-up galleries contain some of the best artworks from Italy’s rich archeological collections. I was fascinated by the decorative bronze fittings--some of them fiercely realistic animal heads--from the sunken pleasure barges of the cruel Caligula, who ruled from AD 37 to 41. The vessels were exhumed from a lake bottom in the 1930s but were destroyed by fire during World War II; only the metal parts survived.

I was even more taken with the Roman frescoes and mosaics in the state-of-the-art exhibition spaces on the top floor. The underground dining room of Livia, Augustus’ third wife, has been reconstructed; a painted garden setting, with songbirds in trees and bushes, it is a perpetual Roman summer and a pure delight.

Rome’s genius for putting old buildings to new uses is evident in three new exhibition spaces launched for the millennium. A former brewery has become the Municipal Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, but the boldest conversion is the Montemartini, an early 20th century power plant that contains more than 400 classical sculptures brought from storage in the Capitoline Museums. Their whiteness stands out against black-painted diesel motors, turbines, pipes and ladders--an unusual expression of industrial and traditional archeology and further proof that the Eternal City is forever renewing itself.

*

Dale M. Brown of Alexandria, Va., was the editor of Time-Life Books’ archeology series, “Lost Civilizations.”

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GUIDEBOOK

Reveling in a Revitalized Rome

Getting there: From LAX, Alitalia has direct service twice weekly; British, Continental, Alitalia, Air France, KLM, American, Delta, Northwest and US Airways have connecting service, with one change. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $1,061.

Seeing the museums: Altemps Museum, Via di Sant’ Apollinare 8; 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday.

Balbi Crypt, Via delle Botteghe Oscure 31; 11 a.m.-6:45 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday.

Borghese Gallery, Piazzale Scipione Borghese 5; 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Sunday. Reservations: telephone 011-39-06-328-101.

Capitoline Museums, Piazza del Campidoglio; 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday.

Colosseum, Piazza del Colosseo; 9 a.m. to an hour before sunset Tuesday-Saturday, 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Monday.

Domus Aurea, Viale del Domus Aurea; 9 a.m.-7:45 p.m. daily except Tuesday. Reservations: tel. 011-39-06-3996-7700.

Imperial Forums, Via dei Fori Imperiali, 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday through September, an hour before sunset October through March.

Montemartini, Via Ostiense 106; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Municipal Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, Via Francesco Crispi 24; 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday.

Palazzo Massimo, Piazza dei Cinquecento 67; 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday.

Tomb of Cecilia Metella, Via Appia Antica 161; 9 a.m. until one hour before sunset Sunday-Friday, 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday.

Where to stay: We stayed at the Hotel Portoghesi, Via dei Portoghesi 1; tel. 011-39-06-686-4231, fax 011-39-06-687-6976, Internet https://www.venere.it/roma/portoghesi/portoghesi.html. Near the Piazza Navona. Doubles start about $145.

Hotel Senato, Piazza della Rotonda 73, tel. 011-39-06-679-3231 or 011-39-06-678-9575, fax 011-39-06-6994-0297, Internet https://italyhotel.com/roma/delsenato. Doubles with bath start at about $190.

Where to eat: Ristorante Myosotis, Vicolo della Vaccarella 3/5, local tel. 06-686-5554. Good Roman cuisine.

Papa Baccus Ristorante, Via Toscana 36, tel. 06-4274-2808 (in the Veneto area). Specializes in Tuscan cooking.

For superb ice cream, Giolitti, Via del Uffici del Vicario 40, tel. 06-699-1243.

For more information: Italian Government Tourist Board, 12400 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 550, Los Angeles, CA 90025; tel. (310) 820-0098, fax (310) 820-6357, Internet https://www.italiantourism.com.