Tweet Today is the eighth Sunday of the Roman Quarantine, and the last day (at least for now) of the current stringent restrictions. Tomorrow we’ll still be required to carry a signed letter to show the police to justify our movements if they ask, but solo exercise is...
Tweet Today I went for a trot along the wild, lonely aqueduct road, which even in normal circumstances is a rather marvellously desolate place. I began this Roman Quarantine on Day 2 happily trotting through Roman parks to the sounds of 90s country music (one of my...
Tweet I mentioned mosaics in the wilder reaches of the Venetian lagoon yesterday. I’ve no idea when I’ll be able to get on a train to Venice, but there are plenty of mosaics in Rome to sate my thirst for multitudes of tiles glittering in the shadows of solemnly silent...
Tweet On Day 42 of the Roman Quarantine, I mentioned the fabulous mosaics at Ravenna. Following the post, I got an email from my wonderful uncle Tommy recalling his trip there as a student on a hitch-hiking tour of Byzantine sites in 1969. When I was perhaps sixteen,...
Tweet I’m very much looking forward to taking a very long walk on Monday. The slight lifting in the lockdown on 4th May means that we will be allowed to take solo exercise for the first time beyond the vaguely-termed “proximity” of our homes. So my first walk will be...
Tweet Before this quarantine I managed, at a push, to write about three blog posts a year. To be perfectly honest I’m not sure that I would have started this if I’d had any idea we’d still be in this situation seven weeks down the line, but I’m very glad I did (thanks...
Tweet Seven weeks ago today I was making pasta e fagioli when an unexpected (at least by us) announcement from the Prime Minister began the national quarantine. That first week was particularly odd: while Italy was shut down, almost everyone else was carrying on as...
Tweet This evening (because he seems to like to speak at supper time) there was an announcement from the Italian Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, about how the lockdown will begin to be lifted on 4 May as we enter “Phase 2”. That’s a week on Monday, exactly eight weeks...
Tweet Today is the 25th April. In Italy it’s a public holiday. The Festa della Liberazione commemorates the liberation of the last Nazi-occupied cities of northern Italy, as well as the end of Fascism, which preceded the occupation. It’s generally a joyful affair,...
Tweet Day 46 I mentioned my foray into the world of online talks on Wednesday and have happily had some interest in a preliminary chat about Rome’s origins. I was thinking of 35-40 minutes of me talking with slides and then questions so fifty minutes or an hour in...
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