Roman Quarantine – Day 41

Coronavirus

Tweet Today we’ve officially gone beyond the quarantine: day 41 of 40 – still buffering. I feel like I’ve lost all grip of what’s happening in the Italian pandemic situation. Things are, I think, improving? Though perhaps not as much as they should be? And when...

Roman Quarantine – Day 40

Coronavirus

Tweet Today marks our official quarantena, the word we get from the forty days the Venetian Republic kept ships suspect of disease at bay. I went for a (permitted, local) walk, the first in a week. I wandered along a little bit of the timeless aqueduct road, past the...

Roman Quarantine – Day 39

Coronavirus

Tweet Days have been mostly sunny recently, but evenings significantly cooler and so today was the first outdoor supper of the year. Timings and temperatures were just right, the sort of thing one can’t really ever organize, and we three neighbouring terraces were...

Roman Quarantine – Day 38

Coronavirus

Tweet On Day 29 I mentioned my jaunt to Urbino in January. If a walk in a park feels distant, impromptu road trips feel vehemently other at the moment. As well as the show in honour of Raphael, I visited the rest of the exquisite Ducal Palace, a place I first visited...

Roman Quarantine – Day 37

Coronavirus, Rus in urbe

Tweet Day thirty-seven of the Happening, and I’m definitely beginning to lose all track of time. It’s not an unpleasant feeling. The URL of yesterday’s blog ends “/day-37” because that’s what I called it at first. In fact today is day 37 after all, but to be...

Roman Quarantine – Day 36

Coronavirus

Tweet The other day on Twitter, Tom Holland (the historian, not Spiderman) posted photos from an enviable early morning London walk. Among them was this photo of St Bartholomew the Great. A thoroughly excellent church, and one that owes its existence to Rome. I still...