Ludus Magnus

From the moment I arrived, I’ve been immersed in Italian culture with all of its stereotypes — a wild taxi ride led to this beautiful, family-run pensione in Piazza Bologna where I was checked in by warm and welcoming Cristallo with his 4-year-old nephew sitting on his lap. Went out for a late dinner to a bar not far down a street filled with Fiats and Vespas. Cristallo had said it was too late for good food and reluctantly recommended this place where the food turned out to be amazing. It was Saturday night and the piazza was loaded with people of all ages out for a ‘passegiata’ and they were loud — breaking into song once or twice — and just loving life. La Dolce Vita. La Vita É Bella. Families with little kids, couples sharing a pizza, old women walking arm in arm, packs of teens, two nuns out for a stroll. It all becomes part of the soup — la minestra — that is Rome. This morning I took a long walk in the Centro Storico (historic center). I wanted to hit the main sites but I also wanted to find something I’ve never been to before, and that turned out to be La Chiesa di Sant’Ignazio di Loyola (Saint Ignatius). It was fantastic. The whole place was designed, constructed, and decorated by Jesuit laborers including Andrea Pozzo, the artist who painted the ceiling. Since they ran out of money for the church and they could not afford to build a dome, he painted an optical illusion which creates a fake dome when viewed from below. My favorite part was something created by a contemporary artist, Vincenzo Pandolfi, a Neapolitan cabinet-maker who worked for 28 years from age 70 to 98 on a wooden sculpture called The Temple of Christ the King. Pandolfi included shrines, churches, and temples from all over the world. The inspiration behind it was to imagine a world where there is universal peace. The Latin phrase “Ut unum sint” was carved in various places, which means “so that they will be one.” As someone looking for something meaningful to do in his retirement, I was blown away by the thought of Vincenzo devoting the last decades of his life on his last wish for the world.Read more