When in Rome

Via Condotti, Roma

It is eighteen years since I was in Rome, and I have only the vaguest memories for the details of that visit, although vivid memories of the ambience. I do recall that my three young children were bored rigid by the Trevi Fountain but wildly excited by the candy-coloured gelati we bought for them nearby. I don’t even remember where we stayed, but I think it was near Piazza Navona where we ate expensive tourist-priced pizza and were served by satisfyingly rude Italian waiters in long white aprons. I recall being overawed by the acreage of piazza at St Peters, and by being able to actually see the famous Sistine Chapel ceiling through the heads and shoulders of the football scrum of tourists. I remember trailing with the children through the galleries of the Vatican Museum, eavesdropping on other peoples’ guides, but being daunted by the sheer size of the place. I remember arriving by plane from pristine, efficient Zurich and being depressed by broken ticket machines, dirty streets and inefficiency. I recall a wild cab ride where all five of us squashed in (the little guy was only seven – we squashed him in all kinds of places on that trip) despite the cab driver’s nervousness about being caught breaking regulations. I recall hundreds of stray cats at the coliseum, and that the tatty boulders signposted as ‘The Forum’ made no sense at all. I recall surviving Rome.

Today my arrival was also by plane, but from grubby, inefficient London, so the contrast wasn’t so stark. Nevertheless, Rome managed to seem as slovenly as I remembered. It wasn’t so bad really – the shuttle came eventually, the immigration and bag collection was really rather quick, and the car driver turned up after only a 20 minute absence. When he did arrive, he was nattily turned out in a sharp suit and designed spectacles, and he didn’t understand English so – luckily for all involved - I couldn’t tell him off.

The drive from the airport was long and uninteresting until we entered The Walls. We approached along the Via Ostiense, one of the eight great access roads, originally Roman built (by Ancient Romans, that is) that radiate out of (and, obviously, into) the old city centre. We slipped from the modern run-down suburbs into the old part of the city, not exactly through, but alongside, the Porta S. Paolo. This is the modern name of the ancient Ostienis Gate, but one of many surviving great gates in the Walls built by an Emperor named Aurelian in the third century AD. The Aurelian Walls are, in some places, built on older fortifications, but during the hey-day of the Roman Empire, when Augustus was at his height, Rome was an open city and feared no-one. It wasn’t until the Visigoths threatened the city that Aurelius flung up the massive Walls. Even then, the enemy cut the aqueducts in a cunning counter-move, and it was the beginning of the end.

You can read about the Ostiensis Gate here and this site lists all the gates.



The Aurelian Walls and Gates



Having entered the Roman Walls, the car took to a satisfying hill – Rome is supposed to be built on seven hills, right? – and then a massive pile of crumbling ruins hove into view. This was more like it. I searched for a name sign but could only see one which seemed to speak of a viewpoint and something about Romulus and Remus. This would need some guide-book investigation later, but clearly we were in Rome. As we neared the city centre, monument after massive monument reared around us. Was that the Quirinale?  The Villa Medici? Piazza del Popolo? None of these places are on my tentative sight-seeing list – good grief, you’d need months to do this place justice. What a monolithic assortment of palaces, museums, cathedrals and goodness knows what! Then the car swung down the Via del Corso and the shops came into view. It was about 7 pm and the hour of the passeggio, when the light afternoon is drawing to a dusky close and work is done. Everyone takes to the streets and walks up and down checking out everyone else, before drifting off home, or to a bar or restaurant for dinner. It is very communal. Many shops were still open for business, and foremost amongst that business on the Via del Corso was the display of some absolutely gorgeous clothes. Sadly, most of them are intended for people who still have waists, but I foresee some window-shopping ahead. A huge palace loomed, with perfect, restrained, handsome Ionic columns in its Classic facade. Inside – Zara, the upmarket Spanish clothes chain. And a whole galleria of expensive-looking shops. Clearly the motherlode.



The Spanish Steps



I fetched up eventually at my hotel, and here I sit ensconced this evening. The hotel is accessed through a small doorway and corridor running between a fancy-looking tea shop (tea shop?) and a Cartier outlet on the Via Condotti. It is approximately fifty paces from the base of the Spanish Steps, thus earning its name, The Inn At The Spanish Steps. Here is the hotel's website. It looks nothing like this. It also cannot possibly be 'five star' since it doesn't even have a restaurant on the premises, much less anything as exotic as a swimming pool. But that is merely to highlight the false and misleading advertising - the room is cheap. I also have a large canvas decorating my wall, depicting Classicaly-draped nymphs playing various musical instruments. And the bathroom is nice.

At first I thought I might have made a mistake in choosing thriftily (Roman hotels seem very expensive), but what the room lacks in size and view (think narrow slit of an alleyway – but at least there is a window) the establishment makes up for in eccentric friendliness. Carlotta on reception cheerfully explained the eight or ten forms I was required to sign in order to check-in (Italian bureaucracy in full flight), explained how to buy a train ticket, drew lots of directions on a map, and booked me into a restaurant around the corner. The doorman-cum-bellman-cum-jack-of-all-trades, whose name I do not yet know but feel that I soon will, showed me to my room, went back to fetch the bag (the elevator could hold me or the bag, not both at once); then sat at my computer fiddling around with the internet connection. Soon there was quite a convivial party going on. Apart from Gino (or whatever his name is) on the computer, in popped Maria to turn down the bed. The phone rang – Carlotta wanted something or other. It was all go in Room 113 at The Inn At The Spanish Steps.



Room 113. It's OK.



Feeling hungry after all this making of new friends, I set out on a five minute walk around the corner to the restaurant recommended by Carlotta. Possibly this was run by her brother-in-law or other close relative, but what the heck. Immediately I felt a surge of contentment and goodwill as the charm of old Rome hit me (in a pleasant kind of way). I stumbled over the rough but picturesque cobbles, dodged taxis driving down streets barely wide enough for them, let alone them and me. The little shops displayed fabulous clothes, kinky underwear, Murano glass. Every second business was a restaurant or a bar, lively by now with customers, candles and Chianti. But on I pressed to the far end of the alley and Carlotta’s recommendation, the strangely named La Buvette. I have since discovered that this French word means a barroom, taproom or tavern; I can report that the establishment is entirely Italian. Locals sit at the bar and drink espresso from teensy little cups, or sit at the bar and drink large glasses half filled with red wine. The women all look elegant. The men all look handsome.



atmosfera at La Buvette



I checked reviews for La Buvette and found that diners had given it 2.5 stars for cucina, and 3 stars for atmosfera, servizio and qualità. Personally, I enjoyed the food very much – but that might have been because the very expensive dinner I had last night at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden in London was an example of everything the British do badly with food. The atmosfera at La Buvette was perfectly fine – stage-set Italian bistro – and the service was friendly but slow (again, England has begun to inure me to this). In fact, one of the waitresses, watching me read my book by the light of the candle and seeing my new iPhone 4, recommended that I download an app which turns the iPhone into a torch. Excellent suggestion. My book, by the way, is called ‘A Time in Rome’ by Elizabeth Bowen, an Irish gentlewoman who wrote novels and spent three months in Rome to write this book, around 1959. It was she who alerted me to the Aurelian Walls. She has not so far mentioned the kinky underwear or any useful iPhone apps.

When I left, the waitress at la Buvette gave me a ticket entitling me to a complimentary glass of vino should I decide to return for lunch or dinner. I may have found my local. There is a lot of competition around the Via Condotti, so I guess you need all the smart marketing ploys you can think of.

My other new Roman friend, Daniela, phoned while I was at dinner, to discuss the interesting matter of hotels on the Amalfi coast. I have planned four nights in Rome, but after that I don’t have any bookings – just a vague idea of going off southwards on the train. A few weeks ago this seemed footloose and fancy free, bohemian, lazy and adventurous. Now, I have decided to book ahead. I know, I know – it is wimpish, but in the end I didn’t fancy arriving at the stazione in Naples, hauling my bag and having nowhere to stay. So Daniela the travel agent is on the case, and will find me a temporary home, or two or three.  She was still in the office at nine pm, which puts paid to any notion that Italians are lazy workers.

On my way in from the airport, reading billboards, I mused somewhat grumpily on Berlusconi: what a creepy man, I seriously dislike him, what an embarrassment he is to his country, what I would say to him given half a chance, yuck yuck yuck, etc. But I had to stop that sort of thing – there is a lot more to Italy than its ghastly current leader, and it will be best if I put him from my mind and enjoy its delights. Speaking of which, I have a date at the Vatican at 10.30 am tomorrow, so I had best get my sleep.



The task ahead.



Images from:
http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/romeancientrome/ig/Ancient-Rome/Imperial-Era-City-of-Rome-Map.htm
www.prodanzaitalia.com/images/location/
www.rome-roma.net/planIT.html
http://www.federstraderoma.it/7-febbraio-2001-presentazione-pubblica-di-federstrade/

Rescue Remedy: 'Fidelio'

'Fidelio'

Did you know that there is a genre of opera called ‘rescue operas’ dating from the time of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror that succeeded it? Neither did I.

According to the Royal Opera House program, Beethoven’s “Fidelio” is the only ‘rescue opera’ that has remained in the active repertoire. After the revolutionaries beheaded the king in 1792, they set about establishing a republic on the basis of ‘Liberté, Égalité and Fraternité (the philosopher Rousseau could be brought into the story here, but I will try my best not to get side-tracked). Things, however, went from bad to worse, and the Jacobin party split, with Robespierre unleashing the dreadful Reign of Terror, resulting in an early version of ‘disappeared ones’ - a phenomenon depressingly common in the 20^th century, and indeed beyond. Many of the revolutionaries’ former moderate comrades were imprisoned, and spent quite some time writing letters and appeals from their dank cells, channelling both public idealism and private passion.

The ideal of Liberté was pretty big in those days: think Statute of Liberty, the classically robed female figurehead symbolising freedom. So the ‘rescue’ stories were not just about telling the tale, but also powerfully symbolic. 

Here's Wikipedia on The French Revolution, if you'd like the details.

The final scene, ROH production

In “Fidelio” the central rescuer figure is a female, Leonore, who dresses as a boy (named Fidelio – ‘fidelity’, get it?) in order to recue her beloved husband from a serious dungeon where he has been illegally imprisoned by his political enemy. There’s a side-story with an old gaoler and his daughter, but in the end Leonore is very brave and rescues her husband in the nick of time; a kindly authority figure frees all the prisoners and the bad guy disappears himself to an unspecified fate. I am being glib about it, but behind the story is some pretty powerful symbolism. Beethoven was a serious kind of guy. He admired Mozart’s music but found his choice of story lines (“Marriage of Figaro”, “Don Giovanni”) to be too frivolous. For his only opera, Beethoven chose much more edifying themes. (I say his only opera – “Fidelio” exists in some earlier versions which are called “Leonore”).  

Second Act, in the dungeon

So although “Fidelio” is based on an earlier French ‘rescue opera’ (by Bouilly, who claimed the story was a true story from the Reign of Terror), Beethoven set it in a vague Spanish castle, and the bad guy’s name is Pizarro. The current production, on hire from The Met in New York, time-shifts the action to the 20^th century and one can’t help but think of the Spanish Civil War, though I haven’t found anything in the program to confirm this impression.  It would be appropriate.

The music, you ask? I was mightily impressed by the overture (very Beethoven-ish), less impressed by the First Act though it had some nice moments (especially one lovely quartet); and mightily impressed all over again by the Second Act. It had it all: a wonderful tenor appears, there’s intrigue, love, action, and it ends with a massive chorus. Excellent. When the tenor (Endrik Wottrich) first opened his mouth, it was to sing an enormous heartfelt cry from the depths of his dungeon: “Oh God! It is so dark here!” After my first Northern Winter, I couldn’t help but empathise.

Fidelio/Leonore was sung by the very wonderful Nina Stemme, who was very good indeed. The nasty Pizarro was performed by the German-born but Australian trained John Wegner. I have heard him sing several times at the Sydney Opera House, including a good Scarpia (the bad guy in ‘Tosca’). Wegner does bad guys very threateningly. I think he’s found a niche. This was his debut at the Royal Opera, and I gave him a hearty ‘bravo!’ at the curtain call, in Antipodean solidarity and encouragement. I wonder if he heard. I was in Row E, which is quite close, so he might have. I must also mention the bass, Kurt Rydl, who sang the part of Rocco the old gaoler. It is a substantial part, and his voice was very beautiful. Basses can sometimes not be, but this guy was excellent.

Ludwig von Beethoven

The big choruses at the end are exceptional. The story ends on a triumphant and happy note. The great mass of freed prisoners sings ‘Heil se idem Tag! Heil sei der Stunde!’ (‘Hail the day! Hail the Hour!’). Leonore then leads them into ‘O Gott! Welch’ ein Augenblick!’ (‘Oh God, what a moment!’) I must say I agree that we should be thinking transcendence here, something that goes way beyond the story line in many ways. The program says “It is a moment that celebrates the power of the moment”, an interesting thought. I’m told that Wagner, although critical of “Fidelio”, was in the end thoroughly inspired by it.

So that was my night at the opera. Not only music, and history, but a little philosophy too. You can’t ask much more than that for your money.

It was opening night, so the reviews will be out tomorrow. Here's the ROH site for more information.

Images from:

http://mostlyopera.blogspot.com/2007/06/fidelio-at-roh-what-happened-in-pit.html

http://www.musicalpointers.co.uk/reviews/liveevents/beethoven_fidelio_roh07.htm

http://www.roh.org.uk/whatson/production.aspx?pid=13815

http://madnessofart.com/2009/03/26/beethoven-lives/

Wisley

Spring!!!!!!!!!!!

What’s a Wisley? I hear you ask. It is a garden, a very large and excellent botanic garden in the heart of rural Surrey. It was also the locale for a very enjoyable Sunday afternoon stroll last weekend, preceded by a late night around Marilyn & Adam’s hospitable dining table with their guests from the village of Horsley, and followed by lunch on the terrace at The Anchor pub, beside a canal off the River Wey. With barges and a lock and ducks and all. The English finally celebrating the advent of Spring. Or at the very least, the promise of Spring.

Birders' board

Wisley is the home of the Royal Agricultural Society, and is one of the greatest gardens in the world, claiming over 25,000 types of plants. They have a saying at Wisley: “If it can grow at Wisley, then it can grow anywhere”, but actually when you think about it, that doesn’t sound too complimentary, so I’m not sure what they mean. But there it is in the guide book. The RAS, given its Royal Charter in 1809, has been at Wisley since 1904 on 60 acres donated for experimental gardening. They still do lots of experimenting there, and gardening education, and the raising of difficult-to-raise species.

On my visit, possibly the most exciting things were the swathes of daffodils everywhere, a myriad of varieties, springing up in formal flower beds, casually clumped under trees, and swooping up grassy hillsides. ‘Tis the time of the daffs. Hooray!

Apple trees: almost in bloom

Cherry blossoms

But venturing away from the formal gardens, we found a quite magnificent ‘pinetum’, as it was called, with magnificent specimens of tall trees. We explored a quiet bird hide down by a bend in the river, then wandered a path along the River Wey, dodging daffodils everywhere, and fetched up at an enormous glasshouse. Here were all the plants I knew the names of, including that garish orange thing that grows like a weed in my garden at home in Lindfield. Here were all the plants from Eastern Australia (me) and South Africa (Marilyn). We gave them a cursory nostalgic survey then headed on up “The Borders”, a hillside planted with what promises to be exciting combinations of herbaceous borders, but which have not yet quite sprung to life. 

More daffs!

We arrived at the orchards – many fields of apple trees, and some quite amazing espaliered apples and pears. Then down through all kinds of berries and some model gardens...and look! There’s another hillside covered in daffodils!

We then toured the more exotic corners: alpine rock gardens, a Japanese garden complete with sakura - cherry blossom in full riotous bloom.  It was all blissfully springlike, and possible to strip daringly down to a mere t-shirt.

Barge on the canal

Tearing ourselves away from the greenery and the daffodils, we lobbed up at ‘The Anchor’, a pub whose founder was well briefed in the old adage ‘location, location, location’. Sited beside a canal which runs off the River Wey, with a moored barge to the right and a delightful humpback bridge and lock to the left, boats plying up and down, ducks getting frisky in a spring-like manner: ah, heaven! We snagged a table outdoors, heaved some happy sighs, and settled to a soporific late afternoon on the river. I knew everyone would be happy when the sun finally came out.

And now, obviously the Wordsworth must be quoted (written in 1815):

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed---and gazed---but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils. 

A host, of golden daffodils

Empire of the Mind

‘Empire of the Mind’ is a book written by a Kashmiri immigrant to London named Iqbal Ahmed. I have two reason for giving you a brief review and a recommendation of this book: firstly because it is an interesting and worthwhile read for its own sake; and secondly because so far this blog has dwelt on English things like red buses, The British Museum, theatre and opera, Buckingham Palace, Victoria and Albert and so on, and I would like to redress the balance a little. London – indeed, England – is much more polyglot than those subjects would suggest.

Out on Euston Road, about a block from St Pancras, is a mighty billboard advertising the availability of advertising space. It says: “Welcome to Central London. You are one of 1,600,000 people who pass this corner every fortnight.” You don’t actually need the sign to understand that this is a BIG city. I have been rather intrigued by how London’s inhabitants cope with the thickly-peopled streets. If you are uncomfortable in crowds, don’t come here; but I must say that there is very little aggression in a London crowd, even at those times of the day when they close off the Euston Road access to the Piccadilly Line platform, and funnel us all down to the other end, so they can control the number of people pouring into the Underground. There is a general sense of stoic-ness in the face of it all; and that thing you may have heard about London commuters never catching each others’ eyes is perfectly true. It is quite an art to spend time in a thick crowd without ever looking at anyone else, except in the most superficial and I-am not-really-looking-at-you-it’s-just-that-my-eyes-have to pass-over-you-to-read-this-highly-interesting-looking-advertisement-over-here kind of way. Ever since the War Department told Londoners in 1941 to ‘Keep Calm And Carry On’, they have been.

All of which is a slightly tangential lead-in to telling you about Iqbal Ahmed’s book, by way of emphasising the very large and varied population of London. Amongst the spoils of Empire is England’s influx of immigrants from its far-flung ex-colonies: Indians, Pakistanis, Nepalese, Caribbeans. Er, Australians. And courtesy of the UK being part of the cosy EU conglomerate an added influx of Polish, Bulgarians, Romanians, Turks, Russians. In fact, that advertisement you were just looking at on the Tube is likely showing a picture of a smiling Pakistani lady with her daughter, or a blond Polish mama and her son, advertising cheaper rates to ‘call home’.

So for me Iqbal’s book was fascinating, moving as I do each day through this melting pot but understanding much more about Victoria and Albert than about the Pakistanis who fixed my phone or the Romanian who cleans the corridors, or the Polish girl serving in the Cafe Nero. Iqbal was born in Kashmir in 1968 and has lived in London since 1994. His first book, which I have not read (yet) is about his move from Srinagar to London. It is called “Sorrows of the Moon” if you want to chase it up. It was awarded various literary prizes when it was first published. ‘Empire of the Mind’ was published in 2006, and is Iqbal’s story of his exploration further afield, to various regional cities in Britain, through trips made intermittently over a number of years. The quiet and laconic telling of his experiences is touching and eye-opening, especially the revelations about the immigrant communities finding quiet corners of the UK in which to settle. One of the reviews described the book as ‘fascinating, humorous and poignant’ and I agree.

Iqbal sets off for places like Oxford, which he knew of through the proud ownership of an Oxford English Dictionary. In Oxford he meets his friend Hashim, a scion of a wealthy Omani family. Hashim was the youngest of fourteen children and his father had always wanted one of his sons to go to Oxford. But it was beyond Hashim to gain entry to any of the Colleges of Oxford University, so he attended a private college in Oxford. His father was satisfied.

Cambridge

In Cambridge, Iqbal finds Auntie’s Teashop, which endeared me to him, because I found it too, last year. There he meets Tao Yang from Shanghai, who was studying English Literature at Cambridge, in between working in a bar evenings to pay for her accommodation and food. She said she would be able to get a teaching job back in Shanghai after her degree, but would never make enough money to pay back her parents for the tuition fees. “However, she enjoyed the study of Literature. It gave her consolation.”

Iqbal goes to see ‘Hamlet’ at the Barbican (“It was the location of the Barbican and not the length of the play that I found daunting.”) This inspires a visit to Stratford-Upon-Avon. The bookshops of Charing Cross Road inspire a visit to Hay-on-Wye at the tail end of the book festival. In Hay he meets a Canadian who is working in a book shop and trying to write a novel. “He said perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to work as a bookseller and aspire to be a novelist. He had found it dispiriting to sell second-hand books to people who were always price-conscious.”

To find a community of Kashmiri people, he travels to Birmingham, where there is a large community of people from Mirpur in Pakistan (who don’t actually speak the same language as people from Srinagar). But Birmingham is famous for Balti cuisine, as served in Indian restaurants in London. Iqbal also visited his friend Zaffer who had been a student at UCL in London. He was from Hyderabad in India and had fallen in love with Naseema, a Mirpuri woman. “Naseema’s mother didn’t like her son-in-law to be darker than her own people.”

In Bournemouth Iqbal finds Kumara from Colombo in Sri Lanka, who had moved to Bournemouth because he was afraid of the Sri Lankan youth gangs in London. Kumara was Singhalese whereas many other were Tamils. There was also an unfortunate incident with a girl and a forbidden marriage back in Colombo. “It was a small world when it came to Sri Lankans living in London. Most of the men worked at petrol stations and the gossip spread from one patrol station to another very quickly.”

Iqbal Ahmed

And in Sheffield – which immigrant community did he find there? Yemeni. Zeinab was born in Aden in the mid 1960s and moved to Sheffield with her parent in the 1970s. She said there were about 5,000 Yemenis living there, many of whom had moved there when Aden was a British colony, to work in the Sheffield steel industry. Zeinab “said it was her responsibility as a voluntary worker to give advice to Yemeni men living in Sheffield, but whenever she went to Yemen she was not expected to express her opinion in front of men. Her years at the School of Oriental and African Studies had given her a deeper understanding of her own culture, she felt.”

I hope I am giving you a feeling for the understated, dry tone of Iqbal’s writing. On the subject of Glasgow, he tells us that “It is certainly a mistake to ask a newspaper vendor for directions when one is not familiar with the Glaswegian tongue.” In Glasgow he visits Jaspal, a Sikh man from the Punjab who had been working for his uncle until he found out he was receiving only half the minimum wage. Jaspal has been too embarrassed to send home a photograph of himself for the past two years, because in Glasgow he has cut his hair short and given up wearing a turban, because he felt out of place. “He intended to grow his hair again before returning to his village as he wouldn’t feel comfortable there without wearing a turban.” Such a story told in so few words.

In Edinburgh Iqbal’s acquaintance was a white South African named Peter, who had moved north from London because there he shared with spendthrift friends who partied every night and he couldn’t save any money. He wanted to save enough to buy a pick-up van back in Cape Town. “He missed nothing more than the barbecues at his family home.”

Doorman at The Imperial Hotel
Delhi

Iqbal himself views London through the eyes of the colonial experiences of the Indian subcontinent, and reminisces about how the tailors back home in Srinagar would imitate Saville Row. He says he feels uneasy at businesses in India using the word ‘Imperial’ in their company name. “I was surprised to find a hotel in Bloomsbury called The Imperial, which reminded me of its namesake in New Delhi. The Imperial Hotel in London was ugly but the one in Delhi was quite pleasing to the eye.” In an echo which resonates with me he comments “I was thrilled when I reached the voting age in Kashmir, but in London found to my dismay that only half the electorate cast their vote in parliamentary elections....I was puzzled to find that one of the Houses of Parliament was undemocratic in a country which is regarded as the mother of parliamentary democracy in the world.”

Iqbal has more to say on his impressions of Britain, but I’ll leave you with one small anecdote which, perhaps, says it all:

“For many years, I had found London too full of distractions to undertake any writing. But...one day I met an author in my neighbourhood [of Hampstead heath] who told me that it is the indifference of Londoners that I might find useful as a writer.”

And we’ll leave Iqbal there, in the Empire of the Mind, having learnt a great deal about a hidden side of England today.

Here is a very good review of the book.

Tales of the Alhambra

The Alhambra

In 1829 the American writer Washington Irving, who at the time had a job as a foreign diplomat, took a journey in Southern Spain from Seville to Granada. Last week I, too, made this momentous journey. In Washington Irving’s case, he was on horseback and the journey took a few weeks; and when he arrived at the famous Alhambra of Granada he found it a picturesquely crumbling ruin, inhabited by families of gypsies who had lived there for generations in its neglected decay. In my case, I was on a tour bus that set out before dawn, took three hours driving through more olive trees that you would ever have thought could exist in one place, and fetched up at the still-famous Alhambra to be wedged in a traffic jam. Instead of gypsies, I found a large group of tourists, a guide with a microphone and earpieces for us his charges (quite a good system).

Washington Irving moved into some rooms inside the Alhambra and stayed there for a few months, smoking a water pipe in the evenings and writing down the stories of the Alhambra that the gypsies told him (later to become his book ‘Tales of the Alhambra’). In my case, I trudged up the hill with the group, spent three hours on the site gawking through the teeming hordes of tourists, and listening through my earpiece to the history of the Alhambra told by the (excellent) guide Antonio.

Irving found the Alhambra ruined and neglected, but still full of charming hidden patios, ethereally elegant arches and stucco work, trickling fountains (the water in the Alhambra comes from the snow-capped Sierra Mountains behind Granada and water reaches the site under the power of gravity alone). This is how he described the Hall of the Ambassadors:

A Moorish archway admitted us into a vast and lofty hall which occupies the interior of the tower and was the grand audience-chamber of the Moslem monarchs, thence called the Hall of Ambassadors. It still bears the traces of past magnificence. The walls are richly stuccoed and decorated with arabesques; the vaulted ceiling of cedar wood, almost lost in obscurity from its height, still gleams with the rich gilding and the brilliant tints of the Arabian pencil.

Pavilion: one of the oldest buildings on the site

Today, if you visit the Alhambra (as so many do), you will find this same Ambassadors Hall fairly much as Irving describes it. In fact it is probably an improvement on his day, since a large restoration effort has gone into this magnificent palace-fortress. The depredations of the centuries means that much of the decorative work in the Alhambra has been lost, but the restoration has been painstaking, and the alluring charm of the hidden Moorish patios will survive while they stand, and while the water continues to trickle through them.

Unlike the Alcazar Real in Seville, the Alhambra is not in the heart of the town. It occupies a hilltop position, chosen for its military and defensive strengths. The complex is a walled mini-city – a ‘medina’ -  enclosing barracks, watch towers, a church, the palace itself, various subsidiary buildings (now mostly lost), and a horrible great thing called Carlos V’s Palace, to which I will come in  minute. The wall is mostly intact, enclosing about 3.5 million square meters, including extensive gardens and orchards. It was built by Muslim rulers of the Nazrid Dynasty in the 13^th to 15^th centuries, and was the very last Moorish stronghold to fall to Isabella and Ferdinand at the end of the successful reconquista (Christian reconquest of Spain). The last of the Nazrid sultan to rule from the Alhambra was named Boabdil, and you hear his name a lot at the site.

Secret oratory with a view

In 1492, that auspicious date, Ferdinand and Isabella (the Power Couple – remember them?) became the new owners of the Alhambra. It retained military importance – it is possible to visit the interiors of some of the great towers and gatehouses in the walls of the Alhambra, but not on a time-limited three-hour tour. Isabella and Ferdinand even brought Mudejar builders from Seville and Cordoba to make repairs to the architecture – they rather liked the style. They did turn the mosque into a rather unprepossessing Franciscan Church. The Catholic Monarchs, as the Power Couple were called, liked the Alhambra and it was an important palace to them. They were in fact buried on the Alhambra site; their remains were later moved into downtown Granada where they presently reside in the Chapel built specially for the purpose.

The Palace of Carlos I/V - told you so.

The real impact on the Alhambra came from their grandson who succeeded them, Carlos I of Spain, Carlos V of Germany. If you are reading this blog closely, you may recall that Carlos married Isabella of Portugal (an excellent diplomatic move) in Seville’s Alcazar. Well, they came to the Alhambra for their honeymoon (it is supposedly the site of the conception of the future Phillip II). He also decided to build a great big whopping imperial palace in the renaissance style smack in the middle of the site – it actually butts up against the old Nazrid Palace. I guess if it was sited anywhere else, this palace would be interesting – it is a classical circle within a square design. But here it is basically an eyesore, it blocks the original grand entrance gates, and looks ridiculously out of place, totally dwarfing the unassuming Moorish buildings. It actual adjoins part of the Nazrid palace. Did I already say that? I was rather shocked to see it. Carlos wasn’t even committed to the project, which he never finished. Later, the place was roofed without the planned third story being added, and it is now used for exhibitions and museum displays.

In the Hall of the Ambassadors

Recovering from the shock of seeing this massive palace in the middle of things, I moved with Antonio and the group, and about  a million other people, into a kind of side entrance to the Moorish palace itself – a room (the Mexuar) which had at some point been turned into a Christian chapel, to its detriment. The oratory off to the side looked exquisitely beautiful, with white stucco decorated arches looking out over the white houses on the hillsides of Granada down below us. However, this bit wasn’t open for inspection, other than sticking your head around the corner for a peek. The Cuarto Dorado next door was virtually all restoration work, with little original fabric left. Without the hordes of which I was one, it would have been a quiet and serene court, with a low fountain gurgling in the centre, and views over the town.

Patios of Lions sans lions

The Palacio de Comares retains one full wall of decoration – it is totally covered in Islamic artwork, mostly in decorative stucco, and some tiles and carved wood. Then you follow one of those Moorish dog-leg corridors and emerge in the Palacio de Comares courtyard – a gorgeously proportioned (the Golden Mean, I’d say) with a beautiful reflecting pool running down its length. This courtyard if one of the sights of the Alhambra, famous for many sights.  At one end, in the Torre de Comares, is the Salon de Trono, also known as the Hall of the Ambassadors – described by Washington Irving above. The restoration of the decoration here has been immaculately done. It reminded me vividly of palaces in India and central Asia – the richness of Islamic decoration.  The domed and decorated ceiling is wildly ornate.

The Southern Pavilion off the Palacio de Comares has a doorway which leads directly into the Carlos Palace, which these days means into a modern museum exhibition. I walked around this interesting exhibition about the twelve lion statues which used to reside in the Palacio de los Leones. It wasn’t until we walked into this Lion Courtyard that I realised that I had chosen a very bad time to tour the Alhambra. The Lion Courtyard is one of the highlights of the site - deservedly so, as I could tell from what little could be seen of the graceful filigree porticos. Those that weren’t obscured by scaffolding or builders’ plastic. The lions are meant to hold up a fountain in the centre of this courtyard, Not only were they in the museum next door (looking very spick and span after their clean-up) but the courtyard itself looked like a builders’ site –well, it was one – and two other importance rooms accessed off the courtyard were also out of bounds. *disappointment*

'Pendatives'

I must say, though, that I was so pleased that we could get in to see the Sala de los Abencerrajes, since the domes ceiling is the most extraordinary confection of stucco work you are ever likely to see outside of a stalactited cave. It is a square domed ceiling covered with an eight-pointed star. The decorations are called ‘pendatatives’ (which is a particularly fetching word) or ‘mocárabe’.

Patio de Lindaraja

Our group did not tour the bath house, but we were led down a high corridor, past the rooms once occupied by Washington Irving, through ever-thickening crowds to a mirador overlooking Granada. But there was one more beautiful space left to surprise me: the Patio de Lindaraja – a hidden garden, riotous with plants, framed on four sides by quiet cloister-like walkways, with the tinkling fountain in the centre. Its design sounds straightforward, and it is, but the place was very moving. Perhaps it was the proportions, or the white-washed archway views of the garden. It is said to have been the private retreat of a princess named Lindaraja. Perhaps Washington Irving was sitting here when he wrote this:

It is impossible to contemplate this once favourite abode of Oriental manners without felling the early associations of Arabian romance, and almost expecting to see the white arm of some mysterious princess beckoning from the balcony or some dark eye sparkling through the lattice. The abode of beauty is here, as if it had been inhabited but yesterday; but where are the Zoraydas and Linaraxas?

I have covered the highlights of the Alhambra – except for those which were dismantled or out of bounds. Outside the Nazrid Palace there is a great deal more to see on the site, but on a three hours tour....There is a Pavilion fronting a pool and garden, once of the oldest buildings on the site; there are the ‘recent’ Renaissance additions; up the hill there is the former San Franciscan monastery where Isabella and Ferdinand where first buried, now a ‘parador’ where you can book accommodation.

Further still – and our little group did make this climb – is the garden and pavilion known as the Generalife. Now, this may sound like an insurance company to you – it did to me – but it is actually a meaningless word, a corruption of the original Arabic name ‘yannat al-Arif’. This originally meant “architect’s garden”, which is more attractive than ‘Generalife’, but there you go. The estate, above the Alhambra proper but still within its walls, functioned as a kind of country estate for the sultan. I was like a ‘home farm’ – the hillside around it was covered with orchards and vegetable gardens. Some of these remain; much is now formal plantings and there is some light forest. The water features are numerous, and the snowy Sierras were shining in the sun in the background on the day I was there. An open-air theatre space has been incorporated into the terraces in front of the Generalife pavilion (can be toured but we didn’t). There are wonderful views back across to the Alhambra, and down over Granada. Actually, the Spanish government has only relatively recently got it hands on this property, as it was in the private ownership of a family of Spanish grandees, and legal action was needed to wrest it from them.

Generalife

There is much to say about the Alhambra. Its appearance in 19^th century illustration and artworks is wonderfully interesting, showing it before the restorers went to work. Sometime the artists imagine what it looked like in the day of Boabdil. But I’ll end with my advice: don’t go to visit until they have put the Lion Patio back together and opened up the rooms adjoining it. And then stay in the parador on the site for a couple of nights, so that you can visit early or late to avoid the crowds, and go back to explore some of the interesting corners when tour guides fear to tread.

The Alhambra is one of the wonders of the world, but there are some surprising hurdles to get over in order to be transported back to the days of its Romantic glory.

View of the Alhambra from the Generalife

Alcazar Real: 1000 years of art and architecture in one building

The Maiden's Patio

You’ll need at least a rough outline of Spanish history for this one. I’ll be brief:

Early history: Iberian and Celtic inhabitants; the Greeks reached the Iberian Peninsula; then the Romans; and after the Fall of Rome, the Visigoths (who brought with them the horse-shoe arch: hold that factoid).

Horse-shoe archways

8^th Century: the Moors from North Africa arrive, conquering most of the Peninsula (but not the northern bits).

10^th Century: The Caliphate of Cordova was a time of great splendour as the Moors dominated the Peninsula.

12^th – 13^th Century: The Almohads, a Moroccan caste, invade around 1147 and Seville becomes the capital.

1248: Ferdinand III takes Seville from the Muslims as the reconquista (Christian reconquest of Spain) advances. Gothic architecture comes into vogue. His son is Alfonso X (“The Wise”).

The Doll's Patio

14^th Century: Alfonso XI and Peter I (“The Cruel”) are kings of Castile (modern Spain doesn’t exist yet). Lots of in-fighting goes on between competing nobles. Peter the Cruel had to assassinate his father’s lover, six of his step-brothers and numerous other rivals. Eventually the reconquista comes to an end (the Alhambra in Granada was the last Muslim stronghold to fall, in 1492). Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, Spain’s ultimate Power Couple, decide that it would be more prudent to marry and unite their kingdoms rather than fight. Their joint rule begins what is present-day Spain. Isabella sends Christopher Columbus off on what others thought was a wild goose chase, and he returned to give her the gold-rich New World (we skim lightly over what happened to the Mayans and Incas).

1526: The grandson of Isabel and Ferdinand, Carlos I of Spain (and Carlos V of Germany – it’s complicated) marries in the Seville Alcazar to Isabella of Portugal. About now Spain rules great swathes of the known world – from Seville.

Alcazar Real

16^th Century: Spain’s Golden Age (literally and figuratively). This was the century of the reigns of Carlos I and Phillip II – Phillip II moved the Royal Court to Madrid and the big gloomy Escorial. Italian renaissance splendour is the fashion, with marble from Carrara and Ionic and Corinthian columns. (Sidebar: one of Carlos I’s cousins was Catherine of Aragon, first wife of Henry XIII of England. Through her – another long story – the Spanish kings claimed the throne of England at one time).

1717: loss of the monopoly of trade with the Americas, gradual decline begins....

1800s: Intermittent civil wars, with various ‘Carlist’ contenders for the throne.

Early 1900s: The reigns of Alphonso XII and his son XIII (16 years old when he came to the throne in 1902). 19^th century Romanticism is the style of the day. Later followed the Civil War, Franco, and much bad stuff.

OK – got all that? You want to know more? Check here.

Each of these disparate fluctuations in the fortunes of Spain and Seville can be seen reflected in the marvellous building that is the Royal Alcazar of Seville. The oldest parts of the building were built in the 11^th Century by Al-Mutamid, and it was known as the Alcázar bendito (al-qasr as-Mubarak). The Almohads in the 12^th century added more great works to the palace (and built the Seville bastion on the river known as the Torre del Oro or Gold Tower).

Dome of The Ambassador's Hall

Alfonso the Wise moves in during the 12^th Century and adds some magnificent (although architecturally completely different) Gothic additions, including a great dining hall and a tapestry room. As the 13^th century wore on and the reconquista stalled, the Castilian kings continued to occupy the Alcazar. The Alhambra was built in neighbouring Granada, and the Castilian kings were much impressed by the Mudejar architecture. Great swathes of it were added to the Alcazar. Carlos I married his Portuguese bride in the Alcazar. With the moving of the court to Madrid, the Alcazar languished, but remained the ‘summer home’ of the monarchs – as it still is. The early 20^th century interest in the palace by the various Alfonsos of the fin de scièle saw some restorations in the British Mannerist style, especially to the gardens.

Apricot trees in bloom

But what is the Alcazar really like? I hear you ask. Like most Moorish palaces, it is unprepossessing on the outside of the formidable walls which enclose it. You enter through arched gateways, into a maze of courtyards and patios, rooms, halls and gardens. In the Moorish style, many rooms, even in the private quarters, don’t have doors, to allow the cooling breezes to circulate. For privacy, then, the corridors leading to these areas often have a dog-leg in them. But once within the suite of rooms, all gorgeously decorated with stucco plasterwork, carved wood (mostly cedar) and ceramic tiles, you look through long vistas, through ornate Asian archways, to cool patios or lush gardens.

The patios are quiet, with only the sound of trickling water. The strong sunlight is shaded by the cool porticos, greenery fills the centre, and small pools are dotted about everywhere.

Sunlight on tiles

Then you may come upon one of the great state rooms. In the Mudejar style, these often have great domed ceilings of almost unimaginable decorative style: carved and gilded, dripping with pendulums of decoration, adorned with stars and symbols, evoking Heaven itself. Then through a window you’ll find the strong sunlight streaming; or through a triple-horseshoe-arch you’ll find another cool tiled room, its original purpose long since forgotten.

The gardens are enclosed by walls, watered by trickling irrigation or spouting fountains. When I was there the apricot trees were in full snowy bloom, tufted with white blossoms like brides. The orange trees still hung with fruit. Clipped box hedges of myrtle gave fragrance.

Tapestry: Upside-Down World

In the great Gothic Halls the walls are tiled to head-height with what look like 15^th Century attempts at humour; in the Tapestry Hall Spain’s largest and most precious tapestries show scenes from the conquest of Tunisia, and an extraordinary map of the then-known world – upside down: the African Coast is on top. This, of course, appeals to an Antipodean. Isidoro told me that a figure of Carlos I was represented in each of the battle scenes tapestries. I believed him. The next day, wandering through the same beautiful halls with mi amigo, I pointed out the figure of Carlos rowing a small boat with a keg of rum...er, not the king? That Andalucian liar, Isidoro!

Lovely stucco work decoration

I can’t resist a comparison. The Alcazar of Seville was built before the Alhambra in Granada, and has had the benefit of being continuously occupied by the ruling monarchs, whereas the Alhambra stood in Romantic dereliction for many years. The Alcazar is thus in much better condition, and has much more of its fabric intact. On the other hand, for the same reasons it has been extensively changed and restored over the centuries. However, I thought the blending of the eras of 1000 years of history through the building were part of its enthralling attraction.

The Doll’s Patio, The Ambassador’s Hall, The Phillip II Ceiling Room...evocative names. It is an evocative place – the full panoply of Spain’s glory years spread before you, if you care to look.