Unfaithful

Dear Certain Favorite Restaurant in Atlanta, with a great bar, heavily tattooed & hardworking staff, possessive of the Best Burger in Atlanta award several times over,

We have been unfaithful.

We unabashedly love you.  We love your venues, we love your spirit and attitude, and we love that we can visit your place over the course of years and still see the same wait staff working there.  That's loyalty.

And we have professed our love for you in countless visits, to have the Black and Blue, the Blue 'Shroom, the Swiss Mushroom and the Four Horsemen.  And with tots.  Always with the tots.  We're sorry that you stopped serving the turkey burger option, but we're still good with guilt-ridden dining on occasion, and for that, we'll still see you.

We are grateful that these items can be accompanied by a small range of nice cold ciders, too.

 But here's the thing:  we've relocated on an extended basis, and the option to see you has now been drastically limited...

...and so, shamefaced and desperate, we eventually went looking for other paramours...

And ohmygoodness...we found one.

We're so sorry.  But we found one!

This is not to say that we didn't find another good, reliable purveyor of burgers here.  We did.  And we'll return to them, even if their ideas about burger toppings are...a little unusual.

But as long as Open Baladin of Rome is in our (squeal!) neighborhood, we will check in there first.

It may be painful for us and for you to see these photographs, but we feel the need to come clean:

That's right, onlookers, that's a wall of beer.  Craft beer made by the purveyor as well as select others.

Be still, my heart.  Excellent wings.  Note the use of environmentally minded, crafted and folded paper vessels for condiments.

For everyone who thought that Italy was just populated by little dark osterias and tavernas, with the signature red and white checked tablecloths, the old Chianti bottles covered in rivulets of candle wax, a mustachio'd, stained-apron-wearing nonna who brought you spaghetti with meatballs to eat while an accordion player wheezed out the Godfather theme...here is your stereotype-killer. You're welcome.

Funky logo design work

Hand-made chips, sprinkled with paprika? Why, yes.

When I told a longtime friend that I might be moving to Rome, she said with characteristic sarcasm:
'I hear they have some art there.'
The post script to that is: it turns out that some of that art is edible.
The stats: thick, lovely hand-formed burger, made only with Piemontese beef, all organic toppings, locally made sesame seed bun.
That amazing bun.
And when you order 'medium' and it arrives, blatantly dark pink in the middle, you turn to Mr. Food Safety, a.k.a. The Spouse, and you ask, 'do you think that this is o.k.?'* He doesn't answer right away because... 

WARNING: you should look away, if the images are too much carnivorism for you to handle.

Do you see any concern on that face?

It appears as though he's saying something, but it was not an answer to my question.  It was something like:
oh my...wow...this is such a mess...but it's SO...
And then, he said no more. 

...except for when he flagged down the tatted/pierced server and asked for a beer.

So, we should close this confessional in order to spare us all any more pain.

It's hard to say this, but we remain loyal - only stateside.

And while we're away from you, we have a 'girl in this port,' and she's amazing.

Hopefully, you can forgive us.

Love always,
The Relocated Americans

p.s.  We would like to assure you that we don't think we'll ever find even a temporary replacement for your other place, which we miss terribly.

*Actually, there is a quality explanation from The Spouse about the color of the beef in my burger (which I spared all vegetarian readers from having to actually see).  After a couple (ahem) different burgers on a couple different visits to this fine establishment, it is clear that the color of the meat is richer and well, redder.  So it's not that my burger was underdone.  It's that the color of the meat is different due to different standards.  The Spouse - who has worked extensively in food safety- explained it like this:
'American beef IS pale, because it's pretty anemic and fatty.  Think about what we do to cows (we don't let them roam much, if at all) and what we feed them (corn and antibiotics), and how Western European countries used to do this too, for awhile, until they started to draw links between rampant use of antibiotics and drug resistant strains of bacteria.  So about 15 years ago, they quit.  The Dutch and the Danes were the first, and everyone else has pretty much followed suit.  What do the cows eat here?  Grass, and not corn, sans antibiotics - the way Mother Nature intended - in open fields.
I'll be sure to snap some shots of those happy roaming bovines at some point in the future.  Moo!

Screenings

Confession:  when we first set ourselves firmly on this journey to living in Rome, I worried that I would not be able to enjoy going to the movies.

In all of my visits to this fascinating city, I never thought about movie-going. I never noticed a single cinema. From all of my visits here, I remembered exactly zero theaters.  Why would I have done that when the art and architecture held me in full sway?

But I love going to the movies.  Love.  I always have.  It probably stems from growing up in a valley in the Blue Ridge mountains where, let's face it, there were not a thousand things to do.

What did I do there for recreation, if I wasn't going to movies?

As a kid, if you were lucky, you knew someone with a pool or you went to a public one.  Two lakes - one natural and one man-made - were available if you could get to them.

And, I have to admit, as a child of the seventies, there was roller skating. A lot of it.  If not in rinks, then in home basements.  With the requisite white booted skates with colored wheels, and striped tube socks pulled up to just below the knees.

Don't worry - I will not be showing any pictures of that.

And there was this, too.  No, none of the corporate amusement parks nearer to Richmond or the eastern side of Virginia.  No, this was in my hometown.

Lots of mostly tame rides run by surly teenagers who couldn't get work anywhere else, or didn't want to work too hard anywhere else.  They had hot jobs, but they weren't hard jobs.  The Umbrellas ride was for cooling off between other attractions, since the Skyway didn't move fast enough to push the air around you.  And a strange, large slide - enameled with some infernally dark color so that it became burn-the-back-of-your-thighs hot from the sun, with those nasty pieces of carpeting intended to assist your ride down to the bottom, but inevitably so trashed that they bunched up, got stuck somewhere in the grooves and ultimately left you screeching your way to the end.  The combination scorch from hot metal sticking to your skin and that herky-jerky, last third of the trip down was a special kind of pain. And the roller coaster was o.k. (watch the linked video only if you don't have an issue with heights or motion sickness), but it was - as many people fondly recall - a bit rickety.

A small town legend.  Now gone, sadly.  I'm not sure it could be more trite than this:  the whole place was replaced by a large strip mall with a grocery store.

In my teen and college years (yep, I was one of those commuters when commuting wasn't nearly as cool as it is now), you went out to eat at one of a very small number of privately owned restaurants, or far more easily, you went to some corporate/chain place.  If it was Burger King, then you went next door with your french fries and fed the ducks.  Maybe we fed too many then, too, but I don't remember having the same problem then that exists now. Ew.

In the valley, you could go shopping at one of three small malls (and the largest of them didn't exist until I was a high school graduate).  One day, I'll have to ask that friend to reminisce with me about the time I had an allergic reaction to something in one of the malls.  I sneezed, coughed, swelled up like a tomato and wound up in the emergency room - where my father came to rescue me, but walked past my exam room because my new Tweety-bird lips and swollen eyes made me completely unrecognizable.  Good times.

Of course you could go to area high school football games.  If you were into other sports, you went to minor league baseball games.

You could pretend to be a tourist in your hometown by going here.

It used to be that the Roanoke star was turned entirely red whenever there was a traffic fatality.  Now, it is perennially lit red, white and blue. Among some longstanding friends of mine, this is THE place where you take your forever love to see your home from above, and to share at least one kiss.

I suppose that you could have a few of those - loves AND kisses.

And when I was a teen, we did a lot of this.  I teamed up with friends to do it to other friends (one in particular carried the supply - sssshhhh! don't tell her parents! - because she had a Corvair with a giant front trunk that could easily hold an industrial size case of, um, supplies) and once, one lovely evening, those same friends did it to me.  They waited until I came home from my date, kissed him on the front porch and went inside. I awoke the next morning to my front yard festooned with billowing loops of white, an excited mother (yay - your friends must like you!) and a grumpy father (now, who's going to clean this mess up?).  I knew people who had perfected the roll toss so well that the resulting effect was truly an artform.  I can still hear one of them, giggling in the dark, softly saying "I like for it to be all ...swoopy."

We extended this practice to ridding the local Wendy's of its sporks, tying ribbons around each one, and inserting them upright into the lawn of a friend.  It was Christmas time.  His mother was completely charmed.

Raise your hand if you came from a town where 'cruising' was a popular thing to do.  We rode in that same Corvair down Williamson Road, looping a length through the Pancake House parking lot.  We affectionately termed it 'The Great Pancake Turnaround.' I remember laughing with girlfriends.  I remember lame, poorly formed conversations with guys in passing cars.  In retrospect:  frankly boring.

All this to say, quite simply:  there just wasn't that much to do.

So movies were a major outlet for me.  I remember seeing the debut of Star Wars.  I remember bad 3D glasses and some appallingly bad special effects in slasher films.  I remember going to see this in an historic theater downtown, and being pelted by toast.

I recall seeing Dangerous Liaisons as a young college student and thinking that I had never heard dialogue like that before. I wondered if I wasn't cut out for it, until about a third of the way through, when I began to understand it.  And love it.

I love the dark, the cool air, the popcorn and holding hands with someone while thoroughly escaping for 1.5 to 2 hours.

And I knew that even when I was in a remarkable city like Rome, with all kinds of things to do and see, I would still want to go to the movies.

So, let's address the obvious:  this is where Italians go to the movies, which should be understandable to Italians. Sure, they make their own (this is the home of Fellini, let's not forget), but they also import American ones.  Lots of them.  And they are dubbed in the primary language of the country.

How's your Italian? you might ask.  Very limited.  I start language lessons next week!

Why, look at that:  they advertise colleges as 'previews' in Italian theaters, too.

So what will this mean for the person who likes to see dialogue-rich films in, at least for the time being, their native language, which is NOT Italian? 

What?  This is coming to theaters in just a few days?  

Before solving that future problem, we elected to go see an American movie that was dubbed in Italian. No subtitles.

We saw the recent Star Trek. (click that link for a slice of what it was like to watch it in another language - there are two trailers, by the way).

I was beyond excited.

And the experience was...unique.

Tickets cost less than in the States.  So do the items you can get at the concession stand - until you remember that portion sizes of things like sodas and popcorn are radically different. My sweet Spouse, who rarely judges cultural differences, finally had a moment that afternoon:  this is medium? he asked, as he held up his 12 oz container...of Coca-Cola, with....no ice. We Americans are so accustomed to medium being massive.  Not so, here.

Although when you consider how much ice comes in that medium, it's more understandable.

And my popcorn came with no butter.  There was no option to ask for it either.

But I didn't care.  I didn't care!

We ascended three escalators to get to our theater in this multi-sala cinema. 

Everything in the place was so clean.  No sticky floors.  No overused, gross chairbacks or armrests.

We sat in our European-sized seats (hey, how about those middle-aged hips?) and watched a film that both of us admitted later to understanding all of about 5-10% of the dialogue. 

But the thing is, with a film like that, you can still easily follow the story. 

And if the acting is good (and I would maintain that this cycle of prequel Star Treks has a great team of actors), then you can even follow the humor.

And by the end, the good guys are still going to win.  

One oddity to report, though:

At the exact halfway point in the film, mid-action scene, the film stopped.  

The lights came on, and a guy with a box of concession stand offerings appeared.

For a 122 minute film, there was an intervallo.

Cute.

And at the end, in the actors' chorus of voices:

"Spazio, l'ultima frontiera." 

(you need to read this in a gravely serious voice)

So after that experience, we started to get a little more picky.  If we wanted to see a film that involved dialogue we wanted to understand, then we were going to have to determine that possibility.

My nice vegetable vendor advises me to look things up online by saying 'Googliama.' 

Googliama helps me find a website that lists films shown in 'originale' - in their original dialogue!

Hallelujah!

They don't run all the time, and sometimes there's only one showing per day that is not dubbed, but we are willing to work with this.  

So we've now seen Suicide Squad and The Family Fang in English, but with Italian subtitles.

.

Side benefit: subtitles enable you to pick up some of the language. Although with some films, what you learn most are the expletives. 

Tutorials are tutorials, regardless, right?

Every theater here is, so far, different.

2 of the 3 we've visited had concession stands.  The 3rd expected you to bring your own - but no glass containers.

So when that next Woody Allen film comes to town, I'll be packing the popcorn, a plastic bottle of water, and a notebook, for recording neurotic commentary in Italian.  

Viticulturalism

Hasn't everyone arrived at a destination - which could be the next town off your interstate, or a country halfway around the world - and asked: what's the thing they're most known for? Chicken statues? A museum dedicated to all things Spam? Some concoction that the rest of the world wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole?

A thing I would totally touch withOUT a ten foot pole.

WINE?

Arguably, this could be the thing for which Italy is best known.

If that is THE thing, then how do you know what is good and what isn't?  

We all know that price does not necessarily dictate quality.

Fancy labeling can attract a buyer, certainly, but that doesn't indicate the caliber of the contents.

Where you buy that thing is not a guarantee of quality either.  And given that every grocery store here - no matter how small - still dedicates anywhere from a quarter to a fifth of the whole space to selling wine, you know that it's a serious business, but you don't know if any of *that* wine is, well, good. The far less prevalent enoteca (wine shop/bar...which may in fact be more prevalent when everyone decides to return from their extended August vacations...*sigh*) should be trusted to issue quality only, but that is no guarantee either. 

Although I can happily report that this neighborhood enoteca has not been a disappointment.

So what IS a guarantee of quality? 

While I know that how you apprehend wine through your senses is supposed to be the true indicator of quality - I have to admit that mine are largely untrained for the task, especially here.  

They need an education.  I need to 'train my nose.' 

Enter the wine class.

First up, the wines of the Lazio region.  Local Master Sommelier Marco Lori schooled us in 5 different wines of the region that encompasses Rome.

He had a lot to say about Italian viticulture in general.  Here are some interesting tidbits.

When we think of wine's historical beginnings in what we now call Italy, we need to imagine the Etruscans (the culture that preceded Rome) cultivating grapes, and we also need to imagine Roman soldiers carrying grape vines from Gaul (what they called the region of modern-day France, Germany and Switzerland) and back to Rome.*  

This is the Fountain of the Amphorae...it actually dates from the 1920s.  But the motif is an ancient one.  It commemorates a region of Rome known as Testaccio, which happens to have a sizable hill made of broken amphorae - the two-handled ceramic wine and oil vessels of the ancient Mediterranean world.  Essentially, the hill is an old trash heap.  

*My Greek friends might hastily remind us all that ancient Greece had already mastered wine-making - and just as the Romans admired so many other things that were Greek in origin, they placed a higher value on Greek wine than they did their own. 

Back to Marco:

Today, Italy makes more wine than anyone else.  France (which takes 2nd place in wine production) makes more money off of their wines than Italy does.  I don't know about you, but I draw some interesting conclusions from that. 

Italy has over 2000 varieties of wine-producing grapes.  There are over 350 chemical compounds in one bottle of wine.  That's complicated!

Italy makes wine more quickly than France. (which explains, for instance, the rationale of prosecco, the sweeter cousin of champagne) 

Italy has been making wine a lot longer than France. (I'm sensing a competitive theme here)

And on every land mass and formation that is considered Italian, wine is made.  This would include Sardinia, Sicily and Calabria. 

(It's probably not wise to ask a Sicilian if they're Italian, though.  You can ask someone from Rome if they're Italian, and their answer will be "I'm Roman.")

(I should also acknowledge here that I have experienced another, different wine tasting since this post was authored, and, as one might generally surmise with Italian experiences and 'authority,' conflicting information emerges.  Let's just accept that this unique reality is much like the veritable Redwood forest of pieces of the true cross relics strung across so many churches:  what matters is your enthusiasm for believing in it right then and there.  All things are apt to change, save for your faith in someone's sincerity.)

Marco gave us a range of types and colors to experience, from a bubbly prosecco (my favorite) to white (Frascati - a worthy Roman white, also a favorite...if you don't like the aftertaste of chardonnay or even some pinot grigios, seek out Frascati, which I know is tough to locate in many parts of the States <holler at me if you are struggling to find it in Atlanta, because I eventually did>) to rose to red. 

He did not talk much about what a particular wine should be used for or with (meal or specific food), and intriguingly enough, the Italian wine tasting experience is not about targeting you as a buyer right then and there.  There was no wine for sale.  

And there went the last of my Americanized expectations about this event.  Happily.

This means, of course, that I have to explore, explore, explore. 

It's clearly part of my education.

Second class:  the wines of summer. 

Hosted by 'wine ambassador' Tony Polzer, this class was probably intended to encourage students to scoop up the remaining wines of summer from their enotecas...because by late September, early October, arrivederci.  They're done. 

A very organized layout. 

In this case, we tasted two whites, a couple of roses and a red or two.  

What I was reminded of by Tony:

Italian wines are meant to go with food. As I lectured both high school and college students countless times, you don't drink just to drink in Italy.  Wine is much more like another food group.  If you visit a bar or enoteca and have wine, your server will typically provide a small bowl of savory nibbles with your drink - because wine should not hit an empty stomach.  This is not to say that some more civilized institutions in the States won't do this too.  It's just not nearly as prevalent as it is in European countries like Italy. 

Also, it's worth visiting these bars during happy hour, because many of them will set out trays and dishes of appetizer items along the literal bar or on a dedicated table nearby.  These are provided as part of the service with your drink.  Some might charge a small flat fee for this provision, but it's usually quite worth it.  Go for happy hour, have wine or some other aperitivo and these little sammies and antipasti, and you're set until dinner, which is far later in the evening than it is for non-Mediterraneans.  

We discussed wine and food pairings - a lot! - in this class.  And this wasn't about just pairing Italian wines with Italian cuisine (although the range of options was more itemized that I expected:  not just pasta, but risotto...not just fish, but sardines...not just vegetables, but artichokes, etc).  Liberal mentions were made of pair-worthy wines for Indian food, for instance.  

What I learned from Tony:

Fans of aerating wines (pouring them into a special carafe and/or allowing the bottle to sit open for a specified time before consumption) should not aerate an old wine for very long. Get into to that bottle of Brunello you've been saving for (as I did once) 11 years, stat! 

A lot of these summer wines, in particular, shouldn't be kept for longer than three years. (But other wines - very good ones - in my limited experience <see Brunello above>, can be kept for far longer). 

In class, we played the 'what other things do you smell/taste when you try this wine' kind of game, and I'll admit that because so many people called out different things...and because I tended to think, 'oh yes, I DO smell/taste that' after someone had called out something in particular, like grapefruit or honey...I'm not yet sold on the idea that there is much universality of smell or taste among the corpus of humanity. The power of suggestion is strong, when it comes to taste/smell.

To my lightly trained nose and taste, these were all superb. Donna Fugata ("women in flight," which stems from a legend about a woman fleeing Napoleonic forces all the way to Sicily) is a Sicilian vintner.  They take pride in the fact that they make their wines on or very near the site of the grape's harvest, so they maintain several locations.  The range of prices for the central bottle (the only one I've seen in a Roman shop so far...so far!) have been between 9 and 13 euros. And with the current exchange rate, you can bump up the number by 1 or 2 and be close in American dollars.  Note the D.O.C. distinction.  I'll explain a little (but that link can do a better job)...

Wines are classified not just by color and grape varieties/mixtures, but also by drinking quality, which is bound up in production methods as well as source. These classifications are tightly regulated, or so you are told. You are then told (remember:  you make a law, we make a loophole!) that those regulations can be lax in some places and times.
The classifications are indicated on the labels, and they go up on hierarchical order, beginning with the least distinctive and therefore, the least expensive:

VGT - vino for the tavola.  Wine for the table and comes from Italy - and that's about all the information you're going to get.  You won't find this much in the States.  Instead, when you are interested in just having a wine from the area when you're IN the area, and you're on a budget, you ask for the 'vino de casa' - the house wine.  VGT is the most likely the house wine.
IGT - wine that is typical of a geographical region.  There are wines known as 'super Tuscans' and 'super Umbrians' - and this is their distinction.  This is also known as table wine, but it is a step up from the VGT status.
DOC - a much more highly controlled (that's the 'C') wine that is often named for the grape and/or the place that the wine comes from.  If you're a fan of a particular wine from, say, Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, then look on that label for the D.O.C. distinction.  Still and all, D.O.C. can have different meanings in different places in Italy, so the 'control' is a little loose.
DOCG - 'G' for guarantee.  STRICTLY controlled and observed wine-making rules go into these wines.  If you've ever peeled away an official looking slip of paper stamped with typed information that lays across the cork and rim of the bottle - before opening it - you have handled a DOCG wine. Fans of the higher end Chiantis or Brunellos (mmm, my favorite reds) are spending top dollar for them.

That said, the wines here are, overall, remarkably affordable. And consider that if people are producing wines on all four levels - and drinking them! - then all are worth a try.  In this case, information is power, but it does not have to induce snobbery.

Rose....not your parents' cheap, boxed wine of yesteryear.  

A little color comparison between two reds.

Also, perhaps most interestingly, Tony was mindful about having us taste a bottle of wine that had gone off, as soon as he discovered it.

Given that he doesn't represent a particular vineyard, I suppose that this didn't take so much courage, but I still appreciated that he was a thorough instructor in that sense.  

Because if you don't necessarily know what's good, you also may not know what's bad.

I've included these shots in part so that you can see if these items are available where you live.  The U.S. imports a lot of good Italian wine...but it is also true that Italy chooses not to export all of it.  The two bottles that the tourist is legally permitted to bring home (in their suitcase) from here seem like a measly allowance when you consider how much wine is created here. And if you'd like to ship yourself a case, then you can make those arrangements, as long as you aren't in the state of Georgia, where that is illegal.  I'm already penning the letter to Mom and Dad in Virginia, asking about room in their basement, in case you were wondering...

To close, a wine from the Bolzano region of Italy...extreme north.  Close enough to - according to those who've visited - hear as much or more German spoken in town as you may hear Italian.  But oddly enough, temperature-wise for the sake of the grapes, it is on par with...Palermo, Sicily!

So, there's my introduction to Italian wine.  Just enough to know that I don't know a whole lot.

Yet. 

Miraculous Snow

August 5th is the Day of the Miraculous Snow.

What - this is not on your calendar?

This is the day on which a legendary, freak snowstorm occurred - in August, in Rome, mind you - in the 4th century. Pope Liberious dreamt that the Holy Mother spoke to him and stated her intentions to have a church built in Rome.  She would communicate her wishes via a snowfall in the summer.

And when the snow fell, it landed on the ground in the form of a church floor plan, the specs of which were followed by the builders of Santa Maria Maggiore (Saint Mary 'Major').

Now, for the theologically minded, the era of this event is about the same time that early Christian church officials were settling a matter that had vexed them for awhile:  whether or not Mary was the mother of God or the mother of Jesus.

And this was a big, big deal.

(N.B. I have over-simplified this subject, so apologies to those who are much better versed in the complexities). For Protestants - who are apt to take The Word at its most literal value - that this was even a dilemma may come as some surprise, given what is in the current version of the Bible. 

Much of Marian information is a bit thin on the Biblical ground, so to speak, but her role as Christ's earthly mother is not doubted.

But for many early Christians, this matter was divisive and of serious import, because it depended on the delicate understanding of Christ's simultaneously divine and human origins, and also whether a mortal woman could be the mother of a divine entity that pre-existed Christ (God the Father).  This idea is implied when we count Christ as God-the-Son. 

A whole council of religious officials convened on this.

The final declaration was that Mary was the mother of Christ, who is a form of God-as-a-man.

She is 'Theotokos' - God-bearer.

It would therefore be only correct that a holy relic of this church is Christ's crib, pieces of which are stored in a crystal reliquary (the thing that seems to be glowing in this picture) installed in an open crypt below floor-level, with an eternally praying figure of Saint Jerome, who is also buried here.

So, churches dedicated to Mary started to appear around the time of this important decision. 

The 13th century apse (the space just behind the altar) mosaic.

'Mom, your crown is crooked.  Let me fix that for you.'
In all seriousness, this is known as the Coronation of the Virgin - as the Queen of Heaven.

Santa Maria Maggiore is one of the oldest churches in Rome to be dedicated to Mary.

(Now, of course, there are tons, just in Rome alone:  St. Mary of the Victory, St. Mary of the Angels, St. Mary in Trastevere, and so on...)

It is an important place for several reasons, not the least of which is its status as a Papal basilica.

Wikipedia will tell you that the status of basilica is a matter of Papal decree. Not quite.

The status of Papal basilica may be a matter of decree, but not just the designation of basilica.

An art historian or architect will tell you that 'basilica' is a term for an ancient Roman structure that evolved to be the original form of the earliest Christian purpose-built churches (that weren't adapted from Roman houses, for instance).

A basilica is essentially a large hall - a rectangular space, with middle and side aisles - with pagan origins. In some cases, actual pagan spaces were converted to early Christian ones.  

Sta. Maria Maggiore is not considered to be one of those, but the spatial layout of the building is that of a basilica.

This church, like so many others here, is comprised of layers and additions and re-builds, spanning many centuries. There are 'spoil' (remnants from other monuments or buildings) elements, like old columns, that either date to an ancient Roman temple or to the earliest version of the church at this site. 

A few popes and other individuals are buried in this church.

Just to the side of the altar, entombed in the floor, is the rock star of Roman Baroque sculpture, Bernini...and his family. To have such a spot for both you and your family says a lot about how well you were regarded by everyone.

Santa Maria Maggiore is one of 7 Papal basilicas (two of which are dedicated to Mary - 4 others are dedicated to male saints Peter, Paul, John and Lawrence..and the Basilica of the Holy Cross - and they are all owned by the Holy See, or considered another way, the Vatican, even though they are not on the grounds of the Vatican State)  that are pilgrimage churches.  Thus, a pilgrim coming to Rome would be sure to visit all of them, in order to share a common experience with fellow pilgrims, and to 'get to know' the early saints of the Catholic church. 

On every August 5th, Romans who haven't already gone on vacation gather in the piazza in front of Santa Maria Maggiore to commemorate the event of the miraculous snow. 

We arrived with plenty of time to spare.  I had heard that there would be a re-creation of the event - with fake snow.  I couldn't miss this.

Special lighting - with gels, even - was set up to add visual interest to the facade of the church.

And snow! Well, sort of.  They were soap suds generated by a machine. Cue the smattering of applause.

A stage.  A band.  A person dressed all in white, looking...virginal? Singing.

Costume change!  Something sparkly.

Because rock music - performed in part by a person dressed in a sparkly gown that was occasionally flourished, the way we've seen plenty of rock stars perform - is the right accompaniment to the re-enactment of divinely miraculous summertime snow.
I can't make this up.

As the musical portion of the program seemed to really kick into gear, The Spouse suggested a bus ride home and some gelato.  I was a bit reluctant to go.  So many people were still present and wandering about, and they didn't seem especially interested in the music.  

They seemed to be waiting for something else.

I sensed that the 'snow fall' that we captured on video was not THE snow fall scheduled for the evening. I wondered aloud about this.

But The Spouse's low threshold for sub-par musical performance won out, and we left.

And wouldn't you know it:  a colleague of his reported on the following day that indeed, a BIG 'snow fall' was staged later in the same evening. Soap suds everywhere! For what it was, he said, it was impressive.  And this wasn't his first miraculous snowfall event, either.  He said that the soap suds were a substantial improvement over an earlier year's version, which involved a lot of flour.
Flour?

Regardless, I was sorry that I missed it. 

The Spouse has endorsed this blog entry.  He knows that he's not going to get to live this one down.

Next year, we are sticking around for the big, sticky, miraculous snow.