大象传媒

MY VISIT TO ROME IN 1944 by Sgt N W Stevens (1917-1996

Since I came to Italy I have achieved one of my ambitions; that of seeing Rome, although my visit to the Eternal City was only of a day's duration and I was able to see only a mere fraction of all the many things, of modern and of ancient Greek and Roman origin, to be witnessed there. Nevertheless, the visit was a most interesting one and one which I shall long remember.

We travelled by the most popular means of transport in the Army of today, the 3-ton truck, which also served as our "bus" for the tour of the city. The previous night was spent with an army unit stationed a few miles outside the city, so that we could have a full day before us on the morrow. These daytrips to the capital are well-run, a limited number of troops being allowed the privilege daily in organised parties, lunch being provided, for the sightseers at either of the two large "Piccadilly" restaurants reserved for them. At the outset we were handed a very well compiled and well printed booklet which gave us an introduction to the city and told us what to look out for. It is an excellent thing that the soldier can have the opportunity, occasionally, in his march through Italy, to pause for an hour or two and to acquaint himself with the lessons in art and culture that the country has to offer, and in Rome one can learn more of this, perhaps, than in any other city in the world. Rome relies solely for its importance on its art, and on its political, intellectual and spiritual history, and unlike the ports or the big industrial towns of the north of Italy, has in present times little or no military importance.

A visit to the city is convincing proof, if such were necessary, that it would have been folly, and vandalism, to have subjected it to aerial bombardment and other ravages of modern war. The city stands today quite untouched and unspoilt and except for the troops of allied nations who throng its streets and a certain amount of military traffic,"pleasure cruising" along its roads, there is little evidence that it is, in fact, the capital of a country divided by the greatest war in history. The streets are everywhere very clean and pleasant, with their tree-lined pavements on which beautiful gaily-dressed women walk to and. fro, and there is less obvious poverty than in any other Italian town or city I have yet visited.

As we entered the city a huge allied police sign met our gaze, with the inscription "THE EYES OF THE WORLD ARE ON ROME. WILL YOUR DRESS AND BEARING STAND THE SCRUTINY?"- reminiscent of the "Have you MacLeaned your Teeth Today" posters of pre-war times. It was evidence of the steps the military authorities have taken to ensure that the greatness of the city shall be respected, as contrasted with the pillage and destruction wrought by the German armies in many of the countries which they have occupied, Italy included.

In the suburbs of Rome I was particularly interested, as one who worked in hospitals in England, in the manner in which their hospitals for every conceivable disease were built adjacent to one another in one quarter of the town. No doubt there were other hospitals I did not see, but this principle of grouping the buildings, in the same style as the doctors' consulting rooms in Harley Street, would seem to have an advantage over our scattered London Hospitals, in that saving of time of physicians and surgeons is effected, and also a pooling of ideas and equipment.

An interesting feature of the drive through the outskirts of the city was the large blocks of modern, artistically-designed flats, some of them twelve storeys high, with their gaily painted shutters and the walls finished in modern building materials, coloured tiles and real and artificial marbles. Many of them had roof gardens and nearly all wide sun balconies. They presented a quite pleasing appearance not usually found with this type of dwelling. Such buildings as this show that Mussolini's fascist regime did do a certain amount of good for the Italian people, even if it did make the fatal mistake of going to war. We passed the Foro Mussolini, an example of 20th century art built in 1931-33 as a great centre for the physical and political training of Italy's youth. Its most striking feature is the huge stadium, surrounded by 60 statues of athletes in white marble. Since Mussolini fell from grace the Foro has been re-named, as have other places and buildings to which he formerly gave his name. It is, to my mind, rather bad taste on the part of the Italians so completely disown their Duce who they at one time followed so loyally, if blindly, and who at least merited some degree of recognition.

After driving through the northern part of Rome we turned south and followed the Tiber, which incidentally was at a very low level following weeks with little or no rain, along its eastern bank, on which side lies most of the city. On the other bank of the river we noted the Castel Sant Angelo, originally the tomb of Hadrian and later used as a fort; a good example of the type of monument the Romans used to erect to the memory of their famous dead, a circular building with a row of columns set round it, reminding one somewhat of Windsor Castle. On the west bank, too, we caught a glimpse of the Palace of Justice; a very fine building with ornate exterior. One building we passed was the Admiralty House, identified by two huge anchors on either side of the door-way.

As soon as we had parked our "charabanc"we proceeded to the Vatican City, and spent the rest of the morning exploring St Peter's and the Vatican. It is not just the church itself, but the entire effect of St Peter's and its great square (a misnomer, for it is really a circle) which strikes one first, and the whole immense building can be seen at a glance by reason of the fact that it is not hemmed in by other buildings as are many of our English cathedrals, for instance Canterbury and St Paul's. We passed through the barrier, where the Swiss Vatican Guards were on duty, along with American MPs, and were on neutral territory. The square is bounded by the great curved colonnades built by Bernini (1598-1680), and in the centre stands a tall obelisk, brought, I believe, in one piece from Egypt as was Cleopatra's Needle on the Thames Embankment. On either side fountains played, cool and inviting, for it was a very hot day.

As we ascended the steps in front of the church, the tremendous dome, one of the most famous in the world, was lost to view behind the lofty and expansive front. The latter is the work of Maderna (1556-1629) who also designed most of the interior, and is more like that of a large government or municipal building, except that the giant figures of Christ and his 12 disciples, spaced out along the edge of the roof, identified it as a place of worship. The dome, which is surmounted by a large gilded cross, some 460 feet above the ground, is the work of Michelangelo, the great Renaissance artist, sculptor and architect.

We passed through the massive earned bronze doors and stood for a few moments trying to appreciate the magnitude of the interior. Inside the church the scale is tremendous and one loses all sense of proportion and size. On the floor some 50 feet or so from the West doorway, I forget the exact figure, we saw the row of brass stars and the inscription marking a length corresponding to that of St Paul's in London; the size of other large cathedrals throughout the world was similarly indicated at intervals up the nave. It was Sunday, and a choral service was in progress at the far end of the church, miles away it seemed, as well as other smaller services in the many chapels around the walls. Two of these chapels were described to us as two of the richest in the world and were decorated with gold leaf, valuable marbles and priceless paintings studded with jewels above the altars. There were many beautiful mosaics in different parts of the church, large copies of famous 'old masters' each composed of many thousands of fragments of coloured glass and a stone, skilfully inserted in jig-saw fashion. These pictures, which are the work of the Vatican School of Mosaic Art, will keep their beauty and colour through the centuries. One in particular, portraying our Lord baptising St John the Baptist, was perfect. The feet of the characters showing beneath the transparent surface of the water were "drawn" in an amazingly skilful manner which one would have thought impossible without the use of a paint brush.

All round the church we saw large monuments, erected to the memory of the Saints and of former Popes. In one corner scaffolding was in position where, we were told, the erection of yet another memorial to the last Pope was in progress. We noticed the confessional boxes, many actually in use at the time, where those of the Catholic creed may confess their sins and shortcomings in any of a dozen languages - Italian, English, French, German, Polish, Spanish, Portuguese, and others.

Beneath the tremendous dome, above the high altar, is a huge bronze and brass canopy, supported by 4 twisted pillars of the same material, 94 feet in height, the whole weighing almost as many tons, and in front of this was a double flight of marble steps descending to a richly gilded and ornamented gateway, beyond which we were told was the tomb of St. Peter. Above the gateway were burning some ten or twelve large sanctuary lamps. The guide told us that within the tomb of St. Peter was a solid gold cross, weighing 150 pounds which I, being of a mathematical and mercenary turn of mind, calculated to be worth 拢20,000 for scrap metal alone. On the right we saw the bronze effigy of St Peter, seated, and noted how the toes of the feet had been worn away through the ages by the kisses of countless pilgrims to his shrine. Above the great canopy, the done rose to an interior height of 404 ft. It did not seem four times higher than the top of the canopy, but we realised this to be so later, when, after climbing to the cupola and walking round the gallery (which corresponds to the Whispering Gallery of St Paul's) we gazed down on the canopy far below. The large lettering of the Latin inscription round the base of the dome, we were told, was 6 feet wide and the pen in the hand of one of the figures in the four mosaics immediately above was 7 feet long. We would not have believed it had we not compared these measurements with the size of the "Lilliputians" walking round the gallery above us.

We went out by a side door and climbed a never-ending spiral passage-way to the roof, only to find we still had several hundred feet to climb in the dome itself. We walked round the gallery inside the dome and from there gained a better impression than we had had from the floor, of the immensity of the place. The people in the congregation below were like flies and the players in a small orchestra in the organ loft were like articles in an open drawer; it was a 52 ft organ, too, which filled the building with harmony, powerful and resounding. The singing from a choir of 50 was very beautiful and impressive. The inside of the dome we found to be covered by mosaics, large figures of angels and smiling cherubs adorning the walls.

We then began the second half of our climb to the summit of the dome, and after several hundred steps up a series of narrow and spiral staircases we found ourselves out on an open air balcony, where we were rewarded by a wonderful panoramic view of Rome and the Vatican City. We stood for some minutes admiring the view and picking out the more noteworthy buildings and monuments with the aid of a map. The tall stately masts of the Vatican and the some radio stations appeared mere pieces of Meccano from the great height at which we were standing. We had not even then reached the extreme limit of the climb to the cross above. Immediately under the cross is a large metal sphere which holds eight people, although from the ground it looks no larger than a tennis ball, and to our delight we climbed the remaining tortuous stairway and vertical iron ladder into this ball and felt on top of the world. It was too dark inside, and too hot to stay long, so we made a hurried descent to ground level, but not before taking one more glance at the magnificent view of the city from the vantage point of the 'crow's nest' balcony.

Some of us wanted to see the Pope, who daily, between 11.50 and 12.50 in the mornings gives an audience to allied troops in a large reception room of the Vatican building, which is next to St Peter's. So we crossed the square and entered the Vatican passing up the imposing hallway and wide staircase leading to the audience chamber. As we entered the room we were handed coloured photographs of the Pope with Latin text, by gentlemen ushers in morning dress or red silken period costume. It was indeed a cosmopolitan gathering of allied soldiers, sailors, airmen and nursing sisters, several hundred strong from England, Scotland, Wales, Canada, New Zealand, India, America (both black and white troops), Poland and the French Colonies, who had all come to see the Holy Father.

We waited fully half an hour, and the Pope's arrival was at length heralded by an excited movement at one end of the long room. His Holiness entered, preceded by his bodyguard in their picturesque blue and yellow striped uniforms, being carried high up on a bier, down the central aisle, smiling right and left and blessing the kneeling assembly until the procession arrived at a platform at the other end of the room. On this platform was set a gilded throne and also a microphone into which the Pope spoke a brief message of welcome and benediction, alternately in fluent English and French, so fluent in fact that it was difficult to catch the words, which were uttered in a high treble voice.

We had intended visiting the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, so called because it was built by Pope Sixtus IV, but unfortunately we discovered it did not open on Sundays. The chapel is the most famous single spot in Rome for fresco-painting of the Renaissance. There are three big painting projects in the chapel. The one is the decoration of the side walls and was commissioned by Pope Sixtus in 1483. He called in several of the most famous painters of the day for the job, including Botticelli and Perugino. These artists illustrated in a series of frescoes stories from the life of Moses and of Christ. The second project was the decoration of the great vault of the ceiling, which Pope Julius 11 commissioned the great Michelangelo to do. Michelangelo was primarily a sculptor, and was not keen to undertake the job. However, he began his task in 1508 and finished it 4陆 years later. The subject matter of the frescoes is a mixture of Christian and Classic ideas: the Creation, the Flood and stories of the Old Testament prophets, Classic athletes and gods and goddesses. The artist executed it all either lying on his back on lofty scaffolding or leaning over backwards. The result was the greatest masterpiece in terms of the human form ever painted. The third project is the huge representation of the Last Judgement, painted by Michelangelo on one of the end walls in 1541. This also is a remarkable study of the human form. It was, naturally, a great disappointment that we did not see any of these beautiful paintings.

After dinner and a rest following a tiring morning, we made a quick tour- of some of the older part of Rome, calling first at the Colloseum, the most famous amphitheatre of ancient times, where were staged many public spectacles, where gladiators fought not only each other, but also wild beasts, and where the early Christians and other political offenders met their deaths in a similar fashion. In the underground passageways of the amphitheatre are to be seen the pens in which the wild beasts and their victims were kept. Near the Colloseum, in the middle of the road, we saw the famous triumphal Arch of Constantine, built 1600 years ago by the first Christian emperor of Rome, to commemorate his military campaigns. It remains very well preserved indeed.

We next visited the Roman forum or civic centre of ancient Rome, with its temples and public buildings, now very badly ruined, but giving a good idea of what the original lay-out of the city was like. On the other side of the road from the Forum we had a look at the forum of Trajan, the most interesting of the smaller forums in Rome. In the middle stands one of the two remaining triumphal columns in Rome. On this column of Trajan are depicted in detail the emperor's campaigning exploits along the Danube river; they are graphically illustrated in a continuous band of relief, from the bottom to the top. As an ARP precaution, however, the column had been well covered up by concrete and brickwork and only the top, with the statue of St Peter (formerly it supported a statue of Trajan) could be seen. The second triumphal column, that of Marcus Aurelius, we saw later in another part of the city. It was similar to Trajan's column and similarly blast-protected.

Near Trajan's column we espied a notice board, on which was the legend "CHURCH OF SCOTLAND CANTEEN" and to the latter we repaired, to enjoy a welcome cup of tea and cakes, served to us by three British women - three of many who are doing a grand job of work for the forces in many outlandish spots.

After tea we had just time to inspect the well known monument of Vittoria Emanuele 11, which dominates the entire area in the neighbourhood of the Forum. It commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Kingdom of Italy and was finished in 1911. We estimated the monument to be well over 200 feet high, and at a conservative estimate must have cost the Italian nation at least 拢2,000,000.

We gate-crashed a side door-way and found our way up some stairs to the centre of the monument, where we got another good view of Rome, with Garibaldi's monument showing on the sky-line in the far distance on the city's outskirts. Immediately in front our attention was directed to the square where the crowds used to gather to listen to Mussolini's speeches; he spoke to them from a most unpretentious looking balcony. We had a close up inspection of the huge bronze statue of Vittorio Emanuele, in the middle of his monument, seated astride a massive charger whose hooves, we were told, were each three feet in length. The whole statue weighs 50 tons and inside the belly of the horse is room for a table to seat 24 people. The monument has been severely criticised by some who regard it as an eyesore and an indication of the degeneration and travesty of Italian art, but I feel the criticism is by no means deserved.

By this time, our lorry had drawn up at the foot of the monument steps and it was time to "go home". We left Rome tired, tis true, but very pleased with our visit. There were, of course, many things we did not see, including the Catacombs, many fine churches and museums, but we had at least seen a good deal in the limited time available, and gained a lasting impression of a very fine city, with a noble past, and, let us hope, a nobler future.

Written in June 1944 on four pages of flimsy paper by Sergeant Norman Wilfred Stevens (1917-1996) of the Royal Army Service Corps

After Rome my father travelled to Padova and Trieste and stayed on after VE day in north-east Italy. He came back to England on 3rd July 1946 and went back to work at the Westminster Hospital in London. Twenty-five years later he returned to Rome with my mother and visited the Sistine Chapel.