What would Jep do?

And now Rome. This is the sixth and last leg of our trip. Fittingly for "Footsteps of the Emperors" it ends in the city that began it all. Thing is though, by late antiquity Rome was a backwater, the action on the frontiers meant that many emperors had little occasion to visit Rome. Some never did at all. Their footsteps would be hard to follow. Instead, on our few days here, we will follow different footsteps, in this case those of a fictional modern day king of the Roman social scene: Jep Gambardella.

Jep is the lead character in La Grande Bellezza--The Great Beauty. LGB won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film in 2013. The film opens with Jep's 65th birthday party and continues as he wanders through Rome ruminating on his life, work, constant socializing, and on a lost love. It's a fantastic film. And like Woody Allen's, Manhattan, or Durell's, Alexandria, the star of the show is the titular city itself, Rome.

So in our 3 days here we won't do all the classic sites. Instead, we'll do what Jep might do: art galleries, less-visited smaller museums, and then a lot of wandering around Rome and maybe seeing some of the sites in the movie. 

Today, for example, we saw Centrale Montemartini. CM is former power station repurposed as a museum for some of the Capitoline Museum's treasures. The juxtaposition of classical statuary and huge machinery is striking and it works--even with the faint smell of lubricating oils coming off the machinery.

Our second stop was MAXXI, the National Museum of 21st century arts (and architecture). The building by Zaha Hadid is itself a piece of art. The first thing to see in the lobby, is an Anish Kapoor (but not, I think, one of his best). 

We plan on seeing Rome from the fountain on the Janiculum Hill (scene from LGB) the Doria Pamphili Gallery (the must-see, Velazquez's, Innocent X) and the new museum of Domitian's Stadium. To keep us going (as we are both very very tired) cappuccino, croissant, and the occasional glass of wine. Jep, I think, would approve.