Hordes of tourists mar visit to Italy

ROME--Warning: do not travel to tourist sites in Italy during summers. The mobs of visitors to such places as Rome, Florence, Pompeii and Sorrento are unbearable.

The swarm is so huge in Florence that you need a reservation to get in the Uffizi Palace with its magnificent Botticellis, Caravaggios and Titians. You need a reservation to see Michelangelo’s “David” in the Accademia.

In Rome you stand in line for two hours to enter the Sistine Chapel. Once inside, the “Last Judgment” room is so jammed with tourists that the glory of its ceiling is diminished, if that is possible, for perhaps the greatest single achievement in art. When the chapel opened in 1512, art historian Vasari described the Michelangelo ceiling presciently: “a lamp for our art which casts abroad luster enough to illuminate the world.”

I focused my binoculars on ferryman Charon crossing the Styx, his paddle held menacingly behind his back, his body darkened, his ears pointed, his eyes bulging. One passenger dumped in Hades stares drunkenly, a glass of wine before him.

The ceiling is kept too dark, blunting the brilliant colors of the paintings. Indeed, you can see with more clarity in a glossy book of Michelangelo’s works. Yet the reason for the darkness is obvious: too much light could damage the paintings.

The St. Peter’s Basilica exhibits the magnificent Michelangelo “Pieta.” But it is behind bulletproof glass and about 15 yards from viewers, not the shining beauty I saw up close in New York decades ago. Also in the basilica is the Bernini dove window behind the altar. It is marvelous art, coppery and glowing yellow.

At the Michelangelo statue of Moses in the St. Peter-in-Chains Church, I felt awed merely to gaze at a work of the greatest artist in history. Then, suddenly, an Italian woman inserted a small coin in a box to turn on the lights. It was an epiphany, revealing the statue in all its Carrara splendor.

Rome abounds with glories. But it has one eyesore: the Victor Emmanuel monument, an oversized, cheap-marble building built in tribute to Italy’s first king. Italians label it derisively as “the wedding cake” and “the typewriter.”

Surge of hatred

Moving statue of Giordano Bruno in Rome’s Campo de’ Fiore. Bruno, Italian philosopher, was burned at the stake in 1600 as a Vatican-labeled heretic. This stark reminder gave me a sudden surge of hatred for the Vatican for destroying an intellectual giant in the name of Christ.

The figure of Bruno is hooded, holding a book. A book, like the mind of Bruno, is to be accepted or rejected but never, never burned. (Milton in “Areopagitica”: “he who destroys a good book kills reason itself.”)

Even the Catholic Encyclopedia admits that Bruno early in his career “attracted attention by the originality of his views.” Among his outspoken criticism of accepted theological doctrines: denial of the Trinity, the virginity of Mary and transubstantiation. Bruno was right on all counts, the church wrong as it admitted nearly four centuries later.

Ad desecration

Disturbed by a huge billboard towering over the top of the Spanish Steps, obscuring the towers of a church. Above the steps rises an ad screen. An attractive woman lies in the grass. The ad copy reads: “There is more space for my desires.” In other words, you can rent the space.

The Spanish Steps is hardly a holy place but the ad is still a desecration. The Italian cultural minister should bar it. But, alas, it’s an age when ads are seen in once unimaginable places: clothing and newspaper front pages. Money is more important than decorum.

‘Does anybody own a Rembrandt’

My wife Mary and I took a Mediterranean cruise but frequently stopped inland for tours. The tour guides talk too much, failing to realize the goldenness of silence. But they do indeed sing phrases from Italian opera, a genre the Italians invented. One guide bursts into “ridi Pagliaccio” (laugh clown) from “I Pagliacci” by Leoncavallo. Another cicerone begins “vissi d’arte” (I lived for art) from Puccini’s “Tosca.”

When Oscar Wilde visited Rome’s non-Catholic cemetery in 1877, he prostrated himself in the grass before poet Keats’ grave. One genius bowing to another…On the cruise ship I attended an art auction and history lecture. I laughed when the speaker asked: “Does anybody own a Rembrandt?”

Strand of Hair

On the airplane to Rome a woman was sitting in front of us, a single strand of her hair glistening in the sunlight. I thought of Camus’ “The Stranger” where a prison chaplain visits the anti-hero Meursault soon to be executed for a senseless murder. He tries to get Meursault to confess his sins and to accept God. But Meursault angrily tells the priest: none of “his certainties was worth the strand of a woman’s hair.”