The Spanish Steps

I remember heat so stifling that the pensione became not a place to sleep in, but a place to flee from. There were eight people sharing the same room, and a trickling shower. Out into the streets, where wiser Italians were already strolling around the Roman fountains, catching some relief.

Well after dark, I half-slept on a stone bench near the top of the Spanish Steps (or the Scalinata della Trinità dei Monti to the locals), hoping the next day would be cooler (it wasn't). Italy's heatwave at the time kept daytime temps well above a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Still, I'd love to transport myself back there right about now, in more than words. . .

At the top of the Spanish Steps, which were finished in 1725 when Detroit was a small French fort and trading post, stands the Santissima Trinità al Monte Pincio, which itself had already been completed in 1585, twenty years after the post of St. Augustine was established in Spanish Florida. The monument in front of the church atop the steps is the Obelisco Sallustiano, a Roman obelisk that may have been brought back from Egypt in the first or second century A.D.; it was placed where it is now (and was then, my night under its presence a quarter century ago) in 1789.

In front of the base of the Spanish Steps is the Piazza di Spagna or Spanish Plaza, the vantage point from which the above picture was taken, probably in the early 1980s or late 1970s. In the plaza itself is the Fontana della Barcaccia, a beautiful fountain that dates back to 1629 -- just five years after the establishment of New Amsterdam, now New York City.

Just outside of the picture to the right is the Keats-Shelley House, where John Keats died in 1821. Hearing the fountain while dying, he chose as his epitaph: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water."

Today's Rune: The Self.