The Coolidge examiner., 1938-01-20
the
Hundreds of Fountains Help
Make the Eternal City Beautiful


wait for jugs to fill Water is not
piped to every Roman home. Cold,
even in summer, a stream of it is
used for refrigeration by restau-
rants and coffee shops. Fruit, milk,
soda pop are so cooled.
When some Of the Pontine
marshes were sea, when navies
were gaIleys and triremes, Ostia,
at the Tiber's mouth IA miles south
west, was Rome's seaport. 1t was
built on the site of an ancient set
tlement where the Tiber forks to
form Sacred Island.
Pliny the Younger, who survived
the eruption Of Vesuvius that de-
stroyed Pompeii, and wrote a
graphic account of it often quoted
today, once lived near Ostia, down
the shore road in a seaside villa.
Worn paving stones, uncovered,
point your way to the ruin as you
walk where Pliny rode. 1t is shore
road no longer.
Ostia's ruins are being dug from
the sand, three miles inland!
Rising shores and river silt have
often blocked the harbor. Mussolini
has not yet followed Claudius, Ira
jan, and Pope Paul V in building
a seaport adequate for Romans and
their times.
Romans today play on the beach
where Lido di Roma, a new town,
stretches two miles along the pres
ent shore. Crowds come by cleo
trio car or new auto speedway, and
only glimpse the Tiber.
The south fork of the Tiber enters
the Tyrrhenian sea some distance
from Lido di Roma. Where the riv-
er widens, protected by stone jet
ties from stormy waves, are two
airportS, one military, the other a
seaplane base Of Ala Littoria, SUBJ
sidized company monopolizing
Italy's air transport.
Here a dozen flying boats some
times ride at anchor, or take off
for Tunis, for east Africa-wherev-
er 'airmail and hurrying passengers
would be flown. Here, too, are
shops where you see ships them
selves repaired and built. The
ground crew lives in a fair-sized
town.
There are two Appian ways. The
narrow old one near Rome could
not be widened for modern trans
port without destruction of relics
such as the Church of Domino Quo
Vadis.
1t is built where Saint Peter, fee
ing Nero's persecution, met Jesus
face to face. You see a print Of a
bare foot in the stone where Christ
had stood; they say it is a repro
duction of His original footprint now
in the Church of st. Sebastian.
Domino Quo Vadis Church.
This church is built over ancient
catacombs cut in tufa-volcanic
rock-under the villa Of some old
Roman sympathetic with early
Christians. What task to carve
that maze of passages, those crypts
in living rock where bones still
crumble!
In little chapels worshipers, fred
by a zeal that only persecution
gives, say prayers by torchlight,
and then emerge into the night, car
rying bits of excavated rock to
throw away covertly, lest unbeliev-
ers discover their subterranean rem
devious.
Into gloomy tunnels, through an
air vent-an iron grill in the church
f1oor-flter faint and far-away or
gan music and chants.
When you come to the surface,
where sunlight streams into the
chapel through stained-glass win
doWs, you see a dozen girls of ten
or twelve learning to sing. Their
(AOtAOo 0&C olAAAP4C oA1O SOl1lCWlldA
tattered-people who live on Via Ap-
pia Antica are not as rich today as
of old. Many wear castof, high
heeled ladies' shoes.
Stone walls, red poppies in their
crevices, hide much of the rolling
Campagna on either side, until at
last the road emerges into open
fields and meadows where occasion
al heaps of stone and brick are re-
mains of huge buildings.
In the distance are aqueducts.
To William Dean Howells they
seemed to stalk down from the
ages across the melancholy expanse
like flies of giants, with now and
then ruinous gap in the line, as il
one had fallen out weary by the
way"