Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2: Studies from the Chronicles of RomeCrawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion)
History
Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2: Studies from the Chronicles of Rome
Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion)
Rome (Italy) -- Description and travel
perished, praising God. But their ashes lie under the high altar in the
church to this day.
The small square of Saint Eustace is not far from Piazza Navona,
communicating with it by gloomy little streets, and on the great night
of the Befana, the fair spreads through the narrow ways and overflows
with more booths, more toys, more screaming whistles, into the space
between the University and the church. And here at the southeast corner
used to stand the famous Falcone, the ancient eating-house which to the
last kept up the Roman traditions, and where in old days, many a famous
artist and man of letters supped on dishes now as extinct as the dodo.
The house has been torn down to make way for a modern building. Famous
it was for wild boar, in the winter, dressed with sweet sauce and pine
nuts, and for baked porcupine and strange messes of tomatoes and cheese,
and famous, too, for its good old wines in the days when wine was not
mixed with chemicals and sold as 'Chianti,' though grown about Olevano,
Paliano and Segni. It was a strange place, occupying the whole of two
houses which must have been built in the sixteenth century, after the
sack of Rome. It was full of small rooms of unexpected shapes,
scrupulously neat and clean, with little white and red curtains, tiled
floors, and rush bottomed chairs, and the regular guests had their own
places, corners in which they had made themselves comfortable for life,
as it were, and were to be found without fail at dinner and at supper
time. It was one of those genial bits of old Rome which survived till a
few years ago, and was more deeply regretted than many better things
when it disappeared.
Behind the Church of Saint Eustace runs a narrow street straight up from
the Square of the Pantheon to the Via della Dogana Vecchia. It used to
be chiefly occupied at the lower end by poulterers' shops, but towards
its upper extremity--for the land rises a little--it has always had a
peculiarly dismal and gloomy look. It bears a name about which are
associated some of the darkest deeds in Rome's darkest age; it is called
the Via de' Crescenzi, the street and the abode of that great and evil
house which filled the end of the tenth century with its bloody deeds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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