Italy Impressions 3: San Clemente
A trek to San Clemente in Rome sparks thoughts of layered cities, sunstroke and roosters.
Impressions of San Clemente: Part 1
A couple years ago when I was still living in New York, some dykes I knew only online came into town, and after a quick drink on some bar’s terrace, I showed them around the East Village streets I’d walked for almost a decade. At some point they busted out laughing because, as they told me, the whole tour was a chorus of, “This used to be.”
“This used to be a Puerto Rican restaurant before it became a fancy hair place.” “This used to be a Dominican bodega before it became an upscale Korean deli.” “And this… this used to be a bathhouse where gay men fucked and somebody once told me Bette Midler sang, but was abandoned during the worst of the AIDS years, a real white elephant until it was transformed into a fancy Chinese place, Lucky Chang’s which a friend stopped by once to ask if they still delivered like they used to in the beginning, and the chic host drag queen looked at her in shock, exclaiming, “No, we never did,” gesturing at the long black limos and famous people in front, but my pal went back home and returned to shove her take-out menu in his face. “Yes. You. Did.””
And even before all that, most of the whole Lower East Side was a Jewish slum. And before that a German one. If you go back far enough in the history of Manhattan island, there were of course Native Americans, who were already setting the standard for New York’s famous real estate shenanigans. One tribe, if I remember correctly, sneakily sold the island to the Dutch even though it belonged to another tribe entirely, laughing all the way to whatever served then as a bank, having screwed both their local rivals and those strange, weird-hatted people from across the sea.
San Clemente by itself had almost as many layers as that, and you could look at them all: the twelfth century basilica built on top of a fourth century one, under that two layers dating back to the first century A.D. We went because I’d read that it was the perfect place to go on a broiling day, plus they had an altar to Mithras. Though mostly because it was on the list of recommendations our architect friend David had given us the last time we were there a decade before, but hadn’t had time to see.
As we trudged our way towards it through the burning streets, David’s list wilting in my sweaty pocket, I thought about how he’d included eight (EIGHT?!) places in his recommendations for the Paleo-Christian Era and Esquiline Hill. And imagined him charging down the sidewalks of the city with his short, energetic strides, and casually spouting information that bubbled through him like one of those fountains Rome’s so fond of.
Once in Paris, we visited the Bagatelle park together, and Ana and I could barely keep up as he led us from the iris garden to a folly to some other architectural marvel, the terrifying screams of peacocks accompanying his narration which was partly about how the history of the garden connected with something or other back in Cuba, which led to some funny or horrifying story about his life in Havana, where he and Ana moved in some of the same circles of very young, and mostly homo, writers and artists.
I trusted him entirely. Though I was disappointed when we finally got there. San Clemente was so crumbling and sad from the outside. In the courtyard, the paving stones were scraggly with moss, the pillars pocked, stones worn, but not in the romantic way tourists like. We slumped on a concrete bench that looked like a tomb, and gathered our forces to go inside.
When we finally did, we were rewarded with a graceful, richly decorated church where the mosaics in the apse rivaled those of Santa Maria Maggiore, and maybe surpassed them—the unremitting saints relieved by barnyard animals—I don’t remember why— including a magnificent rooster I didn’t see at first but bought a postcard of.
There were frescos, too, some of the oldest in Rome, and a marble choir repurposed —as they’d say today—though stripped might be more accurate, from the older basilica once buried below.
All that was amazing. It really was. But what I still think about was the moment we left behind the modern city shimmering with 103-degree heat, and the Christianity we recognized, for something more… pagan? brutal? true?
I need to think more about how to describe it, because we weren’t supposed to take photos so I mainly didn’t. So I looked longer, looked harder, felt more deeply, emerged from the cold and dark as dazzled by the sunlight as Persephone.
To be continued…
That’s it for this time.
Ciao,
xoxo K