No comments about LUXE Rome (1st Edition) (LUXE City Guides).

No comments about Hedonist's Guide To Rome 1st Edition (Hedonist's Guide to..., A).

No comments about The Rough Guides' Rome Directions 2 (Rough Guide Directions).

3 comments about Rome and a Villa.

1. If you need to escape from the drudgery of your everyday life for awhile than this is the book for you.

   Clark's masterpiece is as good as a month in the country. And not just any country either. All of Italy is opened to you by the mind and imagination of Eleanor Clark. She covers the territory from the haunted villa of Hadrian to the dangerous hills of Sicily and the cool depths of Saint Peter's Cathedral. You will meet with the ghost of the Emperor himself, a modern gangster cum matinee idol and the pilgrims of a Papal Jubilee.

   Clark's prose is a whirlwind that leaves you breathless. She throws off sparks in all directions like a Catherine's Wheel. You won't "get" all of this book on the first go round but it is well worth a second and a third reading.




2. this book is deceiving...i admit, some will find it interesting, but clark jumps around with no transitions. it is more of a journal, or a collection of essays. she does describe in detail a number of things in rome, yet if you are looking for a novel or a piece of literature which is cohesive this is not the book for you.



3. "You walk close to your dreams"--that's the first sentence of Eleanor Clark's chapter on the fountains of Rome. Her book is lyrical but informative, and for some readers, perhaps too heavy with information, but I have found it indispensible both while in Rome and later back in the US thinking about where I had been. Orignally published as separate articles in The New Yorker magazine, each chapter focuses on a particular subject. One of my favorites is the section on Protestant Cemetery (actually the cemetery of the non-Catholics), where Keats, Shelley, Gramsci and many other non-Catholic writers, politicians, diplomats, and artists are buried. This is not a typical guidebook, however, and anyone who buys it in order to get maps, pictures, and restaurant tips will be disappointed. Nevertheless, it is an excellent guide to the city--it is thoughtful, it is full of strong opinions, and it is sometimes very funny, too. Eleanor Clark was married to the writer Robert Penn Warren, whose career overshadowed hers. Those who know his work but do not know the work of Clark may be surprised to find out just how good she is.

No comments about Inside Rome: Discovering the Classic Interiors of Rome (Inside...Series).

5 comments about MapEasy's Guidemap to Rome.

1. I have 8 of these maps, for cities from Rome to NY. They helped us around in Wash, DC, find the monuments, eating, and points of interest. They are well planned and informative. We just got back from NY and it was just perfect, once again. Having used the "traditional" ones in the past and being a constant traveller, I look forward to our next trips using MapEasy.They are also small enough to fit anywhere.



2. My wife and I bought 2 maps for our trip to Rome this one, and the Streetwise Rome map. This one is helpful if you are trying to find places to eat that are inexpensive, but the locations aren't in the same location that it shows you. This happened to us a couple of times, also, some of the stores are closed that it has listed. It is very helpful because it has the Pantheon, Coliseum, and Piazza Navona blown up on the back side which proved to be helpful.
   
   Overall the Streetwise is a better map because it has the names of all the blocks whereas this one misses some of the alleys (which there are a lot of). The Streetwise does have a smaller font but not terribly small like one of the other reviews states.
   
   Also, this map would be much more helpful if it had an index of the streets and piazza's/largos which the Streetwise map does have.
   
   Overall this map is worth the 6 bucks that I paid for it, but the 9 that I paid for the streetwise was better (more flipping the map over because it's two-sided, but better).



3. After four trips to Rome and being folded & folded & abused, there are still no rips in this map. I get a MapEasy's Guide anytime I can. Easy to read. And, no matter how long between visits, these places never move. Restaurants & hotels may change, but I mark where our favorite places to stay & eat were for future reference.
   But mostly I just want to know where an attraction is and the shortest way to get there!!!!



4. This map is waterproof, wind resistant, easy to fold and easy to read. It probably has more tourist highlights on it than you'll be able to visit in one trip.



5. I navigated my way through Rome for three months using this map. Worked splendidly! The waterproofing and heavy, foldable (and light-weight) construction is brilliant, as I was caught in more than a fair share of rain storms while using the map. Ideal for pedestrians.

No comments about Rome InsideOut (Insider Guide Insideout).

No comments about Imperial Rome.

No comments about Rome: Ten Literary Walking Tours.

3 comments about Satyr Square: A Year, a Life in Rome.

1. Esthete, epicure, oenophile, academic, and Jewish and gay. Place in the Eternal City for a year and observe the interesting results. This memoir of the sabbatical year of a modest but multifaceted man in Rome is not, one would have to say, an exciting read. For a wild ride, see Felice Picano's Men Who Loved Me. Here is a book for those who appreciate the quieter pleasures: Renaissance sculpture, Roman history, wine, good food, and opera -- at least Mozart's Don Giovanni to which the author refers frequently. As blessedly free of the effete as any book of its type could possibly be, author Barkan describes his eventful Roman year, one with gastronomic and vinous indulgence at its core. We meet his very peculiarly Roman set of new friends, who are of a type that inhabit a very different world and in fact are a very different species than one would encounter in North America. Full of engaging digressions on a myriad of subjects, this book keeps the interest of those with a bent for food and wine, art and music. A glossary for the monolingual would have been nice. A map of Rome with locations noted is unfortunately missing.



2. This book is so intelligent and yet so pleasurable, or perhaps I should say so pleasurable and so intelligent, it makes me wish Barkin had more lives and had written memoirs about them all. His writing is perfectly pitched. We get not just the funny, rich, sensuous experiences of encounters with strangers and new wines and new language, but also the other things we all live through, crushes, and loneliness, and embarrassment, related with both unusual honesty and unusual humor. I think its a book for anyone, but if you've ever had a glass of wine that was a complete revelation, or listened over and over to Don Giovanni, or wandered through Rome alone, you really must spend some time in Barkan's wonderful company.



3. Barkan, Leonard. "Satyr Square: A Year, A Life in Rome", Northwestern University Press, 2006.
   
   A View From the Mind
   
   Amos Lassen
   
   Leonard Barkan is a professor of comparative literature at Princeton University and he spent a year in Rome researching how during the Roman Renaissance there was a practice of exhuming scripture and he relays to us what went on culturally and personally during that year in "Satyr Square". He looks at the art and society as well as the contemporary literature he found during that year. What we get is Barkan looking closely at himself and we learn of his attraction to other men. We go all over Rome with him as he discovers the secrets of the city and of himself. The language of the prose is a bit heavy yet beautiful. Rome to Barkan is magical and we see that as Barkan love Rome, Rome also loved him.
   The memoir is set against the setting of the universal and everlasting power of Roman art and Barkan explores Rome with candor in order to explore himself in the same way. Do not be misled. However--the book is more than memoir--it is also a culinary look at Rome, literary criticism and travelogue. Anyone who has ever worked in academia knows the scars he must deal with and the cultured halls of universities take a back seat to Barkan's look at one of the "cradles of civilization. Intellectual life is strange and it can be quite lonely. Barkan finds a sense of family in Rome, learns Italian and falls in love and as the year passes, he loses the love he found and he finds his voice as a writer. He returns to America where he celebrates his life by writing this book. Central to the book are irony, humor and misdirection and mistakes. Barkan has two major struggles--being a homosexual and being a Jew and he can only understand these by rediscovering and reinventing his own intellectual passions.