alessia-photography

[alessia-photography]

Caravaggio's Rome is My Rome the book I've been writing for the past 20 years

When I first moved to Italy in 2003 I began researching, writing, taking photographs, collecting recipes, stories, experiences; I began gathering together the material that would become The Book, My Book

The book, my book began its life as "Under a Fig Tree in Rome", my love letter to the five years I lived on the streets, named after my first home, a fig tree on the Tiber Island.

In first-person narrative I told the tales that weaved together those five years. A way of apologising, forgiving, celebrating, remembering those faces & places. An exorcism of ghosts of sorts as most of the characters i wrote about are dead now. My book is a memorial. A glorification of the inglorious. But it was no Kerouac. I printed and bound "Fig Tree" and placed it in my bookcase.

My obsession with Rome remained a roaring fire in my heart after i left the city in the summer of 2007. By 2009 I enrolled in the history of art program at Birkbeck, University of London, graduating with a Masters degree in 2017, the majority of my credits being Roman/ Renaissance modules. I had learnt a great deal which made me aware that I knew absolutely nothing.

In 2016 I began writing about Rome again, but from a different angle. My boyfriend had a rickshaw which he used to transport tourists around the city. I realised the rione of Rome I had lived in & written about in The Book, My Book was also the backdrop of Michael Merisi da Caravaggio's twelve years in Rome at the turn of the seventeenth century.

I began to draw different lines on the same map, joining dots, making connections. I wrote another book, based on a series of walks in which you saw the paintings of Caravaggio as well as where he lived, where he drank, where he worked overlayed with where I lived, where I drank, where (and what) I wrote. Caravaggio's Rome is My Rome.

The lockdowns of 2020-21 changed everything for Francesco & I. No tourists, no work. Required by law to stay at home, 25 km east of Piazza Navona, I began to explore my patch the city, Giardinetti, just off exit 18 of the Grande Raccordo Anullare, the ring road around Rome. My geography had changed. & then our circumstances changed too.

In December 2022 Francesco had a car accident that left him semi-paralysed. From the moment he was discharged from hospital in February of this year I became a cook, cleaner & carer. My Rome work became a Mrs Beaton-like grimoire of recipes, household management tips, hedgewitchery and notes on a nightmare commute - with a wheelchair - across the city relying on (extremely unreliable) public transport.

My role changed, so my Rome changed and the book, my book gets re-written, again. More like a Cy Twombley painting than ever - scribble, scribble, scribble, WORD IN CAPITAL LETTERS, whitened, sanded back, text comes through the titanium white.

[alessia-photography]

This is the closest I've been to the Etruscans / taking the 37° Celsius waters / in a natural hot spring / in the middle of Tuscany.

Water has flowed here / for thousands of years / made a 40 year journey / metamorphosed / from rain in Mount Amiata / to this magic mixture of mainly / sulphur & mineral salts. / It smells like aboriginal Italy.

When you're in the water / be water, my friend.

❤ Alessia

14 Aug 2019, Terme di Saturnia, Tuscany

[alessia-photography]

Notes on a Summer (2023) in Portovenere

Every year we return to this house on Via Olivo in Portovenere. We sit on the terrace, look out over the bay & the boats. Time stops. "Time that is moved by little fidget wheels / Is not my time" wrote the Australian poet Kenneth Slessor. Listen to the water, be water my friend.

It's good to be back.

We have been coming here for two weeks in August for over a decade now. Porto Venere, a one-way-in-and-one-way-out-village on the Ligurian coast, in the Gulf of La Spezia, also known as the Gulf of Poets.

This place 44°3'19"N, 9°50'15"W has become like a super fast charger for my family. It's more than that reliable cocktail of sun & sea, fresh mussels & lemon, multi-coloured houses, pebble beaches, deep-fried anchovies and pesto. It's the time to stop. To sleep. To swim in the sea. To discuss the future. My father paints, my mother reads. We cook, we laugh, we eat out on our terrace on Via Olivo; sometimes we eat out in town. We heal.

This notebook has been coming here since 2016, filled with local illustrations, our gentle exploration of this part of the world, our routines & rituals, what we eat, what we read, what we do, how we feel. It only has a few blank pages left, so this year is its last year here.

The ancient Portus Veneris is believed to date back to at least the middle of the 1st century BC. It has been said that the name refers to a temple to the goddess Venus which was sited on the promontory where the church of San Pietro now stands.

In Roman times the city was essentially a fishing community.

Via Cappellini, a narrow multi-coloured thoroughfare sometimes packed with the Cinque Terre tourists, sometimes not.

An antique vintage book market in the main square, the scent of basil, water in my ears, sleeping in the sun all afternoon then a bit of CNN news while my father cooks guanciale, adding chunks of bread which cook in the porky oil, fried jewels in the salad we eat on the terrace under an almost full Harvest moon. Waxing (very) gibbous.

The Monday morning market in Portovenere - buying peaches & green beans, a pair of flip flops & a roast chicken from rude Riccardo.

The pebble beach in front of the American bar.

The rocks, and their mermaids.

Biting into a deep-fried anchovy in Via Cappelini. It's hot and steamy, my lips are salty, the air smells faintly of shit & lemons, sweet & sharp. We are in Portovenere and I'm so happy. This basil mojito is heaven.

There is lots to do in Portovenere. Look it up in an Eyewitness Guide. I have done everything there is "to do" in Portovenere and I really don't go to Portovenere to do stuff. I go for my August Super Fast Charge which gets me to Boxing day when I fly to Venice for a fortnight with my family for our other Super Fast Charge of the year.

Essential Summer Super Fast Charge ingredients: sun, sea, salt, basil, anchovies, lemons, books, a camera & notebook, family love.