Roamn Legion

Always wanted to be a Gladiator? Want to fight like the legionnaires did? It is all coming available now. New astonishing facts are beginning to leak about the collapsed roof at the Domus Aurea this last Monday. The work under way was not restoration works. It is really foundation works for a new amusement park in the Eternal City – The Gladiator World. A complete amusement field, much like Disney world is taking shape in the park overlooking the Coliseum.

Here children – and adults – will be able to attend Gladiator school, train to become a legionnaire, and other more daily life things from the Roman era. For parents, maybe while kids are fighting the battles at the New Coliseum, will be able to attend classes learning to construct aqueducts and to build a house without any modern tools. Might be a good thing for the bored teenager as well.

The food will be typical Roman, with compliments of grilled bore burgers – but no wine for the younger ones.

Coliseum on fire

The most eye catching thing about these plans is still what caused the land to collapse over the Domus Aurea. Here, with a view of the Coliseum and the whole city, will be place a giant window called Nero’s Window – look through this and you will be able to see the city of Rome burning – just like in they year 64 AD.

Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot

Until June 29, 2010 the city of Rome will host the exhibition “Corot to Monet – The symphony of nature”.

The exhibition will show more than 170 works which shows the evolutionary path of the Impressionists way of presenting the natural landscape, starting from the early innovations of the painters of the Barbizon School to end with the triumph of the color of Monet’s Waterlilies.

The exhibition is hold at the Complesso del Vittoriano and is organized through collaboration with prestigious private collections and major museums around the world (including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum New York City, the National Gallery in Washington, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France in Paris and the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg)

Hours
Monday to Thursday: 9:30-19:30
On Friday and Saturday: 9:30-23:30
Sunday: 9:30-20:30

Domus Aurea

This morning parts of the roof of at Nero’s Golden Palace in Rome, Domus Aurea, collapsed this morning. Workers were doing repairs when parts of the roof collapsed, which in turn led to the garden on top of the roof collapsed inside the palace in an area of about 100 square meters. No one was injured, however.
Domus Aurea is situated on a hillside overlooking the Coliseum which was built during the first century after Christ and the site has been plagued by problems since it opened to the public 1999th.
Nero’s Palace was built after the Great Fire of Rome 64 years, it was intended more as a pleasure house than a residence. In addition to it’s gold leaf surface, the walls of the villa was covered with frescoes and semi-precious stones.
According to experts, the portion of the roof that collapsed was built later than the Palace, and known as Trajan Gallery. Trajan became emperor Nero after half a century and built the pool, known as the Baths of Trajan, on top of the Domus Aurea.
Tuesday’s collapse is expected to relaunch the debate about the poor condition of Rome’s crumbling monuments are in.
Domus Aurea was closed for over a year from the end of 2005 since the Ministry of Culture announced that it could not ensure visitors’ and staff safety.

Arista alla Fiorentina

Today’s cooking is a perfect dish to prepare ahead. Arista alla Fiorentina is actually as good served cold as warn.

Arista derives from the Greek word aristos, meaning “best”. According to tradition, some Greek clergymen which visited Florence in 1430 for a Ecumenical Council were served the Tuscan-style roast pork and found it “aristos” or very good. The dish has been called this ever since then.

Ingredients, serving 4:

*1 kg boneless center-cut pork loin roast
*3 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
*3 large cloves of garlic, minced
* salt and black pepper
* olive oil
* cooking string

Preparation

Mix rosemary, garlic, salt and pepper. Make deep cuts into the pork roast, the cuts with the mixture, leave some to cover the surface of the meat.
Tie the roast with the cooking string in order to maintain its compact shape and ensure even cooking. Pour the oil in a large pan and put it on medium heat. Add the pork roast and roll it slowly until the entire meat is browned on on all sides. Now place the roast in a deep pan and put it into the oven to cook at 180°C for about an hour and a half. Check the roast periodically and baste with the pan juices, turn the roast over every once in a while.
The roast is done once the thickest part of the roast has reached 80°C. If you don’t have one, stick a thin knife in the thickest part of the roast; the roast is done when no pink liquid comes out of the hole.
Place the roast to a cutting board, cover with alumnimum foil and let it rest for about 15 minutes. Slice the meat and serve with the pan juices.

Serve with patate al forno – Buon Apetito!

Egon Schiele - Nu Assis 1910

At the Royal Palace in Milan, a much interesting exhibition on Egon Shiele (1890-1918) are opening at the moment. Schiele was regarded by many of his contemporaries as the predestined successor to Gustav Klimt, but died before he could fulfill his promise. His fascinating but not wholly admirable character is accounted for, at least in part, by his family background and upbringing. 40 paintings and works on paper by Schiele, accompanied by as many masterpieces by Klimt, Kokoschka, Gerstl, Moser and a variety of other representatives of early 20th-century Viennese culture.
The show focuses on the person Egon Schiele to reconstruct the cultural and social climate of Vienna in the early years of the 20th century, starting from the foundation of the Secession, through the expressionist trends of the next

Egon Schiele

generation, to 1918, the year that marked the end of the First World War and the death of Klimt and Schiele. A brief but intense period in which Vienna was transformed from the centre of Mitteleuropean culture to the theatre of the ruin of the old Europe.

Royal Place Milan

March 17 – June 6

Woody Allen

Maybe most know as a movie director, and actor Woody Allen is also a musician, playing with a impressive wibe the clarinet. At the moment he and his New Orleans Jazz Band, are touring Europe and will be in Italy at the end of the month.

The first concert will be on March 29th as they are playing at the Teatro Verde in Mentecatini Terme, near Florence. The day after they are on stage at the Gran Teatro Felice in Venice. The last concert lbe in Rome on March 31, at the Accademia Santa Cecilia.

Woody Allen and his New Orleans Jazz Band are playing a  quite unique mix of music

New Orleans Jazz

inspired by New Orleans jazz. Carrying a repertoire of over 1200 pieces from the 35 years of the band, the American director, with his inseparable clarinet will rise on stage  accompanied by extraordinary musicians as musical director Eddy Davis (banjo), Simon Wettenhall (trumpet), Jerry Zigmont (trombone), Conal Fowkes (piano), Greg Cohen ( bass), John Gill (drums).

L'Età della Conquista

The Romans took a lot from the Greeks and developed into their own. Especially in art. A new exhibition at the Musei Capitolini offers you an unique collection of Greek art from early Roman days.

The works comes from one of the most significant eras for the development of all western art: the period following the Greek campaigns at the end of the third century BC until the first half of the first century AD. The exhibition features imposing marble, bronze and terracotta statues including cycles and friezes as well as domestic decorative elements.

On display will be possible for the first time a comparative analysis between the immediate works of Greek artists performed at home and works created in Rome – naked bodies in poses able to deliver authoritative charisma and honor, maybe even more imposing in military clothes with armor, cloak and long scepter. Greek taste in every sphere of daily living, from the ephemeral to the substantial, paintings, sculptures, objects, architecture, Greek traces everywhere.

Ajo, ojo e peperoncino

Ajo, ojo e peperoncino

Ingredients serving 4

500 g Spaghetti

2 cloves of  garlic

1 table spoon of chili pepper

3 table spoons of olive oil

While cooking the spaghetti, heat the oil to moderate temperature and peel the garlic cloves. Let garlic and chili cook in the oil for until the pasta is done. Take away the cloves and mix oil and chili with spaghetti. Serve immediately.

Cacio e pepe

Cacio and pepe

Ingredients serving 4

500 g of spaghetti

200 g of goat cheese

black pepper

This one is even easier. While cooking the pasta, grate the cheese. Mix spaghetti and cheese and grind the black pepper on top. Serve immediately.

Steve McCurry

You do remember the picture of the young Afghan girl with eyes that burns through you, printed on the cover of National Geograpfic magazine in 1985? Most likely, it’s one of these pictures that never leaves you. The photographer, Steve McCurry has spent a lot of time in Asia and some of his pictures can been seen at the Palazzo Ragione in Milan.

But just until Sunday, February 28 is the last date this magnificent exhibition is open. If in Milan, do not miss this.

Edward Hopper - Morning Sun

This week in Rome, opened for the first time ever an exhibition of the work by Amerian painter Edward Hopper (1882-1967). The exhibition pays tribute to the entire career this one of the 20th century’s most popular and best known American artist. The exhibition presents more than 160 works, including famous masterpieces

The exhibition will be staged at the Fondazione Roma Museum, from now till June 13, 2010, then it moves on to the Fondation de l’Hermitage in Lausanne.

Aside from the 160 works on show in the Milan exhibition, where it was staged before, the Rome event will feature more of the artist’s great masterpieces, including the beautiful Self-Portrait of 1925-1930, as well as The Sheridan Theatre (1937), New York Interior (circa 1921), Seven A. M. (1948), and South Carolina Morning (1955) along with their preparatory drawings. These extraordinary paintings will complete the group of famous works exhibited in Milan, such as Summer Interior (1909), Pennsylvania Coal Town (1947), Morning Sun (1952), Second Story Sunlight (1960), A Woman in the Sun (1961) and the stunning Girlie Show (1941). The exhibition explores the whole of Hopper’s oeuvre, and all

Edward Hopper

the techniques used by an artist now viewed as a great master of the twentieth century.

Structured in seven sections according to chronological order and theme, the Italian exhibition covers Hopper’s entire oeuvre, from his education, to his years as a student in Paris, up to his “classic” and best-known period of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, closing with the large, intense images of his later years. The show explores all of the artist’s favorite techniques: oil, watercolor and etching, and devotes special attention to the fascinating relationship between his preparatory drawings and his paintings: a vital aspect of his work that up till now has not been greatly explored in the exhibitions dedicated to him.

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