In the Ara Coeli

Like Saint Francis in this wonderful El Greco (Dublin)

When walking to my library (the Rispoli on Via della Gatta),  coming down from the Monti area (where I belong) I must cross Piazza Venezia, right beside the green lawn, on a slice of pavement, where tourists of all kinds stand, shoulders to the Vittoriano, taking pictures (and selfies) of the big white “wedding cake” (as the Romans called the gigantic building that the piedmontese Savoy built when they conquered the City of the Pope)  which dominates the large Via Lata (now Corso), as a big memento of the shift of power that happened in those lost faraway days… King Victor Emanuel the II, on his majestic horse, martial as Marcus Aurelius on the Campidoglio, seems ready to stride along the Eternal City, prey, conquered and humiliated. This is the deep reason why, I think, Romans do not like that huge marble monument, beloved by the tourists who might think the Vittoriano an old temple coming straight from Augustus times…

No, the Romans do not like the Vittoriano, calling it the wedding cake or the typewriter. And, please, if you have time, walk around it (note how it gives its strong shoulders to the Campidoglio) towards the magnificent paleochristian church of the Ara Coeli, the altar of the skyes. Up there, on top of the ripid staircase that leads us to the entrance of the church that is (and has always been) kept by the holy Franciscans (being Francis a second Christ on earth). And there, in holiness, enter the Church as if in the womb of Mary. Sharpen your eyes and look for the chapel where the holy Bambino is kept. It is not the original one (the one, I mean, carved by a Franciscan monk from an olive tree of the Holy land, which was stolen years ago), but, in its ieratic beauty this new little bambino, in gold and pearls, is as beautiful as the original; please, in focus and concentration, listen to his silent words: one must be a child again to enter the world of the skyes, in the Ara Coeli.