Sept 13, 2018 | Rome> After finishing Trastevere last week, we continued down the hill along the wall into Borgo, the rione sandwitched b-tween the Vatican + the river:

The official rione map we normally inkloot contains Trastevere + also the Vatican, witch together form "Leonine city"—the region enclosed by the the wall pope Leo built (before that Trastevere didn't have 1). This is a more accurate plan of just Borgo (or google it), but even this includes part of the Vatican:

Borgo gots 1 of the longest wiki pages of inny rione, but most of it's boring historickle stuff about all the pilgrims + popes, who had a big part in Borgo's develipment, given its proximity, essentially the Vatican's frontyard. The pentagram-shaped Castel Sant'Angelo is Borgo's mane landmark, a massive fortress cobbled from the ruins of Hadrian's mausoleum. It's connected to St. Peters by a fortified passetto where popes + their posse could bid a hastey retreat when invaders came knocking, like that time in 1527 when Carlos V sacked Rome + Clement VII fled in his PJs to Castel Sant'Angelo while Carlos killed everyone else. Good times!

view from Vatican cupola looking down the "spine" of Borgo Rione  (pic taken in July)

the view looking back, before Mussolini demolished all the houses
to give Borgo a spine (from Roma Sparita)

Even tho the Vatikin ain't an offishal rione of Rome, we may as well lump it into this post... not that we roamed rione #0 this time around, but when our friends was here recently we suffered w/ 'em thru Sixteen chapel/St Peters + these past few days our bedder-½ has meetings at the Vatikin, so she snapped secret pics of the holey inner sanctum wich normal folk aint allowed to see cuz them Harlequin Swiss jokers guard the way.

in the cupola of St. Peters

sum sort of pontific academy in the inner sanctum

Vatican museum

We've also Air-B'n'B'd in the Vatican area a few times (convenient cuz it's near St. Peters train stn if u need to get south of the city).

pic of St Peters from 2015

tunnel under the GiantCulo seperating Trastevere from Borgo/Vaticano

We also once stayed in Borgo for a few weeks, that time in 2015 when we spent 6 homeless months in Rome, in the early days of Huck Finnegans Wake.

photo taken in 2015

rubbeing we made in Borgo back in 2009

In the art moondough, Borgo's soul claim to fame is that it bore the father of futurismo, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. We (Sound Furies) are actually working on a song that features Marinetti orating in the beginning, giving his futurism manifesto. The song gots nada to w/ futurism or Marinetti (it's about Don Quixote's horse) but wile we was working on hit we cd hear a protest out in the street w/ a fascist guy yelling on a megaphone that we wreckoned wint well w/ the song, but our recording of the protest was too shitty to use + then we remembered the Marinetti track we already had that sounded about the same (b-sides the content—whatever fatshits issue they was protesting about). We haven't finished the vocals yet so hit aint ready for prime time, but hear's an urly voiceless demo that our bedder-½ (the voice of Sound Furies) said sounded like Joe Satriani (we, the instrumentalist, was goin' mo for the Goblin/Mannheim Steamroller effect) so we've since slowed hit down + lowered the pitch by n octave to sound more like a dirge. Ecco "Rocinante":

Apologies for the non-roaming digression, we'll get back to Borgo... guess this artist Bernardino Passeri was also from Borgo, but we'd never heard of him 'til this roaming:

the gateway from Borgo to Trastevere

requisite nasone

Borgo graffiti

We was tempted to say "Borghesian" graffiti, but that wd be misleading... we always figgered the name "Borgo" had sumping todo w/ the Borghese family, but the name derives from the German "burg" (fortified city), what the pilgrims called it.

the elevated passageway going from the Vatican to Castel Sant'Angelo

at the moat of Sant'Angelo looking twards Prati

Castel Sant'Angelo

The Vatican features in too many films to mention, most of them awful.

the Vatican in Godfather III (1990)

Castel Sant'Angelo is also a backdrop in a few films, most notably Roman Holiday (1953), the scene where they go to that party on the waterfront + get in a brawl + princess Hepburn smashes the guy over the head with the guitar.

Seems there used to be a floating restraunt/bar parked on the river in front of Castel Sant'Angelo.... in Pasolini's Accatone (1961) they (shirtless) chow down at a place on the Castel Sant'Angelo side of the river + then they dive off the bridge.

Now there's no restraunts or bars on the water except in the summer when there's all those crappy tents + no one in their right mind swims in the Tiber, except on New Years when they dive off the next bridge down.