camminando | Healing in Roma, October 2015

I Walk, Therefore I Am

And I Heal

Searching and finding meaning while walking on time and history, during my Roman meanderings provides healing —as usual.
Roma's intoxicating beauty gives me comfort.

Giordano Bruno's statue in the site where he was burned at stake 17 February 1600

The entrance of Musei Vaticani, one of my daily itinerary

Piazza San Pietro and the Sunday crowds

Castel Sant'Angelo | day

Piazza del Popolo

Castel Sant'Angelo | night

Camminando | As a Tourist in the City Where I Was Born: Finding the Angels

Every time I go back to Rome, at my very first day of arrival I do my ritual  pilgrimage to the places of my childhood. Not that glamorous back then, but recently became extremely popular thanks to Dan Brown's Angels and Demons.
Castel Sant'Angelo is my very first visit, while I still experience jet lag from the six hour time zone difference. The initial structure, almost 2000 years old, was built as a mausoleum, called Mole Adriana, for the emperor Adrian, then was transformed by the popes into a castle, becoming a fortress and refuge during invasions and also a prison and execution place. A fortified corridor connected the castle with the Saint Peter's basilica.

This year I am specifically focusing on the many angel statues guarding, Ponte dell'Angelo, the pedestrian bridge connecting Castel Sant'Angelo with the Rione Ponte across the river Tevere.

A magical sunset blesses my visit: the warmest sunlight bathes the building, emerging from the lead color sky.

Roma, you are such a stage set! Isn't life a play?

Excerpts from the conceptual multimedia project

“Axes Mundi: Perceptions and Understanding of Places as Intersections of Space, Time and Culture"

Places of Memory | Castel Sant'Angelo and Borgo

Rome, was my first axis mundi and during every visit in the past ten years I go through a ritual of revisiting places of my childhood or adolescence, experiencing a deja vu of perceptions, memories and transformed feelings. I realize how my personal history here ---and when I was living here I was totally unaware of it --- was interwoven with historical and architectural places. My childhood and adolescence experiences are connected with all these magical places. If only I could write perhaps I could sell best sellers and screenplays for Hollywood blockbuster movies :-)
This time my ritual was on Castel Sant'Angelo, where I remember riding a trycycle and then several years later with many different experiences. See below how my childhood memories of strolls and tricycle rides happened right in the “angel and demons” places…

An angelic Water Fountain

Photographs and text are excerpts from the conceptual multimedia project
“Axes Mundi: Perceptions and Understanding of Places as Intersections of Space, Time and Culture”