April, 2008
April is one of the busiest months for us overseas. Spring is abuzz as the clocks finally jumped forward in Europe at the end of March. Yet here in Boston, the weather shows no sign of warming, and Opening Day at Fenway was colder than I 
can ever remember. But signs of the changing seasons are all around. In my garden, I saw my first bulb pop up the other day and the morning is now full of the sounds of retuning birds, back from their long vacations in Central and South America. The wonder of April is that we have the whole summer to look forward to, and the messy gardens that line the streets around me will soon be beautiful overflowing plots of sparkling color.
In my travels through Europe, I bumped into so many people in Paris specifically and in Notre Dame, listened to a beautiful choir of ours sing inside its cathedral, and watched groups deal with the weather tantrums of northern Europe from snow to rain to sunny spells and snow again. The umbrella guys did well this season!
At long last, by the time I returned to Rome, the weather was starting to feel like spring again. Here I was, sitting on my favorite stone bench in my favorite square in all of Rome, watching the world go by and reading The Herald Tribune.
Only a stone’s throw away sits the crazy and chaotic Campo De Fiori. Literally translated, “the field of flowers,” the square now lends itself to the open market that takes place every morning there except Sunday. And in the evening, Campo De Fiori becomes an event, engulfed by the trendy, the casual people watchers, and the occasional tourist passing through, just talking, hanging out and eating in the restaurants and cafés that surround this ancient place.
But here on my stone bench in Piazza Farnese, all is quiet. This Farnese family, whose emblem , a Fleur de Lys represents their coat of arms and the coat of arms of the Farnese Pope Paul III, employed the great architects and artists of the time to build the striking palace that I’m sitting under. The Palazzo Farnese, the most magnificent Renaissance Palace in Rome now houses the French Embassy and so sadly is closed to the public. It was designed in part by Michelangelo and contains inside the most famous frescoes of the great Renaissance painter Annibale Carracci. At night, if you are lucky and there is a special reception at the Embassy, you can catch a splendid view of the entire ceiling from the Piazza below.
As I sit on the stone bench that runs along the base of the palazzo, I look out onto two beautiful fountains housed inside huge bathtubs that were pulled from the Roman ruins of Caracalla, courtesy of the Farnese Pope. They were moved here in the 1500s and used as a Royal Box for the spectacles that took place in the square. Later on during the Baroque period, they were adapted into the fountains we see today. It is a stunning sight to see these ancient bathtubs plonked into a baroque setting with a Renaissance palace as their backdrop. You can almost sense the crazy cacophony of Campo De Fiori, but the only sound you hear in Piazza Farnese is the sound of the two fountains and a bell from the Swedish church off in the corner on the far side.
We are practically within arm’s reach of the site of Pompeii’s stone theatre of ancient Rome and a hop, skip and a jump from where Julius Caesar was assassinated. But this evening in the Piazza, I will content myself with taking in the passeggiata and reminding myself that this is indeed the most beautiful and perfect city in the whole world.
See you out there somewhere.
Peter Jones
President and Co-Founder, ACIS
