Art & Culture
The Indian film showing the bride’s ‘humiliation’ in arranged marriage

It is often said that marriages are made in heaven.
But in India, where a majority of marriages are arranged, the process of match-making can feel like a passage through hell for a woman and her family.
That’s the premise of Sthal: A Match, the 2023 gritty Marathi-language film that has won several prestigious awards at festivals in India and abroad. It is releasing for the first time in theatres in India on Friday.
Set in rural Maharashtra state, the film centres around Savita, a young woman striving for an education and a career in a patriarchal society, and the attempts by her father Daulatrao Wandhare – a poor cotton farmer – to find a good husband for his daughter.
“He wants a good price for his crop and a good match for his daughter,” says director Jayant Digambar Somalkar.
The film is notable for the unflinching way it portrays what its lead actress calls the “very humiliating” experience of many young women, unlike other Indian movies about arranged marriage.
Sthal has also grabbed attention as its entire cast is made up of first-time actors chosen from the village where it is shot. Nandini Chikte, who plays Savita, has already won two awards for her brilliant performance.

The film opens with a sequence where Savita is interviewing a prospective groom.
Along with her female relatives and friends, she watches as the young man serves them drinks from a tray. They laugh when he, visibly nervous, fumbles during questioning.
Rudely awakened from what turned out to be a dream, Savita is told to get ready as a group of men are coming to see her.
In reality, the gender roles are completely reversed, and in a scene that’s replayed several times in the nearly two-hour film, Savita’s humiliation comes into sharp focus.
The prospective groom and other men from his family are welcomed by Savita’s father and male relatives. Guests are fed tea and snacks and once the introductions are done, Savita is called in.
Dressed in a sari, with eyes downcast, she sits down on a wooden stool facing her interrogators.
Questions come, thick and fast. What’s your name? Full name? Mother’s clan? Date of birth? Height? Education? Subject? Hobbies? Are you willing to work on the farm?
The men step out, to hold a discussion. “She’s a bit dark. She had makeup on her face, but did you not see her elbow? That is her real colour,” says one. “She’s also short,” he goes on to add. Others nod in agreement.
They leave, telling Daulatrao that they will respond in a few days to let him know their decision.
According to her parents, “this is the fourth or fifth time someone has come to see Savita” – all the earlier meetings have ended in rejection, leading to heartbreak and despair.
The scene rings true. In India, men often have a laundry list of attributes they want in their brides – a glance at the matrimonial columns in newspapers and match-making websites shows everyone wants tall, fair, beautiful brides.

Savita’s protestations – “I don’t want to get married, I first want to finish college and then take civil services exams and build a career” – carry no weight in her rural community, where marriage is presented as the only goal worth having for a young woman.
“Marriage is given far too much importance in our society,” Chikte told the BBC. “Parents believe that once the daughter is married, they will become free of their responsibility. It’s time to change that narrative.”
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She says she found it “very humiliating” that Savita was made to sit on a stool to be judged by all those men who discussed her skin colour, while there was no discussion about the prospective groom.
“I was only acting, but as the film progressed, I lived Savita’s journey and I felt angry on her behalf. I felt insulted and disrespected.”
The film also tackles the social evil that is dowry – the practice of the bride’s family gifting cash, clothes and jewellery to the groom’s family.
Though it has been illegal for more than 60 years, dowries are still omnipresent in Indian weddings.
Parents of girls are known to take out huge loans or even sell their land and house to meet dowry demands. Even that doesn’t necessarily ensure a happy life for a bride as tens of thousands are killed every year by the groom or his family for bringing in insufficient dowries.
In the film too, Daulatrao puts up a “for sale” sign on his land, even though farming is his only source of livelihood.

Director Somalkar says the idea for his debut feature film is rooted in his own experience.
Growing up with two sisters and five female cousins, he had witnessed the ritual far too many times when prospective grooms visited his home.
“As a child you don’t question tradition,” he says, adding that the turning point came in 2016 when he accompanied a male cousin to see a prospective bride.
“This was the first time I was on the other side. I felt a bit uncomfortable when the woman came out and sat on a stool and was asked questions. When we stepped out for a discussion, I felt the conversation about her height and skin colour was objectifying her.”
When he discussed the issue with his fiancée at the time – who is now his wife – she encouraged him to explore it in his work.

In a country where 90% of all marriages are still arranged by families, Sthal is not the first to tackle the subject on screen. IMDB has a list of nearly 30 films about arranged marriage made by Bollywood and regional film industries just in the past two decades.
More recently, the wildly popular Netflix show Indian Matchmaking focused entirely on the process of finding the perfect partner.
But, as Somalkar points out, “weddings are hugely glamourised” on screen.
“When we think of weddings in India, we think of the big fat wedding full of fun and glamour. We think of Hum Aapke Hain Koun,” he says, referring to the 1990s Bollywood blockbuster that celebrates Indian wedding traditions.
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“And the Netflix show only dealt with a certain class of people, the ones who are wealthy and educated and the women are able to exercise their choice.
“But the reality for a majority of Indians is very different and parents often have to go through hell to get their daughters married,” he adds.
His reason for making Sthal, he says, is to “jolt society and audiences out of complacency.
“I want to start a debate and encourage people to think about a process that objectifies women who have very little freedom to choose between marriage and career,” he says.
“I know one book or one film doesn’t change society overnight, but it can be a start.”
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Taken From BBC News
Art & Culture
Will Snow White be a ‘victim of its moment’? How the Disney remake became 2025’s most divisive film

The live-action version of the classic fairy-tale animation sounded like a surefire hit. But even before it’s reached cinemas, the response to it has been loud and often hostile.
You wouldn’t think that the war in Gaza would have much impact on a Disney remake. But the live-action Snow White, a revamped version of the 1937 animated classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, has become a flashpoint for social and political divisions, even before its global release next week.
There was some backlash to the casting of Rachel Zegler, of Colombian descent, as the heroine. More recently, there has been blowback both about Zegler’s pro-Palestinian comments and about pro-Israel comments by Israeli actress Gal Gadot, who plays Snow White’s stepmother, the Evil Queen. And there is an ongoing debate about whether there should have been dwarfs at all, live or CGI. The film’s director, Marc Webb, said in Disney’s official production notes, “I think all good stories evolve over time. They become reflections of the world that we live in”. He has likely got more than he bargained for, as reactions to Snow White inadvertently reflect the most polarised aspects of the world today. Like political rhetoric in countries around the world, responses to the film’s production have been loud, irate and sometimes ugly.

Snow White has been in the works since 2019, and began in earnest with Zegler’s casting in 2021. Since then attacks on its so-called “wokeness” have proliferated, making the film a lightning rod for opinions that have little to do with the fairy tale it is based on. A recent Hollywood Reporter article asked, “Have some PR missteps combined with anti-woke outrage turned marketing the film into a poisoned apple?” And alongside such measured reporting there have been heated responses in the media. The editorial board of the New York Post – owned by Rupert Murdoch, the conservative mogul whose company also owns Fox News – weighed in this week, declaring the film a financial disaster before it has opened, writing: “Disney ‘Snow White’ controversy proves it again: Go woke, go broke!”
The debate over updating
The original film needed an update if it was going to be remade at all. In its day it set a high bar for Disney’s future animated films, but it also introduced the song Someday My Prince Will Come, blighting the expectations of generations of girls by setting them up to wait for a Prince Charming to make their lives complete. Meanwhile, Snow White happily sweeps the floor for the dwarfs until he shows up to rescue her with a kiss after she bites the Queen’s poisoned apple. Soon after her casting announcement, Zegler told the television show Extra that in the old Snow White “there was a big focus on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her”. In fact, the original film states that he “searched far and wide” to find her after falling in love at first sight, and he disappears for most of the film, so no need to take that comment too seriously. Zegler was excited and laughing when she said it. But in an early sign of the blinkered reactions to come, social media posts complained that she was anti-love.
Trying to avoid more political and social discord isn’t Disney’s only Snow White problem – there is much online speculation that the film might just be bad
Some people also rejected the idea that a Latina actress could play a character called Snow White; alongside criticisms of such non-traditional casting, she was subject to racist trolling. This was a similar reaction to that experienced by the black actress Halle Bailey when she was cast as Ariel in 2023’s The Little Mermaid.
The film stumbled into more trouble simply because its lead actresses expressed political opinions. On X in August 2024, Zegler thanked fans for the response to the Snow White trailer, adding, “and always remember, free Palestine”.
Gadot has posted her support for Israel on social media, and especially since the 7 October attacks by Hamas has been outspoken in defence of her country and against anti-semitism. That led to some short-lived calls by pro-Palestinian social media users to boycott the film simply because she is in it.

The fallout on the film intensified after the 2024 US presidential election. Zegler posted on Instagram that she was “heartbroken” and fearful, and that she hoped “Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace”. In response Megyn Kelly, the former Fox news personality, attacked Zegler, saying on her radio show, “This woman is a pig,” and that Disney was going to have to recast the role. Zegler apologised to Trump voters, saying “I let my emotions get the best of me”.
The issue of the dwarfs
Even when people reacting to the film have agreed on a basic principle, like more opportunities for actors who have dwarfism, they have disagreed on how to get there. Peter Dinklage, perhaps the world’s most well-known actor with dwarfism, questioned the entire project before many details were known, calling the 1937 film “a backwards story of seven dwarfs living in a cave together”. Disney announced the next day, “To avoid reinforcing stereotypes from the original animated film, we are taking a different approach with these seven characters.”
As it turned out, the seven characters are CGI, and Disney has reclassifed them as “magical creatures”, not dwarfs. What do they look like? Even a glimpse at the trailer reveals that they look exactly like CGI dwarfs. They are still named Happy, Grumpy, Sleepy, Sneezy, Doc, Bashful and Dopey.
The changes have caused a backlash from some people with dwarfism, who have rebutted Dinklage and accused Disney of depriving them of acting roles. As recently as this week, one told the Daily Mail, “I think Disney is trying too hard to be politically correct, but in doing so it’s damaging our careers and opportunities.”
Amidst this swirl of controversies, Disney altered the traditional red-carpet treatment it would usually give such a major film. The premiere took place in Spain on 12 March, and the Los Angeles premiere is due to take place today at an unusual, afternoon hour. The regular red-carpet journalists have not been invited, even though as a group they are not known to ask hard-hitting questions.

Trying to avoid more political and social discord isn’t Disney’s only Snow White problem, though. There is much online speculation that the film might just be bad. The first full trailer was greeted with a rush of complaints about the underwhelming CGI, with The Guardian calling the trailer “the ugliest thing ever committed to screen”. The film has new songs by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the team behind La La Land, but the one released as a video, Waiting On a Wish, has a bland, generic Disney style. Box-office tracking predicts an opening weekend of around $50m (£39m), solid but at the low end for a would-be blockbuster that reportedly cost over $200m (£155m) to make.
Of course, given the Disney juggernaut – the recent Moana 2 has made more than $1bn (£773m) and Mufasa: The Lion King, which had a slow start, more than $712m (£550m) – the debacle leading up to Snow White’s opening may not hurt it at the box office at all.
Or the film may become the victim of its moment, a fairy-tale princess covered in mud.
Snow White is released internationally on March 21
Taken From BBC News
Art & Culture
Why worm poaching is threatening India’s wetlands

India’s bristle worms are often overlooked. But they are crucial to the health of the country’s wetlands – which is why local women are working to catch the poachers decimating their population.
Jyothi, 40, will never forget the day she almost died. The morning started off like any other at Pulicat Lake, part of one of three important wetlands that attracts monsoon rain clouds from October to December. Located on the east coast of India, 50km (30 miles) from the city of Chennai, Pulicat Lake is an enchanting lagoon, roughly half the size of the city of London. Pink flamingos dot its sandy banks. Migratory birds flock to its many islets in their thousands, while fishermen cast their nets into the glassy waters.
On that day in May 2022, Jyothi, who goes by only one name, had set off to work by 09:00 with 10 other women. Rain had soaked the mud paths, making the way treacherously slippery, but the women were adept at navigating the rough terrain. Their job was to wade ankle-deep in the marshy waters of the lagoon’s inlets, hunting for fresh fish, shrimp and crab. Two to three kilos of catch, a good day’s haul, could fetch ₹500 (£5/$6.25).
As Jyothi waded into the lagoon, she felt something close over her right foot. She slipped. Her head went under. Entangled in the roots and shrubs, she couldn’t surface on her own. Terrified, gulping marshy water, she only avoided drowning thanks to the other women who pulled her to safety.
After she was back on the marshy banks, she looked closely at what had caused her to slip. It was a white bucket, the width of her foot. When she had accidentally stepped into it and lost her balance, she couldn’t pry it off. Now she saw why it was there: shimmering inside were squiggling, translucent pink creatures known as bristle worms, or polychaetes.
These poachers aren’t just stealing worms, they’re destroying an entire ecosystem by breaking the food chain, a vital link that keeps it together – Sultan Ahmed Ismail
Ten species of polychaetes have been identified so far at Pulicat, all of them endemic. They are a crucial part of the lagoon’s ecosystem. Among other roles, they are a main source of food for its fish and crustaceans – which feed not only humans, like those who buy catch from Jyothi, but birds and animals too.
The worms also are a prize of local poachers. Often, the poachers fix empty buckets, like the one that had caught Jyothi’s foot, in the muddy floors of the shallow waters to fill with worms, collecting them later. They sell the worms as feed to the dozens of aquaculture farms, many illegal, that dot the banks of Pulicat.
“I realised at that moment that it was human greed, and not the worms itself, that almost cost me my life,” Jyothi says now.
But Pulicat’s worm poaching threatens other consequences for Jyothi – and for the entire area.
“Pulicat Lake is what is known as an ‘ecotone’ – a transition zone between two ecosystems, in this case, land and water,” says soil biologist and ecologist Sultan Ahmed Ismail, one of the pioneers of worm research in India. The species that thrive in these ecotones, called “edge species”, are integral to the ecosystem’s wellbeing. The polychaetes are among these edge species, particularly a group of worms called nereids.

Like fish, these nereids need the dissolved oxygen in the saline waters to survive. They get this oxygen by burrowing into the soil and breathing through the surface of their bodies; some species have external gills. They eat detritus: the organic matter produced by the decomposition of other organisms and waste products that settles at the water bottom. This detritus contains dead phytoplankton, which is highly nutritious for fish, crabs and other crustaceans, says Ismail.
The fish and crustaceans rely on this detritus, which they get by consuming the worms. While it may seem more efficient for the fish and crabs to directly eat the detritus, there are several reasons why they prefer to eat the worms themselves, says Ismail. The nutrients from the detritus concentrate in the worms; the worms also are easier to digest than the detritus itself. “These poachers aren’t just stealing worms, they’re destroying an entire ecosystem by breaking the food chain, a vital link that keeps it together,” says Ismail.
“When natural predators take away the worms, it’s a gradual process and they’re soon replenished. But when hundreds and thousands of worms are dug out of the soil and taken away by force, their numbers cannot be replenished at the same rate. There aren’t enough adult worms left to accomplish that,” Ismail says.
If the worms start to dwindle, so will the fish, crab and the livelihoods of locals, including Jyothi.

“Worm poaching has been happening for years, and it’s particularly affecting the livelihoods of 2,000 tribal women who depend on hand fishing for a living in these parts,” says S Meerasa, founder and director of the non-governmental organisation the Mangrove Foundation of India.
The poachers usually sell the worms to fish farms, which pay 1,000-4,000₹ (£10-40/$12-50) to poachers for every kilogram of worms they harvest. The worms are fed to fish and prawns. “The amino acids in the worms add to the colour of the fish, so they’re in great demand,” says Ismail. While some fishing is legal, there are also numerous illegal farms in Pulicat, which are frequently ordered to shut down.
“The poachers steal the worms in broad daylight, and they usually start digging from 6:00,” says Lakshmi, 60, who hauls fish with Jyothi and also goes by one name. “They’ve erected makeshift sheds and pitched tents on the outskirts of our villages.” The women describe the poachers as “brash and thoughtless”. They’ve scooped out so many worms from the soil that there are now huge craters along the wetlands, they say, some two or three feet deep. “Elderly people who are afraid of falling into them have stopped handpicking,” Lakshmi says.
“I have friends and neighbours who have been badly hurt,” Jyoti adds. “Some have broken hands and legs, and worst of all, hips, while falling into the craters.”
The pockmarked wetlands are a serious hazard to everyone. But the stress on the ecosystem is also concerning. “Ten years ago, I could walk a kilometre from my home and handpick fish from the mangroves outside,” Jyoti says. “Today, we need to walk 5km to the nearest handpicking spot and even there, fish and crab which once used to be abundant are dwindling at an alarming rate.”
Women from our community have chased poachers away from key handpicking areas – Jyoti
There is also a vicious cycle that will occur as the worms become scarcer, Ismail says. The fewer there are, the less arable the soil becomes. And the less arable the soil becomes, the fewer worms will survive. “These are very sensitive worms,” he says. “Any change in the water content and the salinity of the soil (which can happen when poachers dig out chunks of them) can affect the remaining ones too.”
It isn’t just animals that are suffering from the worms’ decline. Worm poaching could be one of the causes for a slow decline of mangrove vegetation at Pulicat Lake, Meerasa says. This is a problem, as mangroves reduce the risk of soil erosion, protect coasts from tsunamis, and aid in the capture of carbon that can slow global warming.
Various NGOs, including the Mangrove Foundation of India, have tried to fill the ecological gaps. Since 2021 alone, the Mangrove Foundation has planted around 50,000 mangrove saplings. In 2012, Meerasa says they began a community effort to dig canals to support the transplanted mangroves. In some spots of the lagoon, especially in interior villages, a lack of water circulation for the mangroves was a growing problem. Digging the canals was a community effort, however, the worm poachers have hampered progress. “When they dig up the worms, they end up filling in the mud bunds of the canal with dirt and silt, impeding the water flow and disrupting our efforts.”
With the government authorities taking little action, locals say, it has been up to nearby communities – particularly handpickers like Jyoti and Lakshmi – to try to oppose the poachers. “Women from our community have chased poachers away from key handpicking areas. We’ve taken turns standing vigil at many spots around our village,” says Jyoti. The Tamil Nadu Forest Department, which oversees the region, did not respond to the BBC’s requests for comment.
Some villages have had more luck than others. In the Palaverkadu area of Pulicat, locals say worm poaching has reduced substantially.
With other women from the union, Veeramal, who goes by one name, has taken a three-step strategy: watching out for suspicious activity, trying to speak to the would-be poachers, and finally, reporting them. Not reporting them to the authorities, but to a network of fishermen and other prominent members of the community, who then try to reason with the poachers further. “When women put their mind to it, they can do anything,” says Veeramal, 46, a former treasurer of the Thiruvallur District Fish Worker Welfare Association, a local union.

“We are hyper-alert to small groups of men who may not be from our particular village. When we see them skulking around, especially with trowels, shovels and buckets, we know that they’re here to poach worms,” she says. “I engage firmly and kindly… I talk to them about the repercussions of what they’re doing.” Sometimes she says the reasoning works, and the men retreat – at least on that occasion.
It doesn’t always work. If she finds that the men are rude, physically abusive or just not open to discussion, she calls on her network. “I call the men of our village, and they take over,” she says. “Instinctively, if I suspect a group of poachers could be violent, I call to report them before engaging. But we’ve never given up on engagement.”
This approach has not worked in all of the surrounding villages. Often, women say, villagers themselves are bribed to look the other way. “We can’t be everywhere and their numbers keep increasing,” says Jyoti.
Officials from the Tamil Nadu Forest Department, responsible for law enforcement in the Pulicat area, did not respond to the BBC’s requests for comment.
Worm poaching is not just limited to Pulicat. “Worm poaching is a problem across India,” says Ismail. “We just don’t hear about it.” The worms are found in similar ecosystems in parts of Mumbai, Kochi and Chilika Lake in Odisha, which is India’s largest brackish water ecosystem.
The solution Ismail suggests may seem surprising: not punishing the poachers, but rather legalising the worm trade, restricting it to a very small area of Pulicat Lake. This would keep poachers from running roughshod over the entire ecosystem, he says. And in this predefined area, the worms can be cultured from the larval stage to meet the needs of the aquaculture industry. This would require careful monitoring, he says. Meerasa adds that this could be coupled with significantly raising fines for illegal activity.
“[Poachers] are only thinking of the here and now, the money they will earn today, but what about tomorrow?” Veeramal asks. “In the end, we try to tell them that what they’re stealing aren’t just worms – it’s our future.”
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Taken From BBC News
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250311-the-women-fighting-indias-worm-poachers
Art & Culture
An Italian cultural ambassador’s guide to Rome

Alberto Angela has made a career out of exploring his hometown. Here are his favourite spots to unearth Rome’s millennia of secrets, from the Vatican Museums to Ostia Antica.
From the 1st-Century BCE ruins of the Imperial Forum to the Trevi Fountain’s Baroque splendour, Rome packs such an overwhelming myriad of postcard-worthy landmarks that digging through its historical layers can make any visitor feel like they’ve turned into an archaeologist.
Alberto Angela, a TV presenter, global ambassador for Italian heritage, art, history and culture, and a familiar face in Italian living rooms for nearly four decades knows a thing or two about his hometown’s 2,000 years of history – and he’s ready to help visitors discover it, especially as this year’s Jubilee newly puts it into the limelight.
“Rome has two faces,” says Angela. “The Papal – that of the rich – and its working-class soul, the one that is closest to us… the most interesting,” he says.
In a city where grand basilicas lie next to shady alleyways, Angela recommends exploring without cramming in too many sights – so that one can “immerse oneself in the world of the ancients”.
Having followed in the footsteps of his famous father, Piero Angela – Italy’s most well-known documentarist often called a “national treasure” – the younger Angela attributes his career and love of history to growing up in the Italian capital.
“You breathe history here,” he says. “Anyone who comes to Rome can see the same afterglow Caesar would have seen. You aren’t in a place that doesn’t exist anymore. Rome was rebuilt on top of its ancient structures.”
For Angela, this is what makes Rome so unique. “The city did not cancel its history, unlike many others,” he says. “Living here, you understand the ancients.”
Emerging from a small market settlement on the Tiber, the city of Rome was at an intersection between the Mediterranean and mainland Europe, making it a crossroads that swelled into the world’s first true metropolis. Angela believes that the city’s immense global-reaching political and symbolic impact throughout history means everyone has a “piece” of Rome inside them – which is why it can have such a profound impact on those who visit it.
Here are Angela’s favourite ways to experience ancient history in modern Rome.

1. Best place to experience ancient Rome: The Palatine Hill
Much of central Rome’s labyrinthine urban grid is a direct heir of the former imperial capital, with public spaces like the Baroque Piazza Navona or Campo de’ Fiori piazza taking their shape from a bygone stadium and theatre, respectively.
Tip:
Trying to cram in all of Rome’s main landmarks in a few days is an Olympian feat, so Angela recommends first-time visitors follow a three-day rule.
“See the major sights on the first and second days – Saint Peter’s, the Pantheon, the Colosseum,” he says. “And then on the third day, choose yourself, to see something cool [off the beaten path]. When you get home, you’ll feel you’ll have seen the things everyone talks about, but you’ll also have seen something you yourself like.”
But on the Palatine Hill, the mythical birthplace of Rome, you can actually walk on the same stones where emperors Augustus and Nero once dwelled.
“It’s the place where the Caesars lived and died,” Angela says.
As the legend goes, twin brothers Romulus and Remus received an omen from the gods and decided to lay the foundations of a new city on the Palatine Hill in 753 BCE. In the subsequent centuries, the Palatine developed into an exclusive neighbourhood of patrician villas and Imperial palaces – indeed, it’s where the word “palace” takes its root.
One of the legendary seven hills of the ancient city, offering an incomparable vantage point with a 360 panorama, Palatine Hill offers what Angela describes as “a beautiful walk”, with arguably the best views of the Colosseum – the unmistakable “star of ancient Rome”.
Visiting the Palatine is a full immersion into the life of the Roman empire, with a plethora of impressive ruins, including the mosaic floors of Augustus’s palace, Domitian’s hippodrome and the balcony overlooking the Circus Maximus racecourse.

2. The Vatican’s best-kept secret: The Necropolis
As the centre of Catholicism and one of the most important sites in Christendom, the Unesco-listed Vatican is firmly entrenched among Rome’s unmissable sights. In honour of the 2025 Jubilee, tourists and pilgrims alike are flocking to Saint Peter’s Basilica to walk through its Holy Door, opened for the occasion every quarter of a century.
But while much of the Holy See’s architectural majesty is immediately apparent – from the Michelangelo- and Giacomo della Porta-designed designed dome of Saint Peter’s all the way to the Sistine Chapel and Vatican Museums – some of its greatest treasures are hidden underground.
“Once in Saint Peter’s, you walk on beautiful marble floorings, you look up to the Baldachin,” says Angela, renowned for his 2015 TV miniseries Alla Scoperta dei Musei Vaticani (Discovering the Vatican Museums). “But you can go underground. The Popes’ tombs can be found underneath, but under those is the ancient Roman graveyard where Peter the Apostle himself was buried. The foundations of [the Basilica] are a graveyard.”
The Vatican Necropolis, excavated only in the 1940s, features mausoleums belonging to citizens of many faiths, as well as a cluster of tombs called “Field P”, suspected by some scholars to hold the burial chamber of the Church founder himself.
“It’s a trip into ancient Rome that you wouldn’t expect to find [there]”, Angela says. “It makes you understand how Rome really is.”
Visitors must book visits to the Necropolis on the official website of Saint Peter’s Basilica. The dress code mandates covered shoulders and below-the-knee clothing.

3. Best church for experiencing all of Rome’s historical eras in one fell swoop: The Basilica of San Clemente al Laterano
Rome has more than 900 Catholic sites of worship built over the course of the centuries. Now and then, there’s one that best encapsulates the city’s multi-millennial history, like Angela’s pick, the Basilica of San Clemente.
“This Basilica conceals the three souls of Rome – Baroque, medieval and ancient,” Angela says. “Anyone who comes across it is enchanted.”
Tucked behind the Colosseum and a composite of two different churches, San Clemente – dedicated to the third pope of the same name – has been a site of worship since ancient Roman times, when it served as a temple for the Zoroastrian cult of Mithras.
The temple eventually swelled into its grand current form, featuring an intricate overlay of architectural styles – from its Renaissance courtyard and the Mannerist facade of the main Basilica, all the way to its underground, early medieval second structure, which hides ancient Roman remnants.
“The exterior is beautiful and well-maintained, from the 16th Century, with a Cosmatesque [geometric] marble flooring, and then you take the stairs and arrive at the medieval Basilica,” says Angela. “And you find yourself right in ancient Rome, in a Roman temple.”

4. Best off-the-beaten-path museum: The Museo della Comunicazione Scritta dei Romani
From 17th-Century Villa Borghese to the Capitoline, the city’s oldest art gallery, Rome has no shortage of museums displaying a vast array of artefacts – matched by equally colossal crowds of spectators.
While Angela certainly recommends visitors enjoy the time-worn classics, he also suggests a quieter, quirkier alternative: the Museo della Comunicazione Scritta dei Romani.
Conveniently located a mere five-minute walk from the Termini train station, the museum is found inside the Baths of Diocletian, where the majestic 4th-Century Imperial termae have survived in remarkable condition. It is also home to a curious collection of esoteric Roman artefacts, showing how the ancients dabbled in the occult.
“It’s a museum dedicated to how Romans expressed themselves,” Angela says. “But there’s a part dedicated to magic, voodoo of sorts.”
Superstition was the unspoken crux of ancient Roman life, but one that we often overlook. “It’s a world that often gets left behind, that of spiritual beliefs,” he adds. “They found the objects in a parking lot.”
Among the objects on display is a large copper cauldron, curse tablets (defixiones), ritual tools and even Christian spells.
“For someone coming from the station, especially if it rains, it’s quite an intriguing thing to visit,” says Angela.

5. Best for exploring Baroque Rome: Palazzo Doria Pamphilj
The 16th to 18th Centuries were a crucial time for Rome’s urban development, as the city’s aristocratic families – including the Farnese, Borghese, Doria and Pamphilj – vied for social dominance through commissioning lavish building projects, all designed in the Baroque style favoured by the Papal Counter-Reformation.
“I’d advise anyone coming to visit Rome to see the palaces of the powerful Roman families,” says Angela.
While listing a few examples – Palazzo Colonna and Palazzo Farnese among them – few rival the opulence of the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, Rome’s very own “Versailles”, in Angela’s words.
The product of an alliance of noble families, what resulted was a Baroque fantasy come to life and an impressive art collection featuring the works of many of Italy’s greats, from Titian to Raphael.
Its crown jewel is its Hall of Mirrors, commissioned by Gabriele Valvassori in the 1730s and featuring whimsical frescos, gilded Venetian frescos and ornate gold-plated furniture.
“I had never been prior to shooting [a TV special] and it’s truly spectacular,” he says. “It truly surpasses anything else.”

6. Best historic landmark outside of the centre: Ostia Antica
Many visitors coming to Rome don’t know that the city has what Angela considers its very own “Pompeii” around 32km from the city centre: Ostia Antica.
Once Rome’s sea port, potentially from as early as the 7th Century BCE, Ostia Antica developed into a bustling seaside suburb, reaching a peak of 75,000 inhabitants in the late Imperial age. While the city declined after the empire’s fall, and the coastline ended up advancing by 3.2km, much of the ancient town that once stood there has been preserved.
“You lose yourself there, you can see everything,” Angela says. “Bakeries, public bathrooms (latrines), homes, apartment blocks… street businesses, not too dissimilar to those of today.”
A tour of Ostia Antica can show you much of the amenities and features of ancient Roman life – from its 1st-Century BCE theatre, to its forum, public baths and necropolis.
For Angela, Ostia Antica best preserves the “popolare” (working-class) soul of ancient Rome – one which its newer counterpart, the beach suburb Lido di Ostia, has carried on in modern form.
Ostia Antica is a roughly 30-minute drive from central Rome, and can be reached in around the same time by taking the Metromare commuter rail from the Porta S Paolo station.
Taken From BBC News
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