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
Tam O’Shanter is a rip-roaring tale of witches and alcohol, but it has hidden depths. On Burns Night this Sunday – and 235 years after the poem was published in 1791 – Scots everywhere may well be treated to a masterwork with a unique, universal appeal.
If you’re Scottish, or if you wish you were, then this Sunday is a red-letter day. Scotland’s greatest poet, Robert Burns, was born on 25 January 1759, and Burns Suppers are now held every year, all over the world, to mark his birthday. The guests drink whisky (not “whiskey”, please – that’s the Irish and US spelling), they eat haggis, tatties and neeps (don’t ask), and they hear some of the bard’s many ballads and poems. Ae Fond Kiss, To A Mouse and Auld Lang Syne are usually on the bill. And somebody may well recite Tam O’Shanter, a rip-roaring yarn about witchcraft and heavy drinking that was first published 235 years ago in 1791. It’s a poem that has even more to it than most Burns Supper regulars might realise.
“Tam O’Shanter is Burns’s masterpiece, it really is,” says Pauline Mackay, professor of Robert Burns studies and cultural heritage at the University of Glasgow. “It’s one of his most popular works, so when you say it’s your favourite Burns poem, people say, ‘Urgh, that’s so obvious’. But actually, I’ve been studying it for many, many years, and it’s so multifaceted. Burns brought all of his considerable talents to bear on capturing what inspires him, what motivates him, and his own perception of humanity and human nature.”
And that’s not all. Robert Irvine, the editor of Burns: Selected Poems and Songs, notes that there is a darkness to the poem that goes beyond its spine-tingling descriptions of the devil and his minions. “There’s some weird stuff going on there,” he says.
Most of the revellers are ‘rigwoodie hags’, but one witch, Nannie, is young, attractive and scantily clad
The poem tells the mock-heroic tale of Tam O’Shanter, a farmer who spends as much time drinking as he does working. At the end of one market day in Ayr, he retires to the pub with his “ancient, trusty, drouthy crony” Souter Johnnie (ie, Johnnie the shoemaker), never mind that his wife Kate is waiting at home. It’s only after hours of boozing and flirting with the landlady that Tam finally sets off on his horse, Maggie. But it’s a dark and stormy night, so he has to hold on to his hat, and sing songs to keep up his spirits. “Whiles holding fast his gude blue bonnet; / Whiles crooning o’er some auld Scots sonnet.” This reference to a “blue bonnet”, incidentally, is why beret-like flat hats with pom-poms are called Tam O’Shanters.
When he approaches Alloway’s Auld Kirk, Tam notices that a diabolical party is underway inside: witches and warlocks are dancing, and the devil himself, Auld Nick, is playing the bagpipes. Most of the revellers are “rigwoodie hags”, but one witch, Nannie, is so young, attractive and scantily clad that Tam yells out the only words he speaks in the poem: “Weel done, Cutty-sark!” This cat call would later lend its name to the Cutty Sark, a 19th-Century clipper ship that can be visited in Greenwich, London. Roughly translated, it means: “Well done, Short Dress!”
Nannie and her cohorts aren’t pleased to hear it: Tam has to flee on horseback with a crowd of screeching witches in hot pursuit, “Wi’ mony an eldritch skriech and hollo”. Luckily for him, witches can’t cross running water, and the River Doon is nearby. Tam manages to race over the bridge to safety, but Maggie the horse isn’t quite so fortunate. Nannie grabs hold of her tail just as she steps on to the Brig O’ Doon, and – spoiler alert – she is left with “scarce a stump”.
Rude jokes and chilling imagery
Carruthers calls it a “fairly hackneyed ghost story plot”, but the way Burns tells his story means that “there’s no other poem like it in Scottish literature”. Tam O’Shanter is “incredibly rich, so visual, so carefully crafted and so well-paced”, Mackay tells the BBC. “There’s just so much in there: everything from the way Burns has absorbed and assimilated the landscape and folklore of Ayrshire where he was born, and Dumfriesshire where he was writing the poem, to his keen interest in the supernatural, to the various comments that he makes on the complexities of human relationships and gender. All of this is so fascinating.”
There are lines in Scots, and others in English. There are rude jokes, and there is chillingly macabre imagery. There are tributes to the joys of getting drunk with friends in a cosy pub: “Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious. / O’er a’ the ills o’ life victorious!” And there are rueful philosophical musings on how transient those joys are: “But pleasures are like poppies spread, / You seize the flower, its bloom is shed.” Sometimes the narrator will address Tam himself: “O Tam, hadst thou but been sae wise, / As ta’en thou ain wife Kate’s advice!” At other times, he will address another character or the reader / listener – one reason, says Irvine, why the poem “lends itself to performance”, and has become a Burns Supper staple.
In fact, there isn’t much that Burns doesn’t do in Tam O’Shanter – and he does it all in rhyming iambic tetrameter. “He’s showing off,” says Irvine. “He’s doing one thing, and saying ‘Hey, look, I can do this other thing as well.’ In his first volume of poems, he does that between one poem and the next. He adopts different verse genres, he switches from Scots to English, he borrows from all sorts of different traditions – both what we think of now as the folk tradition, and the literary traditions of England and Scotland. It’s a virtuoso display of all the different things that he can do. And in Tam O’Shanter, he’s doing all that within one poem.”
Appropriately for a Burns Supper centrepiece, Tam O’Shanter is a feast, its most satisfying ingredient being its fond and insightful portrait of a character described as “the universal everyman” by Prof Gerard Carruthers, the editor of The Oxford Handbook of Robert Burns. Burns is admired for his egalitarian politics, and even in his rollicking horror comedy, his sympathy for the common man shines through. “Tam O’Shanter is a poem of misdirection,” Carruthers tells the BBC. “Burns is saying: ‘Look at this! Look at the witch! Look at the horse!’ Whereas in fact the real thing that he is talking about is the way in which we’re incorrigible as human beings.” The poem glows with “ridicule and affection at the same time for Tam, and by extension for the human psyche in general”.
It’s a poem about humanity – the pleasures and the appetites, the challenges and the frailties – Gerard Carruthers
Burns – a notorious womaniser – is especially sharp on masculine foibles. “Burns knows the male mind,” says Carruthers. “He knows that men in a lot of ways are stupid wee boys.” On the other hand, says Mackay, women may recognise themselves in Tam O’Shanter, too. “It’s a poem about humanity – the pleasures and the appetites, the challenges and the frailties – and I think that’s one of the reasons why Burns is so universally popular. He talks about what it is to be a human being – and everything that we see in different places throughout his poetic oeuvre is somehow represented in this one poem.”
Still, alongside its compassion, there is devilry of more than one kind in Tam O’Shanter. “The weird and disturbing thing about this poem is that Burns’s father, William Burnes, was a very pious and serious man who despaired of the libertine tendencies of his son,” says Irvine. “He organised repairs to Alloway Kirk when Burns and his brother were boys, and one of the reasons for that is that he wanted to be buried there – and he was. So, in 1784 Burns’s father was buried in Alloway churchyard, which Burns then makes famous as the site of a witches’ orgy. Was he getting revenge on his father for his disapproval of his eldest son?”
As well as everything else Burns is doing in Tam O’Shanter, it could be argued that he is almost literally dancing on his father’s grave. Anyone who hears it at a Burns Supper on Sunday will have plenty to chew on.
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Paris ( Imran Y. CHOUDHRY):- The Embassy of Pakistan organized an event on the archeological studies of the 5000-year-old Indus Valley Civilization with Dr. Aurore Didier, Director of the French Archaeological Mission of the Indus Bassin.
Representatives of the UNESCO World Heritage Center, the Agha Khan Development Network (AKDN), archaeologists, historians and diplomats attended the event, which was organized with the support of the “Cercle des Amis du Pakistan”.
Dr. Didier briefed the audience on the history of the archeological excavations carried out by French archeologists in Pakistan. She gave an update on the latest research resulting from ten years of excavations at Chanhu-daro, one of the emblematic sites of the ancient Indus Valley Civilization. She also addressed how the adaptation of ancient populations to river and environmental fluctuations can be a key to understanding the current crises related to climate change and natural disasters that heavily impact South Asia today.
Addressing the audience, Ambassador Mumtaz Zahra Baloch noted the seventy years of cooperation between Pakistan and France in the domain of archeology. She appreciated the contributions made by the French Archeological Mission in Pakistan in research on the Indus Valley Civilization; and in promoting knowledge and competencies amongst local communities and scholars.
The Ambassador also reiterated her warm support for the “Cercle des Amis du Pakistan” for its initiatives in highlighting the cultural richness and diversity of Pakistan.
Art & Culture
From Bank Lines to Bus Seats: Bold Lessons in Courtesy, Courage, and Everyday Survival
In the line of bill payers at the bank,
As the fairer sex,
If sick, don’t just be blank
“Ladies first”, “excuse me11, “before you please.”
For deals with unpaid bills,
Ask for goods back, threat if you will,
Repeat the request for a job.
You may make it from the mob,
Instead of standing, share the seat on the bus
Isn’t it much better than making a fuss,
Whatever you do during tug-of-war, do not push the rope
Or you’ll be the laughing stock amidst cries of, “What a dope.”
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