Week Three of Italy: Finally Getting Out of Sicily, and Rome!

One of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva's spoiled cloister cats. 

I can hardly believe that I'm done with my on-the-ground research! It definitely hasn't sunk in yet--it's quite surreal, really! This week was a little lighter than some of the others--five true cloisters, and four almost-cloister gardens--but it was also one of my favorites in that out of all of those, four of the cloisters and all four gardens involved talking to Dominicans in person about how they use, maintain, and see their cloisters, which is something that always helps me to see the cloisters in a richer context. The week was also spent mostly in Rome, which is my favorite city in mainland Europe (so far), which certainly did not hurt. 

And now I'm heading home for the first time in six months, and I can't wait! 

Sunday was the day I saw my last non-Roman cloister! I'd been planning to go to Monreale on Saturday once I had a rental car, but when I didn't get a rental car, I had to wait for the dust of that whole debacle to settle before a day trip to Monreale was a possibility. Entertainingly, on the way up to Monreale by bus, while waiting at the bus stop, a taxi driver tried to scam me into paying him (ten or fifteen times as much as the bus cost!) to take me up to Monreale by lying about a) how long the bus would take to get there, b) how close the bus was to the cathedral, c) when the bus was going to arrive, and d) when the cathedral was opening and closing that day. Sadly for him, I knew what I was doing and that he was lying to me, so he didn't succeed in his scam. 

Sadly for me, the cloister is closed on Sundays, but there is a roof walk where one can get a view over it, so I got to see it that way. Not ideal, but since it's not a Dominican cloister anyway (it's Benedictine, originally--possibly Cistercian, given the fountain house, although I don't have data on that yet) I wasn't too disappointed. There were some interesting things about it even from a more distant view point: almost all (or possibly all) the trees in the cloister are different fruiting trees (I'm not sure if the palm trees are--palm tree identification is, shockingly, not a strong point of mine). That's interesting from a typological and utility point of view. As well, the hedges that surrounded each of the quadrants had gaps in them wide enough to walk through, meaning that the space inside each quadrant is theoretically usable for things like events. One of the things I'm going to exploring as part of the design guidelines I create for future cloister garden design is increasing the useful space of cloisters, especially if that's the community's only outdoor space. If there's more usable space, it's better for recreation, quality of life, but also the hosting of events.

I was thrilled to get back to Rome! I came at the end of March/beginning of April this year, and loved it so much I was sad to leave. It was lovely to be back, at least for a few days. 

My first stop in Rome was the Angelicum, or more properly the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, called the Angelicum because Thomas Aquinas is known as the Angelic Doctor. The cloister at the Angelicum is used by the students as well as the friars and faculty there, which is unique among the cloisters I've seen. Apparently the students got in trouble recently for climbing the orange trees and picking the oranges!

I also got to see the friars' garden and the students' garden, but since they're not cloistered, they're not coming into my research except tangentially. They were lovely, though--both full of fruit trees. 

The second stop was Santa Sabina, which is not only one of the oldest churches in Rome, but also the second church the Dominicans ever had in Rome (the first being San Sisto Vecchio, but that belonged to Dominican nuns, not the friars). It has one true cloister, but two other areas which are cloister-like either in configuration or function. One crazy episode in my time at Santa Sabina was being (totally unexpectedly) introduced to the Master of the Dominican Order, who is in charge of and responsible for the entire Order. So, he now knows my name and about my research. Which I find slightly mind-blowing.

The true cloister of Santa Sabina is interesting in that it has box hedges shaped like stars in the four quadrants, stars being a symbol of St. Dominic. I haven't seen that in any other cloister on this trip! It's also raised quite a bit above the level of the surrounding cloister walk. It's not a small cloister--34 paces on a side--but apparently it gets a bit crowded when there are the usual thirty-five friars living there!

There's also a very simple cloister-planted (i.e. foursquare) garden on a terrace overlooking the city, with four squares of grass, and orange trees at the center. 

Lastly, there's something that is, I believe, referred to as the "Cloister of the Oranges", even though it's not cloistered, or at least not on all sides. It contains an orange tree that was allegedly planted by St. Dominic, and a whole bunch of other orange trees that were propagated from that one. It was under construction when I was there, though, so not looking its best.  

One of the cloisters that I was most excited to visit was that of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, my favorite church in Rome (and also the only Gothic church in Rome...there may be a connection there!). I got to visit this cloister first when I was in Rome during Holy Week this year. They started the Easter Vigil liturgy in their cloister, which I was absolutely thrilled about, and which sparked a side-search in my research to find out how many other Dominican parishes start their Easter Vigil liturgies in their cloister. (Not all of them, but a non-insignificant number, if you're wondering.) It's a really interesting cloister in that it's very well-used and well-loved by the Dominicans who live there, but it's not in the traditional foursquare layout, per se. (It does have symmetry to it, though. It's not totally asymmetrical.) It's also full of animals, evidently--the community has three cats, who all live in the cloister, and there are not only koi but also turtles in the pond in the center--and according to the friar I talked to, the turtles will lay eggs and hatch out baby turtles every year!

My last visit of the entire trip (crazy!) was to San Clemente al Laterano, a small, rather quirky little church that's just a few blocks for the Colosseum. It was given to the Irish Dominicans during some of the Elizabethan upheavals in Great Britain, and has remained in their possession ever since, which meant that I got showed around by a friar with an absolutely lovely Irish accent, very incongruous in Rome! 

San Clemente doesn't have a true cloister (they used to, but it got destroyed when a road was built through the district, unfortunately) but they have two gardens they've constructed in cloister-like ways (in terms of symmetry, use of water, &c) and a cloistered courtyard that is within metaphorical inches of me calling it a real cloister. So I spent quite a while there! 

My favorite of the three was the slightly smaller garden, which not only had an arbor, a fountain with a turtle in it, and short walls around the garden bit, built in the 20th century, that contained 9th century spolia (as one, apparently, does?), but ALSO is home, currently, to a seagull with a broken wing.

The larger garden, though, is also beautiful, with a variety of plantings, and plenty of places to sit. It feels like a relaxing place in a way that not a lot of the cloisters I've seen can match. 

And the front courtyard, while it doesn't look like much, is immensely satisfying to me not only as a demonstration of the way that the Dominicans 'repurposed' monastic architecture as a way of inviting people into their meditation and lives, but also as an example of a cloister-like space where the Easter Fire is lit before the Easter Vigil liturgy. 

And with that, my on-the-ground research was complete. Time to move on to writing my senior thesis, which is going to be way too long (for a typical senior thesis) and take up way too much of my time (while I love every minute). 

Thank you all so very much for reading! If, after following along on my journey, you have any questions about anything I've talked about (directly cloister garden related, Catholic topic related, travel related, or anything else!), please leave them on this post. In about a week, once I've recovered from jet lag, I will do a wrap-up and summary of the whole trip, and if I've gotten any questions, I will answer them then!