Notes from the North

The non-Catholic cemetery in Rome is a good place to spend some quiet time in. By mid-February the camellias are in flower and the box hedges make a sturdy fretwork of green through the grey crosses and tombstones. Keats has his grave here, as do Shelley and Gramsci, and many others less well-known.   Backing onto one end of the cemetery is the huge centuries-old pyramid tomb the praetor (magistrate), Caius Cestius commissioned to hold his bones.  It is still so perfect you might think it’s a monstrous testament to a 19 th  century rich man’s arrogance rather than the mausoleum of a Roman citizen who lived some time around 12 BC. But that’s Rome all over - the ruins and vestiges of ancient imperial grandeur and self-delusion still cluttering large parts of the city, rendering even the most superficial digging up of the roads and parks a delicate - and costly - business.    The Centrale Montemartini is in the Ostiense quarter of the city a little further south fr...