The Fountains of Rome

 No one can visit Rome without falling in love with its fountains. In his chapter on the fountains, Edward Hutton traced their origins back to ancient Rome, described their destruction during the Dark Ages, and their revival by the Papacy during the Renaissance. He then took his readers on a walking tour of his favorites.

Horace tells us somewhere that he is the friend of fountains, and, indeed, no true Roman whether of the ancient or the modern world, can ever have been without some sentiment for them, since, in fact, they are the joy of Rome, her voice, as it were, a pleasant and a joyful voice; for no city in Europe is so truly a city of running waters. All day long they waken in the heart some mystery of delight and refreshment; -- the slender jets of water wavering between the cypresses in the shadow, flashing in the sun, splashing among the statues on the cold marble. And their song in the cool, diaphanous mornings of spring is a song of life, of joy, of the brief joy of life…. 

 

 

In the fifteenth century the Popes of the Renaissance, wishing to return to her the leadership of the world, gave her back her waters, and suddenly, in a moment, as though by enchantment, she arose once more out of the wilderness and the ruins, healed and whole at the sound of that song. 

 

Often very early in those spring mornings which are so fair in Rome, or maybe on an autumn evening, under a moon great and golden as the sun, I have wandered through the city of fountains for the sake of their song. It begins with the strange artificial voice of Bernini’s Barcaccia in the Piazza di Spagna, where the Acqua Vergine falls humbly at the feet of Madonna, that gallery of war shooting forth from her guns, not death, but refreshment. Then, as I pass into the silence up the beautiful Scala di Spagna, and turn towards the Pincio, presently, still far off, I hear the most beautiful voice in Rome, the single melody, languid and full of mystery, and all enchantment, of the fountain before the Villa Medici, where, under the primeval ilex, a single jet of water towers like some exquisite slender lily, to droop, to fall in unimagined loveliness into the brimming vase of marble, so admirably simple and in place under these sacred trees, before that lofty villa, which, in some sort, dominates the whole City, and whence one may look across the towers and domes to the Capitol, to S. Peter’s, to the Campagna stretching away to the sea.

 

No other fountain in Rome is at once so simple and so beautiful as this, nor is there another which commands so wide and so majestic a prospect. And yet, if one passes down the slope of the Pincio into the Piazza del Popolo, and so crosses the Ponte Margherita, and passes at last under the height of the Vatican, comes at last into the Piazza di S. Pietro, one finds there…two fountains, quite as beautiful in their way, though truly less simple, singing ever before the threshold of the shrine of the Apostle. Rising in the shape, as it were, of fleurs de lys, the water harmonises perfectly, not only with the fountains themselves, but with the beautiful piazza in which they are so marvelously placed, forming together with it the masterpiece of Bernini. 

 

                                              

We come to the Piazza Navona, where stands the most extraordinary, perhaps of all Bernini’s works, the brilliant but bizarre fountain with its obelisk and statues personifying the four great rivers of the world.

 

It is again to a work of Bernini we come, as, passing on through the City, we stand at last before the fountain of Trevi, which resembles the Acqua Paolina, and which may be heard above all the noise of the piazza. And it is fitting that, since Rome is the city of fountains, to make sure of one’s return to her, it should be necessary to make an offering, not at the grave of Romulus, nor at the shrine of S.Peter, but to the greatest and most famous of her fountains, for it is said, whoever, at the hour of departure, drinks a cup of the water of Trevi and pays for it, has not looked on Rome for the last time. ### 

  

Edward Hutton: Rome, fourth edition, 1922, pp. 318-323.

Trevi and the Temple of Clitumnus

  

 

 

In the vicinity of Trevi Edward Hutton visited the Temple of the ancient river god, Clitumnus.* In this brief chapter he quoted the American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, as well as Roman authors Pliny and Virgil.

 

 

The way from Foligno to Trevi takes one at once almost into Virgilian country, the valley of the Clitumnus. If the night is spent at Montefalco—not so daring an adventure as it seems—one must drive to Trevi by a way as pleasant as any in the world, following the river as it flows, and crossing both river and railway to climb up to Trevi. But the way by San Martino is beautiful exceedingly, and the torrents after the rain only add to the charm of the road. All travellers have wondered at Trevi since she perched herself on the top of her precipitous hill, and though few of them visited her on her lonely height, she impressed her memory upon them even from a distance….

 

Well, I was tired, too, when I came to Trevi at sunset, and the inn was poor even for an Umbrian albergo. But I forgot the poverty of my room in the relief of being able to sleep; and, indeed, the bed was soft and clean, things common in Italy even in the poorest places….

 

In this Virgilian country, Hutton quoted eight lines from Virgil's second Georgic that mentioned snowy flocks and sacred bulls bathing in the river.

 

The white, the snowy flocks of Clitumnus, where are they now? And the bull that bathed in the sacred stream before it was led the chiefest victim to the temples of the gods, the triumphs of Rome; and those temples, are they quite gone from our world? Let us see.

 

As you set out for Spello, if you are wise enough to go by road--it is but twelve miles--when you have passed a third of the way you come to a tiny Temple high over the stream, which here among the trees and the grass has its source. And it is the Temple of the river god that you look on, in all its little splendour of silence and ruin. At least, I hope it is; but some speak of a Christian building and will not listen to Pliny. But however that may be, it is a place too beautiful for any to pass by. I confess that, following the advice of the younger Pliny, I bathed there beneath the glancing, whispering poplars, and found, as he had said, the water as cold as snow. But in vain, in vain, I looked for the god Clitumnus and could not find him, though Pliny said that he was there, “not naked but adorned with the toga”. And then in the shade, within sound of the beautiful river, I read again in Virgil. Is it not thus one might desire to spend endless days?

But for the traveller by road the sun is ever something of a god; imperious as he is, he commands our days. He was slanting down the sky, reminding me that Spello was still far and I alone, and night would follow him. So I set out at last with regret; and later I came to San Giacomo in Poseta, where I saw some of the finest Lo Spagnas in Italy, especially a Coronation of the Blessed Virgin, his masterpiece, though stolen from Filippo Lippi. And so I came to the gates of Spoleto.

 

### 

*Note. The river is now called the Clitunno and flows into a tributary of the Tiber.

 

Edward Hutton: Assisi and Umbria Revisited, London, 1953. Pp. 67-69.

Edward Hutton: The Fountains of Rome

 

No one can visit Rome without falling in love with its fountains. In his chapter on the fountains, Edward Hutton traced their origins back to ancient Rome, described their destruction during the Dark Ages, and then their revival by the Papacy in the Renaissance. He then took his readers on a walking tour of his favorites.

Horace tells us somewhere that he is the friend of fountains, and, indeed, no true Roman whether of the ancient or the modern world, can ever have been without some sentiment for them, since, in fact, they are the joy of Rome, her voice, as it were, a pleasant and a joyful voice; for no city in Europe is so truly a city of running waters. All day long they waken in the heart some mystery of delight and refreshment; -- the slender jets of water wavering between the cypresses in the shadow, flashing in the sun, splashing among the statues on the cold marble. And their song in the cool, diaphanous mornings of spring is a song of life, of joy, of the brief joy of life…. 

 

 

In the fifteenth century the Popes of the Renaissance, wishing to return to her the leadership of the world, gave her back her waters, and suddenly, in a moment, as though by enchantment, she arose once more out of the wilderness and the ruins, healed and whole at the sound of that song. 

 

Often very early in those spring mornings which are so fair in Rome, or maybe on an autumn evening, under a moon great and golden as the sun, I have wandered through the city of fountains for the sake of their song. It begins with the strange artificial voice of Bernini’s Barcaccia in the Piazza di Spagna, where the Acqua Vergine falls humbly at the feet of Madonna, that gallery of war shooting forth from her guns, not death, but refreshment. Then, as I pass into the silence  up the beautiful Scala di Spagna, and turn towards the Pincio, presently, still far off, I hear the most beautiful voice in Rome, the single melody, languid and full of mystery, and all enchantment, of the fountain before the Villa Medici, where, under the primeval ilex, a single jet of water towers like some exquisite slender lily, to droop, to fall in unimagined loveliness into the brimming vase of marble, so admirably simple and in place under these sacred trees, before that lofty villa, which, in some sort, dominates the whole City, and whence one may look across the towers and domes to the Capitol, to S. Peter’s, to the Campagna stretching away to the sea.

 

No other fountain in Rome is at once so simple and so beautiful as this, nor is there another which commands so wide and so majestic a prospect. And yet, if one passes down the slope of the Pincio into the Piazza del Popolo, and so crosses the Ponte Margherita, and passes at last under the height of the Vatican, comes at last into the Piazza di S. Pietro, one finds there…two fountains, quite as beautiful in their way, though truly less simple, singing ever before the threshold of the shrine of the Apostle. Rising in the shape, as it were, of fleurs de lys, the water harmonises perfectly, not only with the fountains themselves, but with the beautiful piazza in which they are so marvelously placed, forming together with it the masterpiece of Bernini. 

 

                                              

We come to the Piazza Navona, where stands the most extraordinary, perhaps of all Bernini’s works, the brilliant but bizarre fountain with its obelisk and statues personifying the four great rivers of the world.

 

It is again to a work of Bernini we come, as, passing on through the City, we stand at last before the fountain of Trevi, which resembles the Acqua Paolina, and which may be heard above all the noise of the piazza. And it is fitting that, since Rome is the city of fountains, to make sure of one’s return to her, it should be necessary to make an offering, not at the grave of Romulus, nor at the shrine of s. Peter, but to the greatest and most famous of her fountains, for it is said, whoever, at the hour of departure, drinks a cup of the water of Trevi and pays for it, has not looked on Rome for the last time. ### 

  

Edward Hutton: Rome, fourth edition, 1922, pp. 318-323.