Searching For Roman Culture Beyond 'Angels & Demons'

April 30, 2009 at 11:41 AM | by egw | 0 Comments

Who knew one man's horrible haircut could cast such a long shadow? Tom Hanks may have shed his greasy "professorial" mop from "The Da Vinci Code", but with posters for "Angels & Demons" suddenly appearing on the sides of buses everywhere, we fear for not only our own souls, but also for the soul of Rome, the city in which we are informed the movie is set.

The prequel features "symbologist" Robert Langdon running around making Secret Connections to everything, and was written to take place largely in the Vatican. Despite the Church banning director Ron Howard from filming in Vatican City, "Angels & Demons" tours have been springing up all over the place as local operators take advantage of American tourists' willingness to believe anything as long as they read it in a paperback thriller. We haven't read the book yet, so we've crossed these kind of adventures off our list... but what to replace them with?

Brown is hardly the first author to seek inspiration in Rome. Henry James, who set part of his novella Daisy Miller in Rome, was such a frequent visitor that he wrote an essay about how great Rome is when all the tourists have gone. (Sorry, Hank!) The poet John Keats overstayed his welcome just a bit when, on an extended European tour, he died there -- definitely not an experience we'd like to recreate. But James Joyce was inspired to begin Ulysses near Piazza de Spagna; his old (and brief) apartment isn't open to the public, but you can see a plaque dedicated to him at Via Frattina 52.

Got any suggestions for can't-miss cultural attractions that don't begin with "Dan" and end with "Brown"? Sound off in the comments.

[Photo: Edgar Zuniga Jr.]

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