Episode 1 Rome Unpacked

Hi, I'm Andrew Graham Dixon

and I'm an art historian.

These ancient roads are slightly bumpy.

And I'm Giorgio Locatelli and I'm a cook.

We've been all over Italy,

revealing her gastronomic and artistic treasures,

but now we've come to the beating heart of the country, Rome.

It's a 2,000 year old metropolis where past and present collide.

It's as unique for an art lover...

In the same moment he's also Christ on the cross.

..as it is for a food lover.

Today I'm going to cook you a dish that is really steep in history.

We will test traditional recipes beloved by the Romans.

-I'm not leaving this here.

-He's not going to let me have any.

And we'll plunge our forks into the cultures that have shaped the city.

The Trevi Fountain, famous as Italian ice cream.

We'll explore Rome's greatest works of art and architecture.

Uno. Due. Tre.

-Full of light...

-Incredible.

..but also, sometimes, darkness.

It's the voice of conscience.

I think it's a truthful voice.

I cannot imagine anything to do in life better than this.

And with you in the back, as well.

It's always been my belief that to understand Rome,

you must first understand the Roman people.

They've always been the driving force behind the city.

From ancient times, the Romans have acclaimed each new Emperor...

..roared their approval or disapproval of each new Pope

and they show no sign of stopping that.

They're always larger than life,

divided, opinionated,

passionate, unpredictable.

Rome might be Italy's centre of government...

..but no-one could be harder to govern than the Romans.

Our journey begins in the historic centre of Rome,

the politically charged Capitoline Hill.

The smallest and most important of

the seven hills of ancient Rome,

it was originally the site of one of the city's most sacred temples

and later became the seat of the Senate.

-Look at this.

-Amazing.

Excuse me.

Caput Mundi. Here we are.

But it's empty. We have the whole square to ourselves.

That is unbelievable.

That's like having an opera performance just for you.

But it is like a piece of theatre.

-Yeah.

-This is THE place.

Yeah, yeah, you're right.

So many things happened here.

Friends, Romans, lend me your ears.

After the death of Caesar,

Petrarch, he comes here to receive his laurel crown

and then Napoleon declares his short-lived rule over Italy.

Not very important. Don't talk about him.

But still, they always come here.

-This is the place.

-Even in the Second World War,

General Clark really didn't feel like

he'd achieved anything until he arrived here.

Well, we talk about, often, Michelangelo the sculptor...

-Yeah.

-..Michelangelo the painter, who created the Sistine Chapel...

-Yeah.

-..but sometimes we forget, this is Michelangelo the architect,

and he creates this beautiful star pavement,

almost like this is the sun.

And at the centre of it all,

this great statue of Marcus Aurelius,

one of the most famous statues in the world.

This statue's stood here, really, for 2,000 years.

The very first equestrian statue.

And in Roman times this signified the status of the ruler,

that the Emperor, he is astride the horse,

just as he is, metaphorically,

he's in charge of his people.

There he is, the great philosopher emperor,

founder of modern mindfulness,

author of works on happiness.

Extraordinary man.

The only reason it survived was that Pope Paul III,

for whom Michelangelo redesigned this square during the Renaissance,

he actually believed that to be a representation of the very first

Christian emperor, Constantine.

-I see.

-And that's why he allowed it to remain,

because all the Roman pagan monuments...

-All melted.

-If they were made of bronze, they go.

So this thing only survives because of a mistake.

Fantastic. Thank God for that.

-One of the most famous statues in the world.

-It's beautiful.

Look at the horse.

There's two Romes, always.

There's the Rome of the great and the powerful,

and there's the Rome of the people, the Rome of the mob.

And this place is where the two meet each other.

Andrew, come, I want to ask you something.

You know what that mean?

Senatus Populusque Romanus.

It's a central idea of Ancient Rome.

Those who rule, only rule with the collaboration of the people.

With the collaboration... of the people...

of Rome. That means a representation

of the mob, as we call it.

The modern world is built on this value, on this idea,

that the people are part of the government.

And, you know, this is so everywhere in Rome.

Look, the aqueduct, water, everybody, SPQR.

-It really is everywhere.

-That's it.

It's pretty unique to see the power

of the people declared in every corner of their own city.

Thanks to that,

the Roman always maintain a strong sense of ownership over Rome,

throughout the Republic and Imperial eras.

But the Empire ended in 476 AD.

Over the following centuries it was replaced by rulers

more interested in exerting power over the people.

Fantastico.

By the eighth century Rome was the capital of the Papal States,

ruled by cardinals and popes.

These ambitious men of God loved nothing more

than to proclaim their own vast power with grandiose monuments.

But even they knew that they also had to please the people.

For me, the best,

most extravagant example of this Papal showmanship in all of Rome...

..is the Trevi Fountain.

Commissioned by Pope Clement XII, in the 18th century.

As famous as Italian ice cream, it looks like it's made of ice cream.

The Trevi Fountain.

It's so beautiful.

In the Roman times it's bread and circuses.

In the Papal times it's fountains.

That's how you really impress your people.

This is the culmination of a kind of centuries-long fountain competition.

Every Pope wants to put a great fountain.

It gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger

and then, finally, this fountain goes up.

And everybody just goes, "You know what..."

-"Maybe we should stop it."

-"Maybe we should stop now."

It's the entire side of a palace.

In the middle, the God of the seas, Neptune.

On the left, you've got Abundance.

She's emphasising that, "Oh, it's not just Papal extravagance.

"Without this water..."

-Nothing grow.

-Nothing grows.

And that's continued in this lovely detail of the plants...

-Yes.

-..that's sort of growing up around the fountain.

Love that one, look, growing on the rocks.

-Looks like a lettuce or something.

-Yeah.

I think my favourite detail are

these horses because they've got fish's tails,

horse's bodies, and they've also got wings.

Wings. Everything is there.

And it's all invented in one go here.

That is so brilliant.

Even as it started to go up,

people knew this was something pretty special,

and that's why the inscriptions are so confusing

because everyone wanted to have their name on it.

So it was commissioned by Pope Clement XII,

but in 1735, before the fountain is finished, he knows he's dying,

so he quickly makes sure that his name was inscribed.

Then, below, in the gold, we see Benedict XIV...

..in his...

Well, basically, in his time, it was actually finished

and declared open.

And then if you look below, another Pope, Clement XIII,

I think he did some additions to the aqueduct work

or something. And he said, "No, I want my name on it, too."

Yeah, it's not three coins in the fountain,

it's three Popes in a fountain.

But in the end, the Italian who really put his name on it,

although he didn't put his name on it...

-Federico Fellini.

-Yes.

Marcello, where are you?

My goodness.

Fellini, more than anyone else,

with the scene in La Dolce Vita

where Anita Ekberg wades into the fountain,

and her friend, Marcello, Marcello Mastroianni.

They made the fountain, that was

already the fountain of the people of Rome,

became the fountain of the people of the world.

Of the world, that's right.

Absolutely.

Oscar winner Federico Fellini was

one of the most famous Italian film directors.

Although from Rimini, Fellini found his real home in Rome.

He responded above all to the people of the city.

Their passion, their love of spectacle

and he put them at the heart of much of his work.

In his 1960s masterpiece La Dolce Vita,

a satire on Roman high society,

he transformed the city's classical sites into vibrant film sets.

Hollywood and its starlets flooded in,

making Rome the centre of the world once again.

In the '50s here you had...

..Gary Cooper, everybody, and there would be people there just watching.

Just standing there on the street just watching.

Look and see what's happening, who's having a coffee,

who's drinking something.

And Fellini was right at the base of this.

He was kind of the spark and just illuminated the whole thing.

Although Fellini could have worked

with any of the big star of the time,

he never turned his back on the Romans.

And in any ordinary man and woman on the street he may find the potential

extra to give him the raw quality he was always looking for in his film.

-Buongiorno, Silvano.

-Buongiorno.

-Buongiorno.

Silvano Spoletini was 21 years old

and working as an encyclopaedia binder

when Fellini picked him to be an extra in his film Roma.

From that moment he went on to have a 60-year career,

working on films such as Ocean's 12 and Gangs of New York.

They called him The Lighthouse because he was the leading light

and everybody follow him.

The capacity of the Roman to, kind of, reinvent themselves

or to push little bit.

What are you doing this morning? I haven't got no job.

I'm walking down Piazza del Popolo. Maybe Fellini's going to pick me up.

Maybe he's going to put me in a film. There's always a chance.

I like that about the Romans, no?

I think it's... That's why it's eternal, the city,

because of the people. We say that so many times

It's now time to cook Andrew a classic Roman dish.

Despite the opulent culinary tradition of the rich,

the food that survive is the cuisine of the people.

Buongiorno.

Simple dishes that have stood the test of time

and everything that I need can be found

in one of the city's hidden gems.

Situated on Monteverde hill in south-west Rome,

San Giovanni di Dio is one of Rome's most vibrant markets.

I love this great amount of greenery.

Greenery everywhere. You see how much?

It's like... This is bietina.

It's like all this different type of spinach.

Very much at the base of what they cook.

I mean, you don't see anything that is not seasonal here, do you?

No. It's all grown around the corner.

That doesn't say, flown in from Israel.

That's, like, driven in by Enzo this morning.

Andrew.

-That's what we want to buy.

-Oh, the Romanesco!

Buongiorno.

Due Romanesco.

One of the main ingredients of my dish

are these beautiful Romanesco broccoli.

Perfecto.

Due carota.

Quattordici quarantacinque.

Grazie.

Next, it's time to buy the main ingredient.

-So, what are we going to buy?

-We're going to buy a razza.

It's called arzilla in Rome

and it's called skate in England.

All the fish have so many different names.

In all, it has about, like,

12 different names in Italy.

Right, right. HE SPEAKS ITALIAN

So, you better get your skates on.

THEY SPEAK ITALIAN

He already knows what I'm going to cook.

Which is..?

Pasta broccoli con arzilla.

Pasta broccoli con arzilla.

THEY SPEAK ITALIAN

62 years he's been in the market.

-Tu sempre questa..?

-Cento questa.

It's 100 years that they've had this stall on this market.

Wow.

He says, "Do you want some parsley?"

because when they serve the fish,

they give you present, a little bit of parsley.

What do you want more than that?

-Grazie.

-Grazie, buona giornata.

So we have everything we need now.

Now we have everything we need.

So we can go and eat.

Let's go and cook first.

I forgot that bit.

I forgot that bit...

Una, una...

What are you doing?!

Andrew, today I'm going to cook you a dish that

is really steeped in history.

I'm going to cook a delicious centuries-old

fish soup with vegetables.

Let's start with the fish first.

The skin of the skate is very spiky

so it's important to scrape it

properly under the tap.

OK, look, Andrew, I mean,

you can see the wings which are the eatable part.

I'm going to go pretty straightforward in, like that.

We're going to go round it.

As you cut you can feel the blade

hitting the bones, so just follow it the length of the fish.

Eugh...

You also have to remove the guts, head and tail,

until you're left with just two beautiful wings.

OK, so now...

Now they really do look like angel wings, don't they?

Now, this is the most important bit, OK.

The trickiest job is to remove the skin from the wings of the skate.

Of course, that's from the electricity department.

Very good. You'd be a really good executioner or torturer, I think.

You've got all the skills.

If you carry on like that, chatting,

I'll definitely execute you before the end.

So here they are.

Usually when you go to the market this is what you get.

But you're going to use everything from that,

you're not just going to use the wing,

you're going to use all the bones and everything, to make a stock?

-That's what I want to make, a beautiful stock, with that.

-OK.

So...I got my pan.

I make the fish stock with carrot, celery,

onions and a couple of bay leaves.

That's what they used to put on Julius Caesar's head, isn't it?

That's right.

Bit of peppercorns.

And finally, a couple of juniper cloves.

-Interesting.

-A couple of them,

just to give them a little bit to sustain the flavour.

-Interesting.

-OK.

Next, I put the fish bones in with the vegetables,

as well as the two wings.

So we put them in, both of them.

Oh, you put the wings in too.

That's right. Cold water.

The last thing that goes in there is a little splash of wine.

OK. The idea is this...

I'm going to put that on a very tiny fire.

Yeah. And I want it to go fast.

You must remember one thing, that fish bones

release all their flavours in about 20 minutes.

So then, if you want to make it strong you have to reduce it.

It's all about, like, very

intelligently stealing the flavour out of these things, yeah.

You quite often talk about persuading.

Persuading the food to cooperate with you.

You have to make it fall in love

with you and you fall in love with it and

then you make a beautiful thing now together.

As the stock is heating up, it's

important to skim off any floating froth,

to make sure that it's clear when cooked.

After 15 minutes, we can take the skate wings out and let them rest.

Oh!

I lost a little bit.

So, I'm going to let that cook.

And hold on...

I'm going to show you now what I'm doing.

OK.

-We're going to prepare the broccoli.

-Oh, I love these.

-Yeah?

Such a beautiful thing.

Now, I'm going to cut them into really

lovely sort of floret

as they call it in English, no?

And some of these will become a little bit more overcooked

and melt away in the sauce.

Some of this will be really nice and

give you a little crunch, you know.

Next, I start preparing the base for the soup.

Bit of olive oil...

Onions, celery, carrots, garlic, the Romanesco broccoli,

-and the anchovies.

-Oo-ooh!

And I put it there.

OK. I'm going to let

those melt away...

-..with it, eh.

-Mmm, good smell.

Vino, in it.

SIZZLING

-You hear that..?

-HE IMITATES SIZZLING

That's what I want.

A few pieces of tomato.

And to give it an absolutely amazing colour, tomato paste.

This is my stock.

We're going to put some of the stock on that.

I'm going to let it cook for at least...

..ten minutes.

Time to finish the dish by adding a short type of pasta

that's perfect for soups.

Don't forget to stir it.

You don't want the pasta to stick at the bottom.

Oh, so that's the finishing touch.

Oo-oo-ooh!

What a lovely idea for a dish.

OK, you can prepare the table now.

Because we're nearly there, eh.

-Come, Andrew.

-Woh-oh...

Oh, the smell is fantastic.

Giorgio, that is fantastic.

This is Rome.

Intenso, it's intense.

Also, the broccolo adds this really nice flavour

and it adds a little bit of

-bitterness to that.

-Yep.

If you came to Rome and you were a pilgrim, not so much money,

you might end up eating this.

Definitely. That was the staple.

-Really?

-Absolutely.

If you go back in time...

That's it.

The ideal dish for a tired pilgrim.

Perfected, no wonder, here in Rome.

Following the counterreformation,

the Catholic Church did its utmost

to restore Rome's spiritual authority...

..raising the great dome of St Peter's...

..and building a multitude of other churches as beacons to the faithful.

Thousands of ragged pilgrims in search of redemption

flooded the city, making Rome a city of stark contrasts.

Rich architecture...

..alongside desperately poor people, living on the streets...

..and nobody captured that better than the painter Caravaggio.

I want to show Giorgio two of my favourite paintings...

..breathtaking works that would give the travellers hope and consolation.

So, Giorgio, this is the burial chapel of Tiberio Cerasi.

He was the principal banker to the Pope, had a lot of money,

but he knew he was dying,

and so he commissioned the paintings in this chapel,

two of them are by Caravaggio.

This one...

..shows St Peter.

And immediately you are face-to-face

with Caravaggio's great revolution,

like Fellini so many years later, to cast the people from the street,

from the streets of Rome, and to put them in his paintings.

And he's doing that here, with this terrible scene,

the crucifixion of St Peter.

It's almost as if he might have used as his model that poor man,

that beggar that we saw on the steps

of the other church around the corner.

And in his own time these paintings were really shocking.

Oh, it's shocking now

with the imagery that we are used to

but it's still quite powerful, this one, you know.

And that dirty feet it just says so much.

Because Italian painting at that moment, before Caravaggio,

was very artificial, very mannered,

very contrived,

very little smell of reality in it,

and suddenly with Caravaggio you've got Peter's sunburnt face,

his scrawny torso,

his agonised expression,

and Caravaggio's painting it almost

as a grisly scene of hydraulic engineering.

Man driven.

You're going to lift him up, put him on the cross.

But I think also Caravaggio's giving hope.

Because this church is the first church

that you'd come to when you enter Rome

because that, outside, was once the gate to Rome.

Now there's a road outside, but in the past it was fields.

You had dirty feet, you identify yourself with them.

Exactly. Yeah.

Cerasi, whose mortuary chapel this is, he was clever.

Not only did he commission Caravaggio to decorate the chapel,

but he also got the leading other painter of Rome at the time,

Annibale Carracci,

to paint the main altarpiece.

Below you've got the Apostles

and it shows the moment when the Madonna's soul

is assumed into heaven.

Up she rises into the skies.

This is really the dawn of the baroque style.

And what the baroque style exists to do is to make us,

the worshippers coming to church, feel a little bit smaller,

a little bit on our knees,

a little bit "Oh!", in awe.

This is a painting that says, "Yes,

"you can come here to worship but remember your place."

And what's interesting is that the Carracci painting,

that was installed before Caravaggio painted his second picture.

And what did he do?

It's this enormous horse.

And he puts the horse's arse in the face...

..of the Virgin of Carracci.

As if to say,

"This is what I think...

"..of your elevated Christianity."

I like this Caravaggio guy.

-He's quite cool.

-He really is.

He's cool, man.

This is St Paul or Saul as he was,

at the moment of his conversion.

That's the subject of the painting.

This is the moment on the road to Damascus

when he becomes a Christian.

Boom, you can hear it.

I never fell off the horse.

I fell off a few motorbikes.

I never fell off the horse.

But I can, you know, kind of like,

you can see he's been struck and he's almost underneath the horse.

Caravaggio means the horse and the groom...

..who looks a bit like Joseph,

I think to evoke the idea of the Nativity.

So you do a kind of double take

cos you look down from them and you expect to see

the baby Jesus by the manger.

But, no, you see Paul.

But then, after you've done the double take,

I think that's when the meaning unfolds.

Because, yes, at this moment of his conversion,

Paul is like the little baby Jesus in the manger.

He's lying helpless on the ground.

And then Caravaggio, with a stroke of genius, I think,

has Paul stretch out his arms,

so in the same moment he's also Christ on the cross.

So light floods him.

He is spiritually enlightened.

It's one of the most amazing pictures in the world.

I think this is one of the best painting I ever seen in my life.

He's a communicator...

..to the people like me.

And that is something that I would

now come to the church to have a look at that.

So, you vote for Caravaggio?

Due a zero.

For centuries after his death,

Caravaggio was sneered at as a crude and vulgar artist.

He was rediscovered partly by

Italian film-makers, including Fellini,

who loved his cinematic use of light

as well as the way he used real people.

And since the mid-20th century,

Caravaggio's reputation has been on the rise.

He's now one of the world's best-loved painters.

-Oh!

-Oh!

Va bene...

This is the old Roman Way.

-Oh, man!

-Julius Caesar used to come down this road, man.

Got to be excited about it.

Rome is the political centre of Italy.

Nowhere else will you find so many politician and bureaucrats...

..or so many limousines stuck in traffic.

Ordinary Romans are used to rubbing shoulders with those in power

and they are prepared to put up a fight.

GIORGIO SCREAMS

Let's go and have a coffee.

Romans love nothing more than discussing politics

from their first espresso of the day.

To be the mayor of this town,

I think is the hardest job.

Whatever you do, you'll always have someone who says the contrary.

How many bureaucrats are there in Rome?

Well, that's the thing.

Quanti burocrati a Roma?

-Troppi.

-Troppi!

Too many, too many.

But, at the end of the day,

Rome would be always Rome because of the people of Rome.

-Yeah.

-You can put as many laws as they want,

but they will do whatever they want,

because they've been doing that for the eternal time.

That's why they've been here for such a long time,

because that's what they do.

They do what they want.

I read in the paper that the

highest-paid head of traffic wardens in the world

is the head of the traffic wardens of Rome.

He gets paid more than the President of the United States!

Yeah, exactly, he gets paid, like, half a million pounds.

And, still, everybody parks where they like.

Everybody do what they want.

I want to take Giorgio to see a monument

that hails the moment when Rome first became

the centre of modern Italian politics.

At the end of the 19th century Italy

was still divided into many states,

under different rulers.

But in 1861 the Savoy family, under their king, Vittorio Emanuele,

had placed their stamp on the unification of the country.

And ten years later declared Rome its capital.

For the Roman people, it also meant

the end of over a thousand years of papal rule.

So to celebrate this moment,

and the crowning of Italy's first king...

..the Vittoriano was erected,

right in the centre of Rome,

next to the Imperial Forum.

What a great beauty.

Which one? I like these bits.

I'm not so sure about...

That big one, over there.

When you see it in the context of real Roman ruins,

I think you get a sense of how...

..just crazily enormous,

how glaringly white,

how astonishingly pompous,

is the monument to Vittorio Emanuele.

I mean, this is Vittorio Emanuele coming to Rome,

saying, "Italy, one Italy, under me".

And he's basically

trying to replace Marco Aurelio, Marcus Aurelius, who's in the back,

obscured almost, from the view of the Romans,

by this great white elephant.

With him on his horse, he's saying, "I'm the new emperor."

-Yeah.

-It's the size of a mountain.

I mean, I think it's 70 metres high, more than 100 metres across.

It was inaugurated, I think, in 1912

and finished 13 years later,

the greatest job creation scheme in the history of Italian sculpture.

The Roman never liked...

You know what they call this?

-They call it the typewriter.

-The typewriter?

-Yes.

It looks like a typewriter.

You know, one of the old ones, that you just...

-Swings along.

-I think that's the whole problem, though,

is that the language that's being typed out on the typewriter is not

really Roman, not Italian.

This is the classicism of Germany.

I mean, it could almost be made of ice.

It's glaring, its white, it's enormous, it's like the Valhalla.

This is Wagner, not Verdi.

Yeah. The whiteness really puts it at odds with everything else.

Because, I don't know, like, look at those tree,

looks in harmony with the church and things.

You kind of like, the shapes, they're all working, these columns,

and suddenly it's like an eyesore, isn't it?

Think about the Capitoline Hill is just behind that.

So in order to build this, what did they build it on top?

Surely there must be something.

Yeah. No, no, they did, they knocked down some temples,

they covered up a piece of ancient Roman history

to create the modern monument.

I mean, this is absolutely in the centre of the city.

And I think that's again part of the problem the people here

have had accepting it -

they know that this has abolished part of their own history.

And so there he is on his horse,

the new Marcus Aurelius,

Vittorio Emanuele II,

and he's saying,

"Friends, Romans, countrymen,

"lend me your ears", but I think

they never really did lend them their ears.

I really don't like the typewriter.

But the Savoy family rule wasn't all bad news for Rome.

In fact, one of my favourite districts was created under them.

A place made for the people.

And I really want to show it to Andrew.

At the beginning of the 20th century,

from being a sleepy village,

Rome rapidly became a frenetic European capital.

The Savoy family started building

social housing for workers such as the Garbatella.

Once at the very edges of the city,

and now right in the centre,

only ten minutes by scooter from the Coliseum.

Here we are, in Garbatella, man.

Where are we going, up the steps?

Yeah, let's go up there.

Come and have a look at this.

Garbatella, garbato, means to be kind, you know.

So this is a place where you're welcome.

And look, we are in the centre of town.

This is not the Rome that I know.

I mean, this is so peaceful.

Where are the guys on motor scooters, zipping past you?

Absolutely. But look, the architecture is incredible.

-Look at this place.

-But this is the 1920s.

When I see a house like that, I mean, my association is to think,

"Suddenly I am actually in the countryside in Italy."

Yeah, little patch where you can grow his little basil

and his little potato or tomato.

But what I love about it is that it is so Italian.

It's a little bit chaotic, a little bit unkempt,

but in a very beautiful way.

Like, look where they've got the two pipes presumably were there one time

but they haven't bothered to paint it back.

There's the plaster round the window.

-This is charm.

-It's charming, it's lovely.

It's really like a little paradise.

From the people I've seen living here,

quite a lot of them are getting on a bit now.

It's as if they are part of the original community.

People in their 60s, people in their 70s...

You want to live with the people

that you love and you want to die with the people that you love.

Surrounded by it, the sense of community,

makes you feel like a human.

-Buongiorno.

-Buongiorno.

-Qual'e il nomo del tuo cane?

-Pepe.

-Pepe!

-Buongiorno, Pepe.

-Cacio e pepe.

Perfect.

Salve. Buongiorno.

In designing the Garbatella,

Rome's urban planners were greatly influenced by the English trend

known as the garden city movement of the early 20th century.

So in a way,

this is a Roman version of

Hampstead Garden Suburb in London.

But the character of this village on the edge of the city

will change in the 1920s...

..when the fascists came to power.

Fascism and its drive for modernisation

took an iron grip of Italy,

and most of all, Rome.

Thousands more workers from the countryside flooded into the city.

And to house them, a new generation of architects

came up with grander designs and bigger buildings for Garbatella.

You see, Andrew, just round the corner it changes completely.

Wow. And they're just so grand.

-They are.

-They're like palaces.

This style is called baroquetto.

Baroquetto.

-That's right.

-Which means little Baroque.

-Yeah, baby Baroque.

-Baby Baroque.

It's fantastic cos it is! That's like a Baroque palace.

Except you see these heads normally on an aristocratic palace.

-That's right.

-But here, the heads

are on the side of a council flat block,

and they're the heads of people from the 1920s, or maybe the 1930s.

Look at her little bob hairstyle.

-Unbelievable, isn't it?

-It's fantastic.

Look, there's something like a gargoyle on the front of the house.

It's not just building.

I can imagine things happening behind those closed windows,

all those little houses with all these little kitchens

and a lot of this lovely food that comes from the countryside,

from the connections.

And they have... The market is very alive.

This is the spirits of Rome,

is within these people.

-Yeah.

-You know, everything comes and goes in this city,

everything gets buried,

it's just the people who stays on top.

It's unusual, pretty amazing, really,

to see a fully working community,

almost like a village, right in the middle of the 21st-century city.

Garbatella, bella, Andrew.

If I had to live somewhere in Rome,

I would love to live in Garbatella.

I think it fits my style.

Yeah, I can see you, just in your vest, like, cooking outside, maybe.

Now we're going back onto the cobbles.

Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh...

You can feel the ancient power of the people all over Rome,

even in some unlikely places...

..such as the palaces of the richest noble families.

Because they knew just how hard it was to rule in this fickle town,

they built their palazzi-like fortresses to keep the mob at bay.

And none was more fortress-like than the stunning Palazzo Farnese.

-Palazzo Farnese.

-What a palace, eh?

It's got 40 windows just on the front. Amazing.

The Farnese family was one of the great forces in Rome

from the 15th to the 18th century.

Many military commanders and cardinals,

two popes and the Queen of Spain

can be found in their family tree.

And thanks to their huge riches,

the family constructed the most magnificent

high Renaissance dwelling in all of Rome,

designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger,

and a chap called Michelangelo.

I'm taking Giorgio to see one particular room

with a truly amazing series of frescoes by Annibale Carracci...

..the same artist Caravaggio had mocked with the rear end of a horse.

Here, Carracci was on top form.

Look at this, the sun has come to greet us.

Now, don't look up, that's the only rule.

-OK.

-You can look at the garden.

Wow. And we're right in the middle of the row.

In the middle of the row.

OK, now we're going to do it.

OK? OK.

Uno, due...

Three.

Wow!

Look at that! Look at that.

Started 1597, finished 1608.

11 years in the making.

And the theme of the whole thing...

# ..the power of love

# A force from above. #

Really! That is the subject!

You've got Diana falling in love,

despite her vows of chastity,

falling in love with the shepherd Endymion, sleeping muscle man.

You've got the abduction of Galatea,

you've got Jupiter and Juno.

We've got Bacchus and Ariadne.

And here he is, in his golden carriage drawn by tigers...

..with rams, symbols of sex and lust.

It's almost too much, isn't it?

It really, like, is incredible.

The figure of the lady is so beautiful, rounded and beautiful.

They're not the model of the modern supermodel, let's put it that way.

-That's for sure.

-They're not skin and bones.

But they're much more beautiful.

It's quite a thing.

And it was all commissioned by a cardinal.

Odoardo Farnese.

Why would a cardinal have something like that in his house?

Well, actually, in the Renaissance, they weren't prudish.

There was a tradition of noble families commissioning,

usually on the occasion of a marriage,

quite sexy, secular images.

Almost like encouragements to procreation.

This is a message from the cardinal to all of his children.

Right. "This is how you do it, just get on with it."

Isn't it? It sounds a little bit like that, doesn't it?

Yes, I don't know what that is in Latin, but...

I think what the room as a whole is saying is, "That for us as a dynasty

"to uphold our power, we must breed."

And something really neat, look at this.

This is thanks to the French, actually,

who've had this as their embassy for so long,

they cleaned this room,

and look what they found.

Carracci had actually left some of his sketches.

So when he was making the ceiling,

he was actually doing these little sketches.

There's actually quite a sad postscript

to the story of this amazing masterpiece.

They cardinal, for whatever reason...

..was a really mean guy,

so when Carracci finished and finally asked for his payment...

..the cardinal got his accountant to do all the sums,

and he said, "Well, "you've been living in the Palace for 11 years,

"so we're going to charge you for the board and lodging.

"So, we're going to pay you £100,000 for doing the picture,

"but we're going to deduct £99,500

-"because you've been staying in the Palace."

-No way.

Really. They paid him 500 scudi for 11 years' work.

Carracci was so upset, he just falls into this terrible depression,

and then that's the end of him.

He dies, basically, of a broken heart...

..for not being paid. Maybe you should have been his agent, Giorgio.

I could have definitely been his chef.

The paintings would have been even better!

Eventually, you could say, justice was served.

The family extinguished in 1731

when the last duke, Antonio Farnese,

died without direct heirs.

The Palace has been the French embassy for the last 81 years,

keeping Carracci's masterpiece a bit of a secret.

But now the doors are open once a week,

and he is gradually being rediscovered.

We really have to have some lunch now, so after the power of love,

I want to remind Andrew of the power of pasta.

This is one of the classics.

You're going to learn how to make a carbonara.

A real carbonara, Andrew.

We are heading to Roscioli,

a small restaurant that's been in the same family

for four generations.

Nabil, the cook, is waiting for us.

-This is Nabil.

-Salve, Nabil.

Nabil cooks the best carbonara in the world,

I'm telling you.

So, what makes the Roman carbonara different

from the one that we might eat in a restaurant in London?

That.

GIORGIO AND NABIL DISCUSS INGREDIENTS IN ITALIAN

You don't use any belly,

you use the cheek,

the end of the cheek and the neck.

And when you give a recipe with bacon, you make a big mistake,

because the consistency of this

when it's cooked is a completely different one

than the bacon would be.

So, rule number one, never cook a carbonara with bacon.

I think a lot of people would be quite surprised by that.

Rule number one. No bacon, no pancetta.

The spaghetti are the main ingredient, obviously.

They've been dried, you know, like that.

So they are just going to cross.

But touch the spaghetti.

They're rough. Can you feel the roughness of that?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Trafilatura al bronzo.

That means the sauce, which is kind of, like the eggs,

is cooked and kind of a bit creamy, it will stick to it.

A really hot pan.

No oil, nothing.

Just the guanciale in it.

-You see, it is screaming already.

-Yeah.

OK, very crispy on the outside and really tender inside,

and when you bite into that, you have an explosion,

an explosion of flavour in your mouth.

Alora.

Turning the spaghetti, very important, don't let them lie down.

Yes. He is going to prepare the eggs now.

OK, the base.

One egg yolk, and then a little bit of egg white,

because it becomes more foamy if he does that.

Beautiful eggs as well.

Parmesan and Pecorino mixed together.

Two nice pinch, pepper.

They love pepper in Rome.

-Very important.

-Toasted Sarawak pepper.

That is so important.

That is the base.

-OK?

-So no garlic, no bacon?

No! Are you crazy?

Don't start to do the American way.

Do not think about putting too many things in it.

It is very essential, it is very clean, it is very neat.

He judges the pasta just with the eye?

Just by looking at it.

He just looks at the pasta,

he doesn't need a timer or anything like that.

Look what he's doing now.

OK.

A little bit of the guanciale in.

A little bit of the fat.

Yeah.

A little bit of that.

Water and the fat that is going to make it creamy.

Rule three. No cream!

No cream. And as the spaghetti goes in, a little bit wet, you see?

He left them a little bit wet.

Yeah.

This is vital, you see?

The cooking water, which already got salt.

Do you notice we have not seasoned anything?

Look, look what he's doing.

So he knows now by touching the edge,

he knows now the eggs is creamy and is cooked.

-Beautiful.

-A bit of cheese around and a little bit of pepper on top.

Wow. Wow. That looks...

-Carbonara di Roscioli.

-Grazie.

Wow, that looks...

I am not leaving this here.

He is not going to let me have any.

You must try to convey to everybody the flavour here,

that really hint of pepper,

the cheese and the creaminess of the eggs,

almost like a fluid mayonnaise or a Bearnaise or a Hollandaise...

That's what you are trying to do.

And then this absolute explosion of

almost like a farmyard taste,

that explosion of the guanciale.

Unbelievable.

Buonissimo.

-Grazie.

-Grazie.

This was a masterclass on carbonara.

It was just!

Thank you.

You know, Giorgio,

if you give me one more plate of pasta,

we are going to have to buy a bigger motorbike.

We are going to finish our journey in modern Rome,

the Rome of the 20th century.

The most famous Italian dictator in living memory

was Benito Mussolini...

..a man whose granite jaw and megaphone rhetoric

was only matched by his severe architecture.

You can still see his buildings all over Rome,

buildings that shouted at the Italian people,

telling them to work harder,

to be on time,

to leave the past behind and go to war.

But in this great city of the people, Mussolini had his opponents,

even if their voices weren't always heard.

For proof of that, I am taking Giorgio to

the Gallery of Modern Art where

they have some of my favourite works of art from the dark, fascist years.

Here, we can still see another side of Rome,

the one that never submitted to fascism and Mussolini.

Look at this figure -

Attilio Torresini's sculpture called Riposo, At Rest,

but she looks almost as if she might be eavesdropping on us.

She looks so...

..beautiful and so unsexualised, but beautiful.

And something slightly sad about her, I think.

I think there's an air of melancholy.

You think it is melancholic?

Maybe I am reading that in.

I mean, I know that the sculpture was made in 1939.

So I just have this feeling that

maybe there's the intimations of war, there is some sense of...

That is a beautiful Italian girl.

..trouble ahead.

Well, if we're talking melancholy,

vieni con me cos one of

the masterpieces of Italian melancholy is in the next room.

This is what has been arranged for us,

a private screening of the masterpiece of Massimo Campigli

and it's just a wonderful...

-So we can sit down?

-We can sit down.

The film has started already.

It is called The Fishermen's Wives.

It is an oil painting,

but it is a bit like a fresco.

The forms are very simple,

they are very solemn, they are very monumental.

There is something of the solemnity of a religious painting.

These women are waiting.

You see, there they are on the left,

they are just holding each other.

The picture was painted in 1935,

so, again, fascism was at its height.

What could be less fascist than this?

-Beautiful picture.

-So the sorrow of the person who loses their husband,

it is almost like saying, "Don't allow your kids to go to war.

"They never come back."

I think this is why this is a painting

that once you start looking at it, it does catch in your throat.

And I think, I mean, are those the colours of Italy in the middle?

-Are those the colours of...?

-Well, there is a bit of green,

there is some red, there is some white.

He enlisted, in the First World War in 1916,

but then during the war and immediately after the war,

he was so horrified by all of that

he said, "I am now forever going to be a pacifist."

But I think it is important to look at these artists

because, as so often in history,

the people who make the most noise,

and the future is with Marinetti as their spokesman banging his drum,

and Mussolini with his megaphone,

everybody knows about them,

but nobody knows about these artists.

It is a much quieter voice,

but it is the voice of conscience.

I think it is a truthful voice.

You know, it makes me think,

what could have been if there was more people like him?

It would have never happened, that Second World War,

they would have never did what they did to each other.

It was just terrible.

And these guys were absolutely right.

Maybe in the end,

that is what artists are for.

-To make...

-To see what we don't see.

Si.

We are at the end of our journey

through a city that is defined by its people.

So where better to finish than with a work of public art?

Proclaiming the eternal might of Rome

on the wall of a modern building.

Look what they have put on the side of the apartment block,

this huge, fantastic, I think, mural of a wolf, the symbol of Rome.

It is unbelievable.

It is so real, isn't it?

You can almost hear it snarling.

I love the hairs and I love it when the evening sun catches it,

the wolf is there and this ordinary building suddenly becomes, wow!

What things did you like the best of the things that we saw on this trip?

The Caravaggio?

Well, those ones were unforgettable, man.

And that St Paul...

..and the story of the asses,

everybody showed their ass to each other, that was fantastic.

Another popular thing that I really liked about was the Garbatella.

-Oh!

-That was so beautiful.

I remember also, the crunch of the guanciale in the carbonara,

the perfect carbonara.

If you were going to feed that wolf anything,

you would give him a really big piece of that guanciale.

This is the wolf of the people,

aggressive and opinionated

and Roman to the core.

I like that kind of Rome,

I like Rome that stays alive through the people.

And, you know, the Pope comes and change,

and the President comes and change, the King comes and change,

but the people of Rome, are still the people of Rome.

They are the one who rules.

-They really are.

-You remember that one?

SPQR.

Senatus Populusque Romanus.

I think it is dinner time.

And you know, in Rome, dinner is always quite good, isn't it?

Not bad. Not bad.

Next time, we uncover more of the hidden Rome.

If you look in the middle, staring out at us,

a painting of the first century AD,

and there are not many of those.

So this is a kidney sandwich.

We try centuries-old traditions.

-Oh, mamma mia.

-We tasted Roman-ity.

And we pay a visit to one of Rome's greatest art collections.

Not a bad room to have a party in.

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