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John Fort's CV
The enlightenment of a Roman fishmonger
Special interest walks and excursions
Review La Geisha, Museo Nazionale d'Arte Orientale, Palazzo Brancaccio, Rome (Wanted in Rome January 2006)
Review Das Rheingold, Rome Opera House (Wanted in Rome October 2005)
A Corner of the Agro Romano (Wanted in Rome September 2005)
Review Così Fan Tutte, Teatro Nazionale, Rome (Wanted in Rome May 2005)
A Taste of the Ciocaria (Wanted in Rome March 2005)
Train Ride to Sulmona and Castel di Sangro (Wanted in Rome Jan 2005)
Archive of older articles
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Running at an acute angle to one of Rome's main thoroughfares, the intolerably noisy and fume-laden Via Cavour, is a narrow medieval street, blissfully cool, dark and quiet compared with the sub-blasted din a stone's throw away. Near the top of the Via in Selci is an entrance in a high, frowning wall, with the number 82 beside it. Go through, and on the far side of the gloomy vestibule is a barrelled wooden hatch. Ring the bell next to it, and after a time a female voice will ask you your business. If the voice is satisfied with your reply, the bolts will be drawn back, and a nun will - without a word - usher you into the ancient church of Santa Lucia in Selci.
It will take your eyes a minute or two to adjust to the darkness, but your nose will register at once that rich compound of dust, incense, candlewax, polish, old wood, bird droppings. Look to your left and you will see the Landi Chapel, and over the doorway the nuns' choir - both characteristic works by Borromini. Further inside is the ciborium, in the form of a miniature temple of multi-coloured marble decorated with tiny statues in gilt and alabaster, the work of the celebrated Baroque architect, Carlo Maderno.
Santa Lucia in Selci is one the forgotten treasures of Rome. Most Romans are unaware of its existence - as I was, for the first quarter century of my residence there. Regularly I used to sit in my van, cursing the clog of traffic in the Via Cavour, wondering if I would ever make it in time for my delivery to the bar in the Via Merulana, utterly ignorant of this haven of peace and beauty around the corner. The truth is that I had no time to consider Renaissance treasures. My mind was on fish.
Another example. One of my best customers was that smartest of Roman watering holes in that smartest of Roman streets, the Caffè Greco in Via Condotti. To get there I would pass along the parallel Via della Mercede. But did I ever pause to gaze up at Borromini's bell-tower of the Church of Sant'Andrea delle Fratte, with its cluster of buffalo heads surmounted by a crown? Did it ever occur to me to stop and go inside and admire the brace of marble angels designed sculpted by Bernini, or stroll around the enchanting cloister? It did not. I was too busy thinking about fish.
I had arrived in Rome in 1973, having decided - after three dismal years in the City of London - that merchant banking was not for me. My uncle, a retired naval officer, had come to Italy some time before and turned his talents to smoking salmon and trout in a dilapidated former olive mill in the hills about an hour's drive east of Rome. I joined forces with him, and we opened a tiny shop located in a hole in the side of the colossal Palazzo Doria Pampilj, in the heart of the old city.
And that is how I engaged with Rome: as an artisan producer and supplier of smoked fish. I dispensed the finest wild Canadian salmon and other delicacies to the occasional principessa, assorted contesse, and a throng of lower ranks who would duck into our miniscule shop. And I made deliveries to a vast range of bars, restaurants and catering businesses scattered all over the city and its suburbs.
Geographically, I soon acquired an immense expertise. I knew every via, viale, vicolo and piazza; and - just as important - the best and quickest way from one to another. I developed a deep knowledge of a side of Rome and its inner life that most visitors never experience; from a perspective located not far from the bottom rung of the social scale, as there is not much below the level of the small shopkeeper.
But I will confess that, culturally, I was an ignoramus. To me, St Peter's did not mean the basilica or the Sistine Chapel, but the duty-free supermarket reserved for Vatican employees through which we did a roaring trade. Similarly, the Palazzo Farnese was not one of the supreme masterpieces of Renaissance architecture, but the residence of the French ambassador at whose frequent and sumptuous parties our smoked salmon was savoured in large quantities by the cream of society. I was not concerned with the long and blood-soaked history of the Ghetto, but with supplying the orders from the salsamenterie and numerous bars concentrated in the area.
That all changed two years ago. During the 1990s the smoked salmon business became ever more difficult as more and more of our customers - in particular the bars - went over to the much cheaper farmed fish. First we had to close the picturesque smokery in the country. Then, as margins were ever more squeezed, I decided to sell the retail business in the Palazzo Doria. After 27 years, I was an ex-fishmonger, with some time on my hands.
Too much time, that was my wife's opinion. But, as wives often do, she had the answer. Prince Jonathan Doria Pamphilj - who happened to be the landlord both of the shop and our flat, as well as a good friend - had been asked by the publishers of Georgina Masson's classic Companion Guide To Rome if he could recommend someone suitable to revise it. He suggested my wife. She suggested me.
Over the next year I pounded the routes laid out in Georgina Masson's twenty-six recommended walks, all of them gruelling and some of them excessively so (there are now twenty-eight). I checked that the text corresponded to reality, making additions where I thought them necessary, and trying to do justice to the wealth of new museums opened over the past few years, in which treasures for long locked away in the vaults of the Museo Nazionale Romano can once again be seen.
Most of the bars and restaurants I once supplied, where the proprietor would offer me a cappuccino and a pastry while he paid his bill and complained about the high price of everything, are now under new ownership, smarter but - to me - less charming. The contesse and the ladies of the alta borghesia still greet me in the street. But these days our conversation tends to be, not about fish, but high culture. Where I used to hurry along, eyes fixed on door numbers, I now search for the features to be found everywhere - the fine stone door jamb, the wrought iron grill, the gothic window, the ornate little fountain, even the odd palace tucked away at the corner of a unregarded square. My eyes have been opened to the richness of a city which I once - as fishmongers are wont to do - rather took for granted. Thank you, Georgina.
The new edition of Georgina Masson's Companion Guide To Rome, revised by John Fort, is published by Boydell and Brewer, PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF. Telephone 01394 411320. Fax 01394 411477, email: boydell@boydell.co.uk
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