Berlin to Rome

Berlin, city and state (1991 est. pop. 3,450,000), 341 sq mi (883 sq km), in E Germany on the Spree and Havel rivers, de jure capital of the country. It is within, but administratively not a part of, Brandenburg. Berlin is Germany’s largest city, its historic capital, and a major cultural center. The city’s manufactures include electrical equipment, chemicals, and clothing. Among its many cultural institutions are the renowned Berlin Philharmonic, the gallery of the Charlottenberg Palace, with its collection of Rembrandts, and the Pergamum museum, known for classical art. Formed from two villages chartered in the 13th cent., Berlin was a leading member of the Hanseatic League and became prominent as a commercial, cultural, and communications center of Central Europe. It was the capital of Prussia and of the German Empire after 1871 and the Weimar Republic (see Germany) after World War I. In World War II it was badly damaged by Allied bombing and a Soviet artillery attack.

In 1945 it was divided into British, American, and French occupation zones (West Berlin) and a Soviet zone (East Berlin). The status of divided Berlin became a major cold war issue, and in 1948-49 the Western powers carried out a large-scale airlift to supply West Berlin during a Soviet land and water blockade. In 1949 East Berlin was made the capital of East Germany; in 1950 West Berlin was established as a state within, and the de jure capital of, West Germany, with Bonn as
the de facto capital. In August 1961 East German authorities erected the 29 mile (47km) Berlin Wall along the line of partition to halt the exodus of refugees to the West. As the East German Communist regime collapsed (1989-90), the Wall was breached (Nov. 9, 1989). Upon German reunification in Oct. 1990, the new, all-German parliament held a symbolic session in Berlin in the old Reichstag building, and in 1991 it voted to move the federal government to the city. The move is to be completed by the end of the year 2000; some government offices will remain in Bonn.

You’ve heard, perhaps, of the Renaissance? Well, this is the region it started. And without the Renaissance, our art would be poorer, our food and wine would be poorer, and our culture would be poorer plus, the term “Renaissance man” would be meaningless and confusing.

Some interesting sites to visit are the castle where Michealangelo is supposedly tombed, the Arno River, which divides the city in half, with the historical district in the northern part, and the Oltrarno neighborhood to the south. The Piazza del Duomo is usually found with hundreds of tourists, and the Piazza Santa Maria Novella is a regular hangout for immigrants and tourists waiting for the train. Most of the streets are open only to pedestrians, so walking is a welcome reward for getting around, rather than by car or bus. Be sure to get a map with all of the interesting landmarks and entertainment to be found in this great city, available at the tourist office and most hotels. Take your time, there are many Renaissance palaces and Gothic churches to be experienced.

Rome wasn’t built in a day…but you can tour it in just over 10 hours. A teeming anthill of humanity and antiquity intermingled with awful traffic jams, Rome grew up on the Tiber (“Fiume Tevere”) among seven low hills that rise from the river’s soggy eastern banks. It’s a city of many peeling layers of history, of which the bottom layer–that of the earliest Roman centuries–is the most interesting and still astonishingly whole. The hub of this layer is the Palatine Hill, the Forum, the Colosseum and the Circus Maximus.

On the western bank is the Citta Vaticana, the independent papal city where the Pope blesses pilgrims from all over the world. Neighboring Trastevere (“Across the Tiber”) is a mix of Roman, Greek and Jewish subcultures, great for little restaurants and nightlife. Further north on the other bank is “vecchia Roma,” medieval Rome of the Pantheon and Piazza Navona; Renaissance Rome is centered south of the Corso Vittorio Emanuele. Commercial Rome is the city of the Via del Corso, the Piazza del Popolo, the controversial Victor Emmanuel monument and finally the Stazione Termini, the nexus for all trains and roads from Rome.

As you approach the city over the bridge from the Italian mainland, you leave behind terra firma and, with it, earthbound notions of how to see and experience a city. Venice is not solely the spill of churches and palazzi on either side of the Grand Canal, but rather a city of islands, 118 in all, some of which are little more than the weedy, humps you see in the Lagoon of Venice. And yet these mud flats provided haven for the people who fled here (without benefit of a bridge) from Huns, Visigoths, and other marauders in the fifth century. And those refugees gave birth to a culture that ripened into a thousand years of greatness.

As you near the end of the bridge, you see at first only the back side of the city itself. But in the time it takes to walk through the train station, you begin to hear sounds peculiarly Venetian–the low rumble of boat motors, a humid incubation of voices, water lapping insistently against wood and stone. And then Venice confers her greatest gift: No matter how many times you’ve been here, it always seems, in that first glimse, like the first time.

If you are smart, you will immediately start a tour down the Grand Canal by hopping on a vaporetto (water bus) or gondola or water taxi. If you are lucky, it will be during those few hours before sunset when the light shines most kindly on the venerable facades that line this liquid boulevard. If you are particularly observant, you might even notice that neither the light nor the colors are quite Italian, not like the tawny earth tones of Florence or Rome.

The canal is a murkey green, the palazzi a mix of faded, grimy sherbets–watermarked mint and sun-blanched apricot and deep overripe peach. Sunlight shatters into spangles on the water, gondolas knife bach and forth, the Rialto Bridge looms overhead, and then, beyond one final curve, the Palladian church of Santa Maria della Salute and the Campanile (bell tower) of San Marco come into view.

Piazza san Marco is Venice’s grand salon–expansive, familiar, picturesque, pigeonesque. It is anchored at its eastern extreme by the Basilica di San Marco, which is not only the spiritual seat of Venice’s patron saint but also one of the most glittering monuments of Christendom.