King Albert and Queen Paola now living in Rome

The Belgian newspaper Le Soir yesterday reported that King Albert II, who abdicated in July 2013, and his wife Queen Paola no longer live permanently in Belgium. According to the newspaper, Queen Paola, who was born into the Roman noble family of Ruffo di Calabria, has renovated a floor of her family home, Casa Ruffo in the neighbourhood of Parioli in northern Rome, and the couple now live there from September to May, while spending the summer in their house in Chateauneuf in southern France and onboard their private yacht.

Prince Amedeo marries in Rome

On Saturday Prince Amedeo of Belgium, a nephew of King Philippe, married his longtime girlfriend Elisabetta Maria Rosboch von Wolkenstein, known as Lili, in the ancient Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere in her hometown Rome. The bride wore a Valentino dress and a tiara loaned by the groom's grandmother, Queen Paola, which originally belonged to the late Queen Astrid.
Among the guests were King Philippe and Queen Mathilde, accompanied by their four children, of whom Princess Elisabeth was a bridesmaid, King Albert and Queen Paola, and the groom's other uncle, Prince Laurent with his wife Claire and their three children, among them Princess Louise, who was also a bridesmaid. Several members of the groom's paternal family, the House of Habsburg, were also in attendance, as was Princess Beatrice of Britain.

Belgian royal wedding in Rome on 3 July

The Belgian TV channel VTM yesterday reported that the wedding of Prince Amedeo and Elisabetta Rosboch von Wolkenstein, who announced their engagement a month ago, will take place in Rome, where the bride was born, on 3 July. However, it was not made clear whether this referred to the actual wedding or the religious blessing of the marriage, or if both will take place at the same time in the same place.
VTM also reported that the groom's grandparents, King Albert and Queen Paola, will go to Rome at the end of next month to represent King Philippe at the canonisation of Pope John Paul II and Pope John XXIII on 27 April. It will be interesting to see if Queen Paola will exercise the privilège du blanc now that she is no longer the wife of a reigning monarch, but as Queen Fabiola has done so in her widowhood I expect Queen Paola to follow suit.

New books: The history and art history of Rome

Recently I have been reading several books on cities, among them Simon Sebag Montefiore’s latest book Jerusalem: The Biography and Robert Hughes’s Rome, the latter published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson before the summer. The Australian-born, US-based art critic Robert Hughes first came to Rome in 1959 and his book, in which he charts the history and art history of Rome from its beginnings until the present day, is the product of a lifetime’s acquaintance with the city (in which it should be said he has never actually lived).
The book is engagingly written, with some refreshing personal asides and the author does away with some popular myths (no, Caligula did not make his horse a consul and no, Nero did not fiddle while Rome burnt). The sheer magnitude of the topic such as the Eternal City obviously means that the author has to be selective when deciding what to include and on what to focus.
The author’s perspective is indeed often that of the critic, which means that there are many highly personal evaluations. Personal preferences also seem to have a strong influence on what Hughes chooses to focus one.
Occasionally the author will allow himself to be carried away into some rather lengthy digressions on topics which appear rather peripheral to the story but for which he evidently has great enthusiasm. There are for instance several pages on the brilliance of Velazquez, who was never more than a visitor to Rome.
At first the focus is mostly on the history of the city, but as one reads on its shifts to Rome’s art history and one is able to tell that the author feels more at ease with the arts than with history. The best part of the whole book is probably the pages on Bernini, whose artistic genius Hughes does full justice – to the extent that one may wish that a book on Bernini might be his next project.
The shifting of focus is not entirely unproblematic, as some key historical events during recent centuries are passed over quite summarily. This is also the case for the post-war years. Hughes is rather pessimistic about the current condition of Roman and Italian culture and although he argues that nothing of great value – except Fellini’s films – have been produced after World War II, he spends many pages on saying so while hardly saying a word about the post-war history of Rome.
There are some unnecessary repetitions and some contradictions. For instance that Vercingetorix is said to have been “ignominiously strangled in a dungeon” in 52 BCE on page 49, but “beheaded in 46 CE” on page 104. To die twice, in two different ways and 98 years apart would surely have been a remarkable feat.
But all in all this 534-page tome is an enjoyable and informative, although selective and not exhaustive, account of the rises and falls of one of the world’s most intriguing cities.

What to see: St Peter’s Square, the Vatican City

St Peter’s Square, one of the greatest works of the Roman baroque, was laid out between 1657 and 1667 by the sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini on the orders of Pope Alexander VII. It is one of the greatest works of the Roman baroque and often counted as the very centre of the Christian world. When Bernini was given the task by the Pope, the square was to put it simply a mess which had to be completely rearranged.
Projecting from the façade of St Peter’s Basilica are two rectangular wings which frame the inner part of the square. The outer part of the square is in the shape of an ellipse, has a diameter of 240 metres from its northern to its southern end and is flanked by Doric colonnades on either side. Bernini himself described the colonnades as the “arms” of the church, stretching out in welcome to all visitors, believers and non-believers, and drawing them towards the church.
Because the colonnade is curved Bernini arranged the 284 columns four deep on radial axes and gradually increased their diameter in order not to disturb the proportions between spaces and columns. The colonnades are topped by 140 statues of saints, each measuring 3.1 metres in height, and six coats of arms of Alexander VII.

What to see: Princess Charlotte Frederikke's tomb, the Vatican

While many know that the former Queen Christina of Sweden found her last resting place in the crypt of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, few are aware that a princess who might have been queen of both Denmark and Norway rests in the Camposanto Teutonico next to St Peter’s.

Princess Charlotte Frederikke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1784-1840) was the first wife of the man who in 1814 briefly reigned as King Christian Frederik of Norway and later as King Christian VIII of Denmark in the years 1839-1848. Unlike many royal marriages of the time, theirs was obviously a love match. They married in 1805, had their only surviving child (the future Frederik VII) in 1808 and divorced in 1810 after it had been discovered that the Princess had an affair with her music teacher, Edouard du Pouy. That Prince Christian Frederik himself had a roving eye did not matter much at that time, when moral standards were very different for men and women. Apparently the couple only wanted a temporary separation, but a divorce was pushed through by King Frederik VI.
The Princess was banished to the small town of Horsens at a safe distance from Copenhagen. She met her ex-husband again when he returned from Norway in 1814, but no reconciliation was achieved.
In 1829 Princess Charlotte Frederikke moved to Rome, where she converted to Catholicism. She died in Rome on 13 July 1840, shortly after her ex-husband had ascended the throne of Denmark, and was laid to rest in the Germanic cemetery in the Vatican.
After her divorce she never again saw her son, who it would turn out had inherited perhaps too much from her both in looks and personality. When he became king in 1848, Frederik VII made sure that a suitable memorial was erected on his mother’s grave in the Vatican - it was executed by the sculptor Jens Adolf Jerichau in 1848-1849. 170 years after her death its upkeep remains the responsibility of the Danish Embassy in Rome.
The pictures show Princess Charlotte Frederikke’s tomb and a portrait of the young princess by F. C. Grøger, which hangs at Rosenborg Palace in Copenhagen.