17 Dec 2018 | Rome> Did a dubble-feetsure the other day, rioni VI + VII. # VI—Parione—lies @ the core of the centro historico:

A lot of wich is taken up by piazza Navona + Campo de'Fiori:

Parione means "big wall" tho it aint nowhere near the surrounding Mura Aureliano. The other notable thing about rione Parione is that it gots the word rione embedded into it, like Pa' rione. + they also gots a dragon in their coat of arms + unlike Ludovisi dare dragon don't come off cartoonish like it was scribbled by a child w/ a crayola. Guess it's not a dragon but a hybrid griffon creature w/ the body of a lion + an eagle head... not sure what they did w/ the leone's testa, maybe its got sumping to do w/ why they halve lion's smoking pinecones on sum of the buildings:

Parione nasone

Bernini's in p.zza Navonna

merman—speaking of creepy hybrids

10 yrs ago before ever we lived in Rome we were having a coffee in Piazza Navonna + got swept up in a student protest that ended in violence:

clocktower sumwhere in Parione (in 2010)

talking statue (in 2017)

shortcut near Campo de'Fiori whereabouts Cesar was sposedly stabbed
(tho many other buildings claim this)

wall on via Capellari (in 2010)

We had slices @ il Forno in Campo De'Fiori (★★★★½) like we've done menny times before, eating it standing, hunched over so the oil drips onto the sanpietrini + then after washing our manos in the nasone. Far from a flowery meadow now Campo is famous for displaying food porn for turisti to take fotos of but dat no 1 can really afford to actually buy. The hooded Giordano Bruno is barely visible thru all the unsightly tents + selfie sticks, the statue on the spot where he was burned at the stake for having the gall to to think il moondough revolved round the sun. Our hero Bruno has a cameo in 1 of the Sound Furies songs, witch, insidentally the album un is forthcoming in exactly a week, on Dec 24... stay tooned!).

#VII, Regola, is the neighboring hood that hugs the riverfront (on the banks of which we once saw a dead body... 3 of the 4 times we've seen a corpse has been on Tiber banks):

Strada per strada brake down of rione VII, tho i think it extends further west than they say:

Regola aslo halves a hybrid critter in their emblem, tho more B9—a rabbit w/ antlers, perhaps that inspired the jackalope of Amerika Southwest lore. A'cording to wikipedia, "the inhabitants of this rione were nicknamed mangiacode, 'tail-eaters', after the dish coda alla vaccinara, which was a specialty of the many vaccinari 'butchers' of the rione." Regola used to be in the flood plain so only po folk lived there back in the day but now it's fashinoable w/ the rich + famous. It's main drag is via Giulia, perhaps the only straight street in downtown Rome, spitting u out @ palazzo Farnese.

Farnese/French embassy

Banchi Vecchi (in 2008)

texture #610

boundary marker from ancient Rome times

mammalian eagle on via Giulia (in 2013), yet another creepy hybrid

bridge the Farnese built so they cd walk from the mbassy to their palace across the Tiber
sans interracting avec peons on the rue

crypt of St Mary of Oration + Death

The above Chiesa di Santa Maria dell'Orazione e Morte was closed now for reparations, but we took the cryptic photos below in 2011 which dont think never we posted on 5cense. We also rubbed sum of the skeletal inscriptions on the outside + incorporated them into sum collages back in 2010:

fountain at end of via Giulia

The host (Cenci, or Ceci (chick pea)) of the ghost that now dwells in our palatial attico lived in Regola rione, near the Jewish ghetto in piazza Cenci... before they lopped her 22-yr old head off.

Form L to R—Beatrice Cenci, the same Cenci painting as Lynch prominently displayed it in Mullholand Drive (as we described here) + the bedder (vox) ½ of Sound Furies who bares an uncanny resemblance

Went back to go to Rocioli (★★★★) last night for dinner, on the border of Parione + Regola—good, but like most places in Roma overrun w/ gringos. We've also been to Pierluigi (★) a few times, but it's become a complete rip-off so make sure sum1 else is paying. Montecarlo (★★★) might be Morrisey's favorite pizza place, but not ours. There's a # of other decent places around Campo we've been to, none of which really stick out, except maybe Taverna Lucifero (★★★★) cuz we dig the name. We went to ilSanLorenzo (★★) the other night, they had pasta ai ricci + raw red shrimp but like Pierluigi is stuffy + overpriced. That Vietnamese restraunt at the end of via Giulia is ok, but last time we went we left still hungry for a slice of pizza.

Only 2 rioni to go! A riva riva!