When is a guidebook not just a guidebook?

When it is also a guide to the art, the history, the culture, and the architecture of a specific place. So I’m not going to call ‘A Journey into Michelangelo’s Rome’ just a guidebook. It is, in fact, a work of art that allows you to travel both back in time and into the present while exploring Rome through the eyes of it’s most famous artist, Michelangelo Buonarroti.

The perfect book for the armchair traveler, it starts with an introduction to Michelangelo and his world. You are immediately transported back in time to follow his journey from sculptor to painter. Along the way, you’re introduced to a cast of characters, mainly popes and politicians, who played extremely important roles in the development of not only Rome but also Michelangelo’s art.

I was quickly mesmerised by the beauty of Michelangelo’s work and was fascinated by the background stories on how the various sculptures and paintings evolved. And as a traveler, I found the numerous maps that highlighted the locations of Michelangelo’s work, plus where he lived and visited, indispensible. Having never visited Rome, the maps helped me envision not only the Rome of the past but also present day Rome.

The book’s detailed photographs, sidebars, diagrams, and street maps provide clarity and understanding of how and why Rome is considered one of Europe’s most beautiful and interesting cities.

Written by Angela K. Nickerson, A Journey into Michelangelo’s Rome looks like a coffee table book and acts like a travel guide and history/art lesson. It is also small enough to make the ideal traveling campanion. In fact, I’ve lent the book to a couple of friends who are off to Rome later this year for the very first time. They thought they had already figured out where and what to see in Rome. But after reading this book, they are now revising their plans so that they can see Rome through Michelangelo’s eyes.

Want to know more about the author and this book, then have a read of this interview.

A Journey into Michelangelo’s Rome is one of the Roaring Forties Press ArtSeries. Each of the books in the series tackles the interrelationship between an artist and a city. Some of the other titles include A Journey into Dorothy Parker’s New York and A Journey into Matisse’s South of France.

There is nothing I love so much as the jumbling and scrapping of expectations. I thought Rome would live up to all my visions of a city steeped in history and hanging onto its past. But it’s something else. It’s hard to get a grip on the city. It slips away. It reminds me, oddly, of Russia — the only way to really begin to know it is t be invited into someone’s home. It’s a city where you really have to pack up the guidebook and just start walking. It’s all jumbled tgether in streets of old and new, tiny distances separating today’s racing, exhaust-filled thoroughfares from the immense and impressive buildings thousands of years old.

There’s the Colosseum, looking, yes, incredible, but like an aged matriarch of the great-great vintage, sitting serenely in an armchair, watching the antics of her children’s children’s children and knowing that, although she can still stand straight-backed and proud, her time has passed.

And there’s the Pantheon, that incredible feat of engineering, completely whole, still with full use of its faculties after two thousand years, hemmed in by buildings that are babies by comparison. It is set off by a tiny piazza in front, but mostly it tries to blend in, the squat round thing, as if it’s found the secret to eternal life but doesn’t want anyone to know and would just like to be treated like one of the guys, thanks.

Anywhere else these sights would require a walk outside town maybe, at least some effort. Here they’re packed in with the busy life of modern Rome. There’s no time to build up the awe of ancient history, little escape from the screaming rush of traffic-filled streets, the buzz of scooters, the constant clack of espresso cups on china, and the crush of tourists. There’s no space for reverence of the past.

I get the feeling that’s what Rome intends. Life goes on, it seems to say. There were glories of imperial weight before, and the oozing history of the past two thousand years — both the beautiful and the very ugly — but if you stop to ponder it you culd be crushed under the weight of stories long gone. Right now there is business to be done, children to feed, planning to do, friends to meet, politics to shake your head over, coffee to drink. It is good to be reminded of the past, to glance over at the ruins of the Roman Forum, where world-shaking decisions were once made, but it is not our present. It is not our life, not our now.

I thought the sense of history here would be tremendous, but it’s something else. The sense that history moves on is nowhere so vivid as in Rome. Only here can I imagine, someday, busloads of tourists stopping by a broken building overgrown with wildflowers, roses tumbling out of former rooftops, and the guide will say, “Yes, here’s the White House, whose residents once thought they commanded the world. That was a long time ago.”

(This is a guest post by Joanne Scarborough about a unique theater that originally paid its actors in food and allowed patrons to barter food for a ticket during distressed economic times; hence its tag line, “ham for Hamlet.” Since playwright George Bernard Shaw was a vegetarian, however, his payment arrangement with the Barter was in local spinach.)

For someone who lives at the edge of the somewhat arid Texas plains, the really inspiring show is the outside profusion of springtime dogwood, redbud and tulips, but Virginia’s Barter Theatre onstage productions are pretty special too.

Located in Abingdon, Virginia, in the state’s southern Appalachian foothills, the theatre is celebrating its 75th anniversary during 2008. Founded in 1933 during the U.S. Great Depression by a young actor named Robert Porterfield, the Barter offered a unique way to match up out-of-work New York performers with Southwest Virginia farmers needing entertainment — trading food from local farms and gardens for admission to a play.

“At the end of the first season, the Barter Company cleared $4.35 in cash, two barrels of jelly and enjoyed a collective weight gain of over 300 pounds.”

In 1946, Barter was named the State Theatre of Virginia and now boasts a professional repertory company performing on two different stages from February through December.

Traditional productions alternate with new works, and an ensemble called the Barter Players also offer plays for young audiences. Photos around the main stage lobby recognize distinguished “alumni” actors, including Gregory Peck, Hume Cronyn, Patricia Neal and Kevin Spacey.

When my husband and I visited recently, we caught a sold-out matinee performance of a musical developed locally: “Keep on the Sunny Side — the Songs and Story of the Original Carter Family”. Every performance is a live show of Carter music by the actors, a testament to their talent.

The Carter Family are enshrined in the Country Music Hall of Fame for their groundbreaking harmonies and guitar licks; they were performers and songwriters in the 1920s-1940s. Their work was rediscovered during the folk music revival of the 1960s, including their hits like “Will the Circle be Unbroken.” Johnny Cash’s wife June Carter Cash (portrayed most recently in the movie “Walk the Line”) was a Carter, although the Barter production features her mother, Maybelle.

As is the Barter tradition, Artistic Director Richard Rose cheerily welcomed visitors (especially first timers), recognized a couple of groups attending and then pinpointed the audience member who had traveled the farthest. That day, the winner was from Brazil and merited enthusiastic applause.

The audience also joined in for a couple of the Carter family songs, and produced both smiles and tears as the saga ended — a friendly audience getting into the spirit of the show.

Later offerings this year include comedies, the rock opera “The Who’s Tommy”, “Sweeney Todd” and the thriller “The Desperate Hours”.

Barter Theatre’s home, Abingdon, offers lots of other artistic and historical attractions, ample lodging and numerous places to eat both before and after a show. The latter include the casual Barter Cafe across the street (decorated with theater memorabilia and with sandwich orders given actor’s names) and the elegant Martha Washington Inn.

To dig deeper into roots music, visit Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail.

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