Rome for the Romantics

Although the Piazza del Popolo and the Spanish Steps are stunning, the area turns into a nightmare in August - with the crowds of tourists and the 90 degree heat. As you pass the Steps, the first door on your left is a little museum that offers some peace and quiet. In fact, the museum is the house where the Romantic poet John Keats spent his final days. It is also located very close to the places where other Romantic poets lived while they were in Rome - including Lord Byron, the Shelley’s, and Goethe.

I have always loved the Romantic poets and I am considering them as a topic for my dissertation this year, so I undertook a little literary pilgrimage and visited the homes of Keats and Goethe. Both are preserved as memorial museums.

First, I visited Goethe’s home on the outskirts of the Piazza del Popolo. Before I came to Europe, I read some of Goethe’s Italian Journey, a journal of his travels in Italy. Although he loved all of Italy, he rushed through it in impatience to get to Rome, which he considered to be ‘the capital of the world.’ Once he had absorbed himself in Rome’s art and culture, he felt as if he had reached the pinnacle of human experience and could die happy. He also fell in love with a mysterious woman while he was in Rome. When he left, a friend reported that he cried for 14 days straight and claimed he would never be as happy again.

The Goethe’s House museum is full of evidence of the profound experience Goethe had of Rome. It includes hand-written letters from Goethe, sketches, and a heart-wrenching note from his lover who he left behind. There was also a library full of original editions of his works. I was the only visitor in the museum, which made it a very peaceful experience.

Goethe came to Rome in 1786, a time when The Grand Tour was considered an important experience for young gentlemen. He carried with him an idealized vision of Rome based on neoclassical ideals. In Rome’s ancient art and architecture, he found a sense of eternal beauty and perfection.

Next, I visited the Keats-Shelley memorial house, beside the Spanish Steps. It’s a tiny museum with a beautiful library of books either owned or written by the younger generation of Romantic poets. These poets lived adventurous, tragic lives and died young. Percy Shelley was at the peak of his poetic career as an expat in Rome when his close friend Keats died from tuberculosis at age 25. In the museum, I was able to stand in Keat’s modest bedroom. I opened the shutters and looked out the window at the view of the fountain and the bustling square that he must have seen while he was dying.

After Keat’s death, things went downhill for the Romantics. Percy Shelley drowned at age 29 and Lord Byron was subsequently sent into an existential crisis. He joined the Greek War of Independence and became a local hero, but soon died at the age of 36.

The Keats-Shelley House museum displays objects that were kept as relics by friends and admirers who revered the poets as saints. These objects range from a carnival mask owned by Byron, to an urn containing bits of Shelley’s corpse that were salvaged from his cremation. The object I found most interesting was a locket owned by Shelley that contained a lock of John Milton’s hair. Shelley had revered Milton and held the unpopular opinion that he was a secret satanist.

The Romantic poets had a different view of Rome than Goethe because they were a younger generation and rebelled against the aristocracy of neoclassical ideals. In an ode to John Keats, Percy Shelley wrote:

“Rome has fallen, ye see it lying heaped in undistinguished ruin: Nature is alone undying.”

When I first entered the Piazza del Popolo, my breath was taken away. It's impossible not to be impressed when you pass under the triumphal arch with its grave latin inscriptions and emerge into the vast piazza with an obelisk in the center. Everything is constructed to bear the illusion of eternal,

indomitable power.

While the Romantics found Rome to be an awe-inspiring city, they also considered it proof that the greatest of human creation is nothing compared to the eternal power of nature. The untimely deaths of the great poets supported this philosophy.