Yes Hotel Rome Travel Blog: The Rome travel guide

Almost in every country an ancient statue is an object to be admired and preserved in a museum. But there are exceptions.

When in comes to sculptures, Rome is unbeateable. It seems that all you have to do is to dig a hole in a random spot of the city to find some archeological treasure. As i said before, the sound thing to do with an archeological treasure is to keep it in a museum, but when you have many treasures (and that’s the situation in Rome) you start to use them in odd ways. To make the most of the city , buying a Roma Pass is definetely a must.

There was a time when Pasquino had no name. It was just an sculpture without face or limbs found in the 16th century, placed in an alley near Piazza Navona. An interesting classical Tour of Rome is a suggestion for detailed information .But someday someone decided to use him to voice the people’s dissatisfaction with the church’s government of the city hanging form his neck a sheet of paper with satirical verses, The idea was terrific for its time: the church never hesitated to hang or decapitate its critics, so a spokesperson made of stone was the perfect solution for the Romans.

Pasquino became really popular (and apparently got his name from a professor who used to write satirical verses, but nobody is really sure) and many popes tried to throw him into the tiber or put guards to vigilate him during the night, but all they got was the sudden creation of other “talking statues”.

After Pasquino the most famous talking statue of Rome was Marforio, a Roman sculpture representing the Tiber river or the Ocean that’s preserved now on the Capitoline Museums. Marforio became Pasquino’s interlocutor, and they eventually formed the Congress of the Witty, with other talking statues of less importance as Madama Lucrezia or Abate Luigi.

Madama Lucrezia is a monumental bust of a roman priestess located now near Piazza Venezia. She wasn’t as outspoken as Pasquino but was also popular on its day.

When the popes weren’t allowed to rule Rome anymore, the purpose of the talking statues dissapeared and they weren’t as popular as before, but if you walk past near them while visiting Rome you’ll still be able to see letters expressing the most poisoning feelings of the romans towards the italian government.