In the lush context of the Gianicolo, that once was the site of Garibaldi’s headquarter and where the equestrian monument erected in 1932 preserves the body of his wife Anna, from Garibaldi Square onwards there is one of the most picturesque panoramic views of the city, far from the noises produced by urban traffic, in an ancient silence, only broken by the cannon shot fired a salvo from the lodge for ticking midday. Strategic for Garibaldi’s war plans in defending Rome in 1849, more than 200 years before these places had confined from the rest of the world Torquato Tasso, the author of the “Gerusalemme Liberata”, who was never given the poetic crown Pope Clement VIII had assigned him.
Of the famous oak tree of Tasso, struck by a thunderbolt in 1843, there is only the skeleton left that was never removed in memory of the poet who, from the nearby monastery of St. Onofrio where he stayed at the end of his illness and till his death in 1595, he had a rest under the shadows of its branches in total meditation. Also Garibaldi got moved by his sad destiny when, during his requisition of the bells to be transformed into cannons, he saved those of St. Onofrio, that he considered “sacred” because, he said, “they played the agony of Tasso”.
|
