Word: rome
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Hall of Mirrors of Rome's block-long Quirinale Palace. Italy's 70-year-old President Giovanni Gronchi swore in his good friend Amintore Fanfani, 50, as Premier, along with a Cabinet of 19. Not since Italy became a Republic after World War II had an Italian government leaned so far to the left...
...beaten track 60 miles northwest of Rome stands one of the strangest witnesses on earth to man's love of the curious and bizarre. Near the Villa Orsini at Bomarzo is a whole sculpture garden of beasts and ogres carved from volcanic rock (see color pages) on the site. Rarely has sentiment taken a more bizarre turn. Created in the 1560s by Duke Pierfrancesco ("Vicino") Orsini, the sculpture garden was meant not only to astonish and delight, but to serve as a memorial to Orsini's deceased wife...
...garden was "rediscovered" when Salvador Dali journeyed there from Rome to pose in an ogre's mouth (opposite) while conversing with a white cat. Research by Italian and English scholars indicates that, far from being a surrealist chamber of horrors, the garden was originally a rather solemn effort to combine the wonders of the ancient world with figures from a pagan sacred grove. With sphinxes on either side of the entrance to give fair warning, Vicino Orsini did all he could to create the impression that some otherworldly spirit had brought the strange stone figures into existence, left...
...early hours one January morning, the clang of church bells broke the stillness over the vineyards and olive groves of Sant'Angelo in Villa, about 50 miles southeast of Rome. At the sound of the tocsin, villagers tumbled out of bed and, dressing as they ran, swarmed to the church, shouting threats. The alarm had been sounded by two early risers who had spotted the enemy on their way to work. The enemy: Parish Priest Andrea Tarquini, who, flanked by three carabinieri, had tried to slip secretly into the church to sign a document that the whole village considered...
Last November, when Pastor Cannito applied for permission to build a new church (with donations from the U.S. Southern Baptist Convention), war broke out again in Sant'Angelo. Although Rome's Ministry of Public Works gave its approval and the Baptists started to build, the local mayor issued a firm no. Contrary to the standard plot rules of Italian church-state village dramas, Mayor Antonio Baldassarra was not a Communist, but a Christian Democrat who was outraged by the prospect of a Protestant church in Sant'Angelo in Villa...