An intoxicating mix
In a search for the best Negroni, Wendy Holden rediscovers her love of Rome and Venice
Athing of beauty is a joy for ever.’ The poet Keats could have been talking about a really good Negroni. We were in Rome, where the poet’s life ended, and about to walk into the bar of a leading, longestablished hotel. How would the Inghilterra score on the Negroniometer?
Rome was our third stop on a grand tour by train. We Eurostarred from London to Paris where, having shoved our rucksacks in Gare de Lyon’s handy left luggage office, we spent a day wandering and lunching before getting the overnight sleeper to Venice.
To emerge in the morning from Santa Lucia station on to the Grand Canal is one of the world’s great experiences. Like stepping into a widescreen film, all colour, bustle, and glorious light.
Under a bright November sun, the air was fresh but not freezing. There were people around but nowhere near as many as in high summer.
We walked around the Accademia art gallery and barely saw another living soul trying to work out what Hieronymous Bosch was on about in the wonderful collection of his works on show.
Having visited Venice many times, now I like to wander round, stopping occasionally for a nibble or a snifter.
Which is how, one evening, I found myself sitting in a bar opposite the Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari church, watching a hipster barman, arm high in the air, pour the ingredients for my Negroni into a chunky cut-glass tumbler containing just one huge round ice cube.
For those unacquainted with this particular libation, a Negroni contains equal parts gin, (red) ver- mouth and Campari. It was invented in Florence in 1919 when Count Negroni asked for a slug of gin in his Americano cocktail in place of the usual soda.
Negronis are now a fixture in all hip cocktail bars but not every hip cocktail barman has quite cracked the art of making one. Not even in the drink’s native land. From the perfection of the Frari version, the next night, in the bar of Venice’s illustrious Teatro La Fenice, mine was so heavy on the gin that the second act of the opera was almost impossible to follow.
And for those still with me from the first paragraph, it is my sad duty to report that the Inghilterra’s effort was weak in the extreme.
Getting to Rome by train was much less of a disappointment. The fast new Frecciarossa service travels down through Padua, Florence and Bologna before drawing into the cradle of civilisation and seat of the Caesars.
After the sybaritism of Venice – sublime beauty at every turn – visiting Rome can seem more of a job
of work. But few other jobs are quite so much worth doing. The Keats-Shelley House is a favourite, with an evergrowing collection of great Romantic memorabilia.
The Capitoline Museums, with their sublime view over the Forum, are unmissable.
But there’s always something new – or rather, old – to discover.
This time it was the Ara Pacis, Augustus’s ‘Peace Arch’ and Imperial propaganda in marble.
Here’s a tip for those travelling by train from Rome’s central Termini station to the city’s Fiumicino airport.
As two of the city’s greatest museums – the Palazzo Massimo and the Baths of Diocletian – face the station, it’s worth getting a late flight to explore them both.
You can park your luggage in the museum lockers and spend the day reading the amazing curses in the witch’s well and admiring Empress Livia’s famous Garden Room frescoes. Intoxication of a different sort, perhaps.
ROME CAN SEEM MORE OF A JOB... BUT FEW JOBS ARE SO WORTH DOING