Page 87 - Travel + Leisure India & South Asia (January 2020)
P. 87
But I also believed that more profound than
the jolt of perversion is the solace of beauty, its
scholarship, its motives, how it comes into being and
why it endures. Over the next few years, I moved in
and out of Rome, where the Doria Pamphilj Gallery
became one of my refuges.
Social acquaintance with Prince Jonathan Doria
Pamphilj, whose palazzo neighbours the gallery
and its art, graduated to friendship over the years.
In his palace of over 1,000 rooms, you are met in
a honey-hued salon; a butler arrives with a silver
salver bearing prosecco and aperitif. A reception
with Jonathan is memorable for its grace: driven
by a sympathy for great ideas, his wit is sparring
but always kind, bordering the fabulous; his
manner is correct, yet he warmly welcomes you
into a private fold of beauty, as if you had always
belonged there. You imagine other guests in this for providence in it, a love for travel,
august, rarefied salon, including Madonna. More GETTING THERE a peripatetic, dusty life that prized
recently, the palace hosted a much-discussed Many airlines, including Etihad experience over symbol. The family’s
Airways (etihad.com), connect
fashion show from Giambattista Valli for H&M India’s major cities to Rome. The motto is optima pades, which translates
(front row: Kendall Jenner, Chris Lee). entrance to the Palazzo Doria to ‘show your best’. Taking this advisory
Jonathan can talk high art or a new restaurant Pamphilj is on Via del Corso 305. to heart, Jonathan has invested his
The galleries are open to public,
on Via Catalana, where fried artichoke leaves are between 9 am and 7 pm every entire life in the pursuit of rare ideas
on point. He is passionate about restoration, and day (except the third Wednesday and difficult truths, including a political
of each month). Individual
was one of the first members of Italian nobility tickets for adults from `948; conviction in our fundamental equality.
to open his palace, and a part of its formidable doriapamphilj.it/roma He publicly supports many causes,
collection housed in the Doria Pamphilj Gallery, to STAY including equal rights for all, irrespective
SHUTTERSTOCK (2) Elson Braga, who radiates kindness, intelligence, The new Fendi Private Suites lets month-long stay in Italy last year. A
public. Dinner is always with his family, his partner
of gender, race, or sexual orientation.
you stay at Fendi’s boutique in
I met Jonathan at the end of a
Rome—on the third floor of Palazzo
equanimity; and their children, Emily and Filippo,
Fendi. From `59,225 in January;
bleak April in Rome, it had rained
raised with fiery wonder for the world, humility
fendiprivatesuites.com/en
every day; at a trattoria, my favourite
sunglasses got nicked. I arrived at his
palace in a strop. But the surfeit of fine
things on the piano nobile—frescos,
Frescos and
paintings decorate marble busts, paintings —quietened
the dome of that tetchy hum in my head. I could
the gallery.
do the only reasonable thing: submit
to collective splendour. Much later,
The Doria as I was leaving, I stood alone in his
Pamphilj Gallery
is one of the courtyard. I imagined Handel, who
largest private had performed pieces here, entering
collections of fine the palace in the days of yore. I also
art in Italy.
imagined Velázquez at work, when he
had been commissioned to document
one of Jonathan’s forebears, a Pope
whose unflattering portrayal prompted
a scandal. But an exultation in greatness
can only be measured by how one feels
leaving it behind. As the wet cobbled
streets of Rome led me back to my flat,
I recognised that I had been profoundly
comforted; and April, which thus far
had felt misspent, now had its crown.
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