Rome is burning!  When it comes to stylish modern evocations of the Great Fire of 64, we thought things were looking good yesterday when we stumbled upon those classical column candles made by Goody Gram!  Today, however, we’ve stumbled upon the best Rome fire re-creation that we’ve ever seen.

This fabulous firescreen (perfect for the Compound’s fireplace) was designed by BBM and we saw it first on Core 77.  It’s made of asercut cor-ten steel plate and is  screen is produced in the image of the present-day skyline of Rome.

Now, of course we know there was no Colosseum, Column of Trajan, St. Peter’s Basilica, or Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine – all represented on the firescreen – when Nero burned down the place (or was accused of doing so) in AD 64.   If we can figure out how to buy one of these babies, that’s not going to keep us from playing with matches and fiddling while Rome burns, right in the comfort of our own Compound.

For you Anglophiles, they’ve created a London version too.

Oh!  Are we ever digging these classical column candles!  Gotta order some now so we can do our own Great Fire of 64 thing here in the Compound.

These are made by Goody Grams and sold by MollaSpace.  We’re told that “Even after usage, the candle will only burn 1/3 of the top, creating an original piece as wax will melt over to drip down the column base.”

Come on baby, light our fire! Scheduled to ship in late November, these will make the perfect holiday gift for the Neronian in your life.

A huge storm swept through Rome on Monday bringing high winds and very cool temperatures.  The winds uprooted trees along the streets of the city, but they also brought down a huge gilded statue of the Virgin Mary that stood atop Monte Mario, behind the Stadio Olimpico.

The statue, which stood atop a church in the Istituto Don Orione, was originally erected in 1953.  The Virgin suffered significant damage in the fall, losing an arm, but authorities say that she’ll be restored and re-erected as soon as possible.

We love these photos, taken by Giacomo Gabrielli – Toiati and published in Il Messaggero for their emphasis on the enormous scale of the sculpture.

Faithful readers of eCool will know that here in the Compound we did almost everything made by Worldwide Fred, from their Jesus! Look at the Time! Watch to their Roman Numerals Birthday Candles to their Holy Toast Bread Stamp, they simply crack us up.

In the interest of humor (and knowing that some of you are eager to get a head start on the Christmas shopping) we’ve decided to showcase another of their products today.  Called Spongioli, these ravioli-style pop-up sponges are packaged as if they’re pockets of gourmet pasta filled with cheesy goodness! What better tool to wipe the pesto or ragu from your counter tops?

You can order your Spongioli here.  And if you want to know what sauce to mop up with this particular type of spongy pasta, you’re probably going to get a copy of Oretta Zanini De Vita’s brand-new and magisterial Encyclopedia of Pasta, described by Rachel Donadio in the New York Times as “a social history disguised as a food book.”

Buon appetito!  And stay tuned for more gift-giving suggestions as the holidays grow near.  We’ll help you find the perfect gift for every Rome-antic in your life.

So Michael Jackson and Augustus walk into a bar….

We’ve not really managed to finish the joke, having only come up with weak punchlines about first century thrillers and imperial moonwalks.

Our inability to figure out what happens in that imagined bar scene probably stems from the fact that Augustus would have hated Michael Jackson and vice versa–we can only imagine that the meeting of their carefully choreographed self-images would have produced an ugly clash.

That hasn’t stopped the city of Rome from celebrating these two historical figures in a single space, however.  A recent drive down the (blissfully deserted) Lungotevere alerted us to the fact that someone’s decided to honor Michael Jackson at the new Ara Pacis Museum.  There, visible through a massive glass window that faces the Tiber River, stand a sizable boot and glove that sparkle with golden glass mosaic tiles that could commemorate no one else but the King of Pop.

As far as we know, Augustus was never decked out in such a fashion (and would have sternly disapproved of anyone who accessorized their toga this way) but it’s not the first time that the Ara Pacis Museum has been used to display fancy dress, so maybe someone knows something we don’t.

It’s that time again eCoolers when we offer a roundup of links about Rome that we’ve found interesting.  If you’re a Facebook Fan of eCool, then you may already have seen these and we apologize for the repetition.  Others of you may want to click over to Facebook to join our fan club (link above) or you may prefer to take advantage of the hot new Facebook fan box we’ve added to the sidebar of this blog.

Here’s what we’ve been reading in the past few weeks:

• After its triumphal tour of Greece, the Euphronios Vase–recently returned to Italy from the Metropolitan Museum of Art–takes up a permanent place in the Villa Giulia.  Michael Kimmelman of the NY Times reports.

• The Sacramento Examiner tells us what healthy, low-cost food to serve at an ancient Roman toga party or wedding.

• The Onion brings us news that Hercules is struggling to complete his 13th Labor.

• Awesome Athena comic books from Dynamite Entertainment.

• The Discovery Channel alerts us to the discovery of lotion that is over 2000 years old, left almost intact in the cosmetic case of an aristocratic Etruscan woman. Taking your cosmetics to the grave gives a whole meaning to the brand Bed, Bath, and Beyond.

• USA Today has an article on daily life in Pompeii.

• Divina Cucian tells us how to make Sicilian Tomato jam. Yummm!

• Speeding nuns moving a bit too fast in a Ford Fiesta refuse to pay their fine.

• A reporter from the Globe and Mail went to gladiator school in Rome.  After we published this link, faithful reader Star let us know about another great article on the same subject from the Telegraph called “I Came, I Saw, I Conked Him.”

• The remains of a Bronze Age warrior with an arrow sticking through his skeleton was found in Nettuno.

• An account of a culinary vacation in Campania made us really really hungry.

• Curators of the shrine of Italian saint Padre Pio have enlisted scientists to provide the technology for a 60-metre statue of the friar capable of collecting and recycling solar energy.

• The Etruscan masterpiece, the Chimera of Arezzo, has gone on show at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles as part of a cooperation deal with Italy after the museum agreed to return contested antiquities.

• Hype about the possible discovery of the summer villa of the Roman Emperor Vespasian had been discovered was followed a brief article by classicist Mary Beard that clarified the process (or non-process) by which the identification (or non-identification) of the villa was made.

• The same Mary Beard visited the Roman Forum on a trip to Rome and registered complaints about the lines, the disrepair of the monuments, and the decision to install a contemporary art exhibit in the ancient downtown of the city.

In case you’re wondering, that “Your Teens” photo above is by Susan Sanders.  Click over to her photo blog, Rome With a View, to see more wonderful photos of the Eternal City.

Every once in a while a product rolls across our screen that we’re sure we can’t live without.  Anyone reading this entry will immediately understand why this is one of those moments.

We don’t know who makes Classic Chalk — these are sticks of chalk in the shape of  Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns–nor do we know who came up with this genius product.  But we like the Nerd Approved suggestion that these writing implements would be useful for anyone traveling back in time to 64 AD with the intention of writing “Nero Sucks” all over the city of Rome.

And, of course, we’re sure that every art history or classics prof needs a pocketful of this stuff–it’s hard to think of anything that would impress students more!

Purchasing options are vague.  It seems that these artful columns may be available in bulk here–which is OK as we can’t imagine that a 3-pack would ever be enough.

It’s Photo Friday!  Faithful eCoolers will know that photographer Susan Sanders loves the writing on the wall.  She spends lots of time on Rome’s streets looking for witty juxtapositions of word and image and that which she brings us today certainly doesn’t disappoint.

The sole-ful photograph above was shot near St. John Lateran, where a colossal bronze statue of St. Francis and his friars commemorates the visit of Assisi’s saint to Pope Urban III in Rome in 1209. The Pope, it seems, expected to meet a radical preacher, but instead found himself in admiration of St. Francis’s humility and faith and granted him permission to continue his work as the founder of a religious order.

The sculpture of Francis and his followers stands facing the church of St. John Lateran. Tourists and Romans alike pose for photos with the over-sized friars, but it’s when you walk around the back of the sculpture that things really get interesting, for the youth of Rome have applied their paint pens to the feet of one of the friars.  We wouldn’t call it art, but the tags inscribed on the kneeling friar’s soles seem to suggest a new spelling for the word gra-feety.

Sorry for the absence eCoolers.  We’ve had some IMPORTANT things to take care of here in the Compound over the past week or so and that’s kept us from blogging as faithfully as we’d like.  But, we’re back and we’re bad!  So stay tuned for some Rome ultra-coolness over the course of the next few weeks.

We’re kicking off our Summer Coolfest with some sand sculptures from Jesolo Lido, a city near Venice on the east coast of the boot-shaped peninsula.  Seems that Jesolo Lido has a thematic sand sculpture festival each year and that this summer they’ve asked a team of professional sand sculpture artists to illustrate Dante’s Inferno (note to Compounders: possible alternative career).

In particular, artists were asked to take their inspiration from verses 1-9 of Canto III of the Inferno, words that Dante reads as he stands at the edge of the world of the damned souls:

Through me is the way into the woeful city; through me is the way into eternal woe; through me is the way among the lost people. Justice moved my lofty maker: the divine Power, the supreme Wisdom and the primal Love made me. Before me were no things created, unless eternal, and I eternal last. Leave every hope, ye who enter!

The international team of 18 participating artists have created the scenes, mythological figures, and the most famous characters from the Inferno, including the figures of Charon, Paolo and Francesca, the terrible Cerberus, Count Ugolino and  many others.

We haven’t seen this.  But we’d love to.  It’s on display at Jesolo Lido until July 31st and is open from 9am to 11pm.  Those who are really well-versed can take advantage an area where spontaneous poets (this means you!) perform by reciting the Inferno.

The entry fee is a mere 2 euro.  If you’re in the area, make your way to the Casa Bianca Beach.

More than 400 people follow us on Facebook (you can too – click on over to facebook.com/eternallycool and show us the love).  As a Facebook fan, you’ll get daily Rome updates!

Not on Facebook, but still want to know what’s going on in the Eterna?  Then you’re sure to find a link or two below that will appeal:

• Bruno Heller says he wants to produce a theatrical wrap-up to his critically beloved and prematurely canceled HBO drama “Rome.”  Oh please let them make a Rome movie!

• The Aurelian Wall is a bit less sturdy than was thought.  There are fears for the future of Rome’s ancient Aurelian walls after chunks collapsed.

• Bldgblog.com visits the Crypta Balbi Museum near Largo Argentina and describes it as “a city-block-sized core sample of Rome, threaded through with staircases, tunnels, and elevated walkways for visitors.”

• The New York Times provides a schedule and some details about usually-closed monuments in the Forum and Palatine that are open to the public this summer.

• The Timesonline.co.uk reviews David Watkin’s new guidebook to the Roman Forum and gives it two thumbs up, saying, “More successfully than any writer before him, Watkin makes his reader aware of the multilayered, fascinating history of this unique site.”  We’ve been passing the book around the Compound for the past few months and we concur.

• At SeriousEats.com, Gina DePalma shows us how to stay cool this summer by doing as the Sicilians and eating ice-cold gelato, granita, and sorbetto for breakfast.  Oh yeah!

• The NYTimes has an article today about the Euphronios Vase, now on display at the Villa Giulia, and Vernon Silver’s new book, “The Lost Chalice: The Epic Hunt for a Priceless Masterpiece” which they rate as a “first-class page turner documenting the stolen krater’s travels from ancient Greece to Etruscan Italy to New York and then back here — and of the travails of another work also by the sublime Euphronios.”

• Trenitalia cancelled their lost and found service.  That struck everyone in the eCool Compound as hilarious.

• Restorers working on Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Pauline Chapel at the Vatican claim to have found a self-portrait of the artist.

• The Pope announced that bones in a grave excavated at San Paolo fuori le mura belong to St. Paul while archaeologists announced that the oldest known representation of St. Paul was recently discovered in the catacombs of St. Tecla on Via Ostiense.  All that news came as the Vatican’s Year of St. Paul drew to a close at 29 June.  Make of that what you will.

• Venice got its first female gondolier.  Brava!

• Smithsonian Magazine covered the work of French amateur archaeologist, Bruno Tassan, who’s fighting to preserve a neglected track of the ancient Via Aurelia in Provence.

• Awwww cute.  The Rome Zoo (aka Bioparco) celebrated after a zebra foal was born there for the first time in over ten years. They named him Primo, but that’s hjust a temporary name and  a more permanent one will be chosen by children who visit the zoo.