Page 4: The Historic Ball
In fact, there are many odd things I could tell you about Christina as she stuck close to her devotional timetable and fountain visitations. I won’t though, because you are probably fed up already and I’m supposed to be talking about the Ball in the fountain that is so vital to the history of Rome. Instead, I’ll just mention one… one day our beautiful Queen promised the French sculptor and fountain designer Charles Errard, who was staying at the Villa Medici, that she would knock on his door at a certain time.
However, on purpose or else for some reason that unfortunately we don’t know, the fact is that at the arranged time this energetic flower of the North was still at Castel Saint Angelo. Not a bit dismayed, she excused herself to the company and popped out for a minute. Nowadays, she’d just have used her mobile to rap out a text message or give her friend (or, according to some, her enemy) at the Villa Medici a phone call. Then, however, it seems she trotted off round the battlements of the castle, used the index finger of her hairy little hand to dial the correct number on the breech of a big gun and fired off a quick "cannon call" to the other side of Rome.
The solitary stone Ball flew high across the skies above the city, sticking rigidly and solemnly to its allotted course until, spotting the door of the Villa Medici from on high, it hurled itself down to crash against it. "You can still make out a kind of dent in the upper section of the door to the historic villa", writes one enthusiast. Picked up immediately by pious hands, the miraculous Ball was carefully pierced and, with a metal spout stuck in the hole, was placed in the middle of the marble basin as the fountain spout. And there you can still admire that historic Ball which, despite its long flight, did not break and has remained, for some of those who love to study Rome, as one of the city’s many symbolic artifacts.
 |
 |
 |