NOT ALL the marches on the streets of Dublin in recent days were protests against the Government, writes Frank McNally
Last Sunday afternoon, a crowd gathered at the Garden of Remembrance, a traditional starting point for demonstrations. From there it moved south, stopping outside the Department of Education and gathering numbers en route. By the time it crossed the Liffey, the movement had swollen to at least 250.
If the Taoiseach had run into it at that point, he might have been tempted to perform another U-turn. But evasive action would have been unnecessary in this case. The marchers were coming in peace, led by Pat Liddy, writer, artist, and fount of all knowledge about his native city. And the event was merely the latest in Dublin City Council's series of themed walks.
Following the success of the Jewish Dublin tour in May, this time the focus was on Italy. But the turnout confirmed what the city council seemed to discover then, months before the Government: that there is a new public mood for purposeful street-based exercise. Of course, in straitened times, the free food and drink laid on afterwards — of which more anon — may have something to do with the walks' popularity.
You could have a tour of Italian Dublin featuring fish-and-chip shops alone. In light of Julius Caesar's controversial decision not to come here, the nearest thing Ireland has had to a Roman invasion was the influx a century ago of migrants from Casalattico - a small town in Lazio whose population is now exceeded tenfold by its extended Irish family: Fuscos, Fortes, Cafollas, et al. As Liddy reminded us, the famous "one and one" is a vestige of a time when these new arrivals had a similar struggle with the language to the one in which Giovanni Trapattoni is now so manfully engaged.
But the focus of Sunday's tour was not so much cafés as art and architecture: beginning with the Hugh Lane Gallery (itself housed in an Italianate mansion) and Antonio Mancini's curious portrait of Lady Gregory, painted through a threaded grid, the lines of which you can still see on the picture; continuing with a beautiful Francini plaster ceiling, glimpsed through the first-floor window of a house in Marlborough Street; and including, inter alia, such delights as Dublin's version of The Last Supper.
John Byrne's photographic mural — the centrepiece of Mick Wallace's Little Italy complex — is holding up better, so far, than the original did. Despite being a genius, Leonardo painted his masterpiece in such a way that it began deteriorating almost immediately. But four years on, Byrne's version remains miraculously unvandalised, except for occasional graffiti- which, since the picture is wipeable, unlike Leonardo's, can be easily removed.
The tour involved literature too - much of it connected with that great Italophile James Joyce. There was also a bit of politics. And the literature and politics merged later in City Hall, with a short documentary on Joe Nannetti,nationalist MP, councillor, and (in 1906/7) Lord Mayor of Dublin.
By trade, Nannetti was a printer, and features prominently in Ulysses as the man in the Freeman's Journal who takes Leopold Bloom's ad. Indeed, Bloom prophesies that the Irish-Italian will become mayor (not an inspired prediction by Joyce, since he was writing years after the event) but also frets that the councillor has never seen his "real" country.
Nannetti was thoroughly assimilated in Ireland, however. A Joyce-themed exhibit in the National Archives features the MP's real-life parliamentary question, tabled for answer on the original Bloomsday - June 16th, 1904 - demanding to know why polo might be played in the Phoenix Park's "Nine Acres", when Gaelic games might not. Nannetti framed the question with his belief that the park "belongs to the citizens of Dublin" - a notion dismissed in the Chief Secretary's reply as "pure fiction".
Tour over, the audience in City Hall was treated to a selection of arias (Italian, naturally) by the Drawing Room Opera Company, after which the City Council's largesse even extended to providing supper.
I can foresee this becoming an increasingly important part of these events. The Jewish Dublin tour ended with a kosher banquet in Tailors Lane. Here, guests were treated to both food and wine, courtesy of Italian caterers, and the short trip from the opera performance space to the buffet table saw some of the fastest walking of the day.
Already, I look forward to the French-themed tour, which I suggest should start at the Alliance Française building in Kildare Street, proceeding in a south-west direction to Café en Seine (pints on the Lord Mayor); then east past the Huguenot Cemetery on Stephen's Green, before ending around the corner at Government Buildings, just to give the Cabinet a fright.
After that, walkers can repair across the road to the nearest French restaurant - Patrick Guilbaud's, I believe - and the council's now-customary free spread.
For an Irish-Italian experience of another kind, readers might want to visit the Back Loft in St Augustine Street, Dublin 8 tonight for a show called Notes from the Underworld. Directed and performed by musician and artist Maria Laura Ronzoni, this is described as "a journey into the untold of human existence, featuring excerpts from Dante's Inferno and the poetry of Samuel Beckett, with musical accompaniment." You have to pay for tickets (€12/10) but the wine is free. Find out more at www.thebackloft.blogspot.com, or from the Italian Cultural Institute at www.iicdublino.esteri.it/IIC_Dublino.