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Walking Tours of Rome

Rome According to James Joyce

27/6/2019

 
Walking Tours of Rome
Plaque to James Joyce, Via Frattina, Rome
Plaque to James Joyce, Via Frattina

Not everyone who comes to the Eternal City is captivated by its magic, a case in point being the great Irish writer, James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (1882-1941).

​Joyce arrived in Rome from Trieste on July 31st, 1906, to take up employment as a clerk in a bank. He was twenty-four years old and was accompanied by his wife-to-be, Nora Barnacle. The couple moved into a room on the third floor of a house in Via Frattina, which, since 1982, has been marked by a plaque. 

The plaque hails Joyce as the writer of Ulysses, which was published in 1922. What it fails to note is how much Joyce disliked Rome. After a tour of the Forum, which left him distinctly under-whelmed, he wrote to his brother Stanislaus: “Rome reminds me of a man who lives by exhibiting his grandmother’s corpse.”

Joyce did little writing in Rome, returning to Trieste in early 1907.

Statue of James Joyce in Trieste
Statue of James Joyce in Trieste

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    My name is David Lown and I am an art historian from Cambridge, England.

    Since 2001 I have been living in Italy, where I run
    ​ walking tours of Florence, Rome &
    Venice.

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  • Private Tours
    • Private Tours of Rome
    • Private Tours of Florence
    • Private Tours of Venice
  • Contact
  • Rome
  • Vatican
  • Florence
  • Venice
  • Tuscany
  • Gallery
  • Year in Art