La Citta Eterna

Not long ago I was defending the Italian way of driving; saying the rumours of wild street muscle stretching was one of the untrue stereotypes. After a few minutes of driving in the city centre I deeply changed my mind.

 

The first shock was when we turned from the motorway to the local road and were caught in the chaos of honking, yelling and speeding. Red lights are just a sort of mild suggestion, you might consider stopping, but the Romans just glance at the light and hit the pedal. A regular two lane road quickly gets another lane, because people don’t care much is there’s oncoming traffic while passing cars in front of them. Very few cars are not carrying scarves of the courageous driving of their owners. Mostly they are full of dents and scratches. Still the Romans are good drivers, for you really need to have skill to play those centimetre tights squeezes.

It doesn’t matter which way you go, in Rome you always end up in Vatican, standing on the square with the statues of disciples staring at St. Peter’s. It’s where the streets, the bus lines and tourist paths cross.

 

Many famous names tried themselves at building the basilica, so the tools and pencils were passed down from Bramante, Raphael, Michelangelo to Bernini.

 

We loved our way up to the dome on the 491 steps and upon getting to the top, with the fascinating view of the square we were breathless. It was here, with the view of all the endless rows of houses, that I got the feeling of how big Rome really is. The moment only got spoiled by masses of tourists with cameras, hands, babies and everything sticking out, with somebody’s breath always down your neck, wanting to snatch away the photo opportunity you’re using right now.

 

We also enjoyed the interior of St. Peter’s and concluded the day by walking the Musei Vaticani, the museum of Vatican, one of the largest museum complexes in the world with legacy of Egypt, Etruscan, a gallery of maps, the room of Raphael, masterpieces of ancient Rome and incredible paintings of Michelangelo in the Sistine chapel stand side by side. 

Finally the moment came to penetrate the very heart of Rome. For centuries the Coliseum – Il colosseo (as it romantically sounds in Italian) – welcomes the tourists. It is an astounding and partly renovated masterpiece, but at least for me it was rather eerie and gave me goose pimples. You can still feel the fear and desperation of gladiators between tall walls and the cruelty of the masses, looking forward to the spectacle. In the arena the gladiators fought each other and wild beasts, sometimes even women and children were forced into the fight. It was carefully built, so it allowed a flooding in order to host naval battler here.

 

The path once walked and polished by ancient Romans took us to the Roman forum. Walking the paved way and seeing the ruins of the Caesars palace with pools, stadiums, temples and arches you can hear the echoes of old footprints and for a moment see the white tunics swirl in the wind. 

 

After an adrenalin ride with a bus we continued on narrow Roman streets and suddenly saw the glorious Pantheon. Above it the dome with a few meters of an opening reaches for the sky and has the shape of a perfect half sphere. Today it is a Christian basilica, but it was built to be a temple. 

 

In the evening we had to try the proverbial heavenly Roman cuisine and ordered pizza, which really lived up to the expectations. But they were a bit on the spicy side, for it’s said that the Romans love to use a special spicy oil for preparation of their food. Next we had to stop in a gelateria where we were choosing between 150 flavours of ice-cream, among which some had strange names – imagine a basilica flavoured ice-cream.

There’s an interesting legend connected to the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. A few centuries ago as the answer to popes recommendation, who was not too sure about the investment into building a new church, the snow fell in mid-August and marked the outline of the church. We went on, walking the busy streets and large squares. Not all who wander are lost, said Tolkien in the Lord of the Rings, and at this point I could not agree more. 

 

Spanish stairs stand on the edge of the Piazze del Spagna, the Spanish square, and are one of the most romantic places in Rome. In certain months they are covered by a beautiful flower rug, but when we visited they were just covered with tourists. Among tourists there are also vendors who sell just about everything – from scarves to roses and even slimy pig toys. So – everything!

Small winding streets all of a suddenly opened and we were speechless, for we were in front of the famous Fontano Trevi, this carefully carved mass of white marble with water flowing over it in beautiful turquoise colour. There’s a mass of countless tourists around it and for a moment I wondered what would somebody think about the human race, who’d not know that throwing a coin over your shoulder into a fountain brings luck. People are turned with their backs toward the fountain and want to pose with a nice smile and a coin to toss into a pool of water, while their companions are trying to capture the moment on camera. 

 

During high season there can be up to 3000€ worth of coins in the fountain. It’s said this money is used to finance the cultural heritage and sponsor the public kitchen for the homeless. 

 

We’ve stopped in one of the spaghettarias to rest our feet and for an hour we enjoyed the smells, tastes and a magical Roman atmosphere.

 

For conclusion we wanted to see the Piazza del Popolo, where public executions took place and where an obelisk with hieroglyphs stands, which still presents a reason for anger between Italy and Egypt, which demands Italy returns it to where it was one taken from a few centuries ago by Emperor Augustus.  

On our last day in the Italian capital we decided to see one of the darkest and most mysterious places of Rome – the catacombs. The city underground is full of these dark passages with more than ten different catacombs, which are a sharp contrast to the vivid bright city under which they lay. We saw the San Callisto catacombs, a labyrinth of narrow and dark passages dug in five stories. In the walls of soft rock lay graves. More than one third are tiny children’s graves. These were the bodies of first Christians, who did not believe in cremation and declined the burial in the Roman necropolis – the city of the dead.

 

As soon as we saw daylight we were in the car and heading for the ancient Via Apis from where we joined the motorway and with sad hearts caught the last views of the quickly disappearing beauties of Rome.