Rome

Despite my best efforts to catch up, I’m still a full month behind in my blog-keeping, trying to recollect and write about places we left ages ago. And I suppose that if I ever hope to catch up, I’m going to need to make these essays—err, I mean, entries—a little more streamlined. So here goes, and apologies in advance if you miss all my flowery prose and history lessons!

Actually, it would foolhardy for me to even attempt to provide a succinct historical background of our next destination: Rome!

It was a quick trip from Florence on another of those wonderful fast red Italian trains, and we were treated to yet more soothing views of the Tuscan countryside. However, things got considerably less picturesque as we approached Rome, which is a large, sprawling city. Rome may be grand, but its suburbs…not so much. Its massive Termini station is by no means beautiful either, but as one of the largest train stations in Europe, it’s reasonably modern and efficient. It resembles a small airport, with restaurants, grocery stores, stationers, and more. But what I most appreciated is that it’s fairly central and extremely well connected to all of the city’s other public transportation, including both its metro lines. Sometimes Italians get things right.

We were staying a few blocks away, in one of the nicer parts of the Esquilino neighborhood, and I was immediately grateful for the large, mature trees, so conspicuously absent in Florence. Though we were within the Aurelian Walls of the old city, the Romans had the good sense to revamp some of their neighborhoods in the 19th century, including adding public parks and wide, tree-lined boulevards. Of course, they did their best to preserve any ancient monuments, which they just built around!

We had an elegant 4th story flat in a townhouse, also probably built in the 19th century. After our budget digs in Florence, we loved the large rooms, high ceilings, tasteful art work, and very effective air conditioning. But what Griffin most adored was the tiny, old-fashioned metal elevator, carefully retrofitted into the middle of the central stairwell. He insisted on using it every day, until he and Amy got stuck in it and had to be rescued by a grouchy super that gave them a lecture in Italian! Our only complaint about the apartment was the ridiculous amount of street noise from the boulevard below, thanks to all the motorbikes (love those) and the Italians’ liberal use of their horns. Sigh.

Outside, we were disappointed by the amount of trash and graffiti, even in this more upscale neighborhood. And the electric scooters, which seemed to be laying about everywhere. (Apparently, they’ve been more of a nuisance than a help in Rome, causing quite a few injuries each year and getting in everybody’s way.)

A few hours after we arrived, we rendezvoused at the apartment with our next set of traveling companions: Amy’s parents. They had just spent some time exploring Iceland and England, and were now joining forces with us for a couple weeks in Italy. The 100° F temps in Rome must have been quite a shock to them; we were starting to get used to it!

We spent 5 nights and 4½ days in Rome, and for the sake of brevity, I’ll just list out what we did and saw each of those days.

Day 1

After enjoying a homemade cheese and olive platter with Amy’s parents, we headed out on foot to see what we could with the remainder of the day. Our closest landmark was the Colosseum, where we lingered for close to an hour, drinking overpriced spritzes, snapping photos, and reading up on its gory history—like the fact that an estimated that 400,000 people died in its ring, along with 1,000,000 animals. Next, I led us on a walk around the base of the Palatine Hill, where the city was founded, and the old Circus Maximus next door, the massive chariot racing ring that could accommodate up to a quarter million spectators. Then, up through the modern Roman Rose Garden to a terrace overlooking the River Tiber (the Terrazza Belvedere Aventino) where we got some nice sunset views.

Day 2

The next day was a sweltering Sunday, and we got an early start on perhaps my most ambitious self-guided walking tour yet, a 6 mile jaunt that included virtually every major Roman landmark east of the Tiber. We started by meandering through our own neighborhood, particularly the shady Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II park, to a well known cream puff bakery. Then onto the first church of the day, the Basilica Papale di Santa Maria Maggiore, one of four in Rome that are outside of but essentially part of the Vatican. Originally founded in the 5th century, the present church has been extended many times, and we were blown away both by how massive and ornate it was. (Little did we know how many other massive, ornate churches we would see that day!) Next, we wandered through the the Monti neighborhood down the cute Via Urbana pedestrian street, where we made a pit stop at an adorable café with only a couple of tables (Zia Rosetta) that served mini sandwiches and spritzes. We continued on to an upscale craft market, then to a small Vespa shop with an even smaller free Vespa museum in its basement that featured a handful of classic models.

By then, it was blazing hot, probably over 100°, as we walked out onto the Via dei Fori Imperiali, a grand boulevard that bisects the very heart of ancient Rome. connecting the Colosseum to the modern Piazza Venezia. But the road itself is not ancient at all; it was built by Mussolini only 90 years ago as “a celebration of the glories of ancient Rome, because its construction has rediscovered and made visible the Imperial fora: the demolitions served to rediscover the forums of Trajan, Augustus, Caesar, and Nerva and Trajan’s Market, previously hidden under the demolished buildings. Its construction, however, entailed the systematic demolition of over 40,000 square yards of one of the most densely populated areas of Rome, obliterating medieval and Renaissance structures.” (Wikipedia) Hmm…I guess you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet? Though the street is controversial, it accomplished its purpose; on either side, archaeological work has uncovered massive areas of the ancient city, much of it below the level of the street, making it sort of a raised viewing platform (which is free, unlike entry to the sites on either side). And the day we were there, it was open only to pedestrians as they cleaned up after some event, probably the huge June 2nd parade that happens here each year, the equivalent of our 4th of July. The only problem was the lack of shade and unrelenting heat, which was bad enough that some city employees were handing out free bottled mineral water to anybody who would take it.

We stopped briefly at one of my favorite landmarks, the Trajan Column, a solitary round column that depicts Emperor Trajan’s two victories against the Dacians in detailed carvings that wrap around it almost like a comic strip. Cool little known fact: it also has a staircase inside. But as a graphic designer, what has always interested me more is that all the so-called Roman fonts that we use today (e.g. Times Roman) are said to be based on the lettering chiseled into this column, as well as the more recent Trajan all-caps font, which has been used in more movie posters than you can imagine. (So this is sort of a holy site for graphic designers…or should be!)

Next to us, and of considerably more interest to most people. was one of the grandest monuments in Rome: the Monument of Victor Emmanuel II, also known as the Altar of the Fatherland…or the “wedding cake”. This massive marble structure, rising up from the Capitoline Hill over Piazza Venezia, dominates the entire Roman skyline. But like the boulevard it’s on, it’s not ancient; this was built between 1885 and 1935 to honor the first king of a unified Italy, for whom it is named. Though some Italians regard it as an eyesore, it’s really quite an impressive site. I only learned later that you can take some stairs or even an elevator to the roof for some awesome views over the city!

Instead, we followed a lane around the back of the monument to the top of the Capitoline Hill (Campidoglio in Italian). This is one of the legendary seven hills of Rome and was the site of various several big and important temples. In fact, it’s such an important symbol of ancient Rome that the Capitol building and Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. are almost certainly named after it. Today, it’s the site of an elegant Renaissance square flanked by three buildings, all designed or refurbished by Michelangelo, which house the Capitoline Museum, considered the world’s first museum. Amy’s dad longed to stay and peruse the galleries, but the strict tour guide (me) was keeping to the itinerary. After all, we were only halfway done!

We ambled back around the wedding cake to Piazza Venezia, where Mussolini used to make speeches from a balcony to crowds in the square. Then we wove through a few busy streets to the Largo di Torre Argentina, a strangely named square in the middle of town that is an important archaeological site, the site of several ancient temples and the steps where Julius Caesar was assassinated. Today, it is probably most famous as the home of a colony of several hundred stray cats. There are stray cats all over Rome, but the Italian Parliament actually passed a law in 1991 to protect these ones, setting aside this site as a sanctuary and designating caretakers for them. We didn’t spot any, almost certainly because they were all hiding in the shade.

We stopped for lunch at a nice vegetarian café, then wandered down to the Campo de’ Fiori, a cute square famous for its open air veggie, flower & fish market which has been going on for 150 years. Amy’s mom bought some fresh pasta noodles, some of the widest I’ve ever seen, which fed us for the next few days.

Our next stop was the grand Piazza Navona, once a Roman stadium. Today, it is a large square (with the same footprint as the stadium) built in the 17th century, anchored by the Fountain of the Four Rivers (Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi), a fantastic sculpture by Bernini topped by one of the Egyptian obelisks that are ubiquitous in Rome. It’s a wonderful square, and would probably be a good place to meet friends and grab a drink, if it wasn’t so choked with tourists. Here, we ducked into a couple of churches, which were much larger and more impressive than we suspected, found an underground public restroom which was so clean and modern (an absolute anomaly in Rome) that Griffin still talks about it, and finally got some gelato, which is practically a daily ritual when visiting Italy.

By now it was late afternoon, and we had a lot of ground to cover before our dinner plans, so we had to speed things up a bit. We popped into a few more impressive churches, including one with some original Caravaggios (San Luigi dei Francesi), then walked briskly towards the Pantheon, the oldest church in Rome and one of the best preserved buildings from the ancient city. Though it’s technically a Catholic church now, it wasn’t built as such; it’s thought to have been a temple dedicated to all the gods—which is very unusual. Architecturally, it’s famous as being the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world, a title it has held for two millennia. (Rumor has it that Michelangelo intentionally made the dome of St. Peter’s slightly smaller.) It’s a really impressive building, though the small square in front of it doesn’t do it justice. When we arrived, there was a lively band playing in the square, surrounded by a dense crowd and a long line to enter the Pantheon, so we decided to move on.

We popped briefly into a large Baroque church down the road famous for the incredible frescoes on the ceiling (Chiesa di Sant’ Ignazio di Loyola). Then we continued on to the Trevi Fountain, that incredible icon of Rome and one of the most famous fountains in the world. It really does deserve the fame; it’s simply marvelous. Finished in 1762, the Baroque fountain it is fed by one of the original eleven aqueducts that supplied ancient Rome, the Aqua Virgo, bringing water from 13 kms away. Not surprisingly, there was a huge crowd here, and we couldn’t even get close to the water. But Griffin still insisted I follow the custom of throwing a coin in over my right shoulder, which I tried to do from the terrace above. But instead of making it into the water, I nailed some guy below us, who wasn’t very pleased about it. Time to go!

The final stop on Cameron’s Roman Death March was the grand Spanish Steps. You gotta give the Romans credit for dreaming this up: they had a square, the Piazza di Spagna (the Steps’ namesake and the site of a Spanish Embassy), and a church on the hill above, neither of which were particularly significant but seemed to need connecting. So they held a design competition in the early 18th century to produce this completely overwrought set of 135 travertine steps, which became an attraction in itself—and one of the most famous in Rome at that. At least they’re big enough to support a huge crowd without feeling too claustrophobic. When we were there, the Steps were in the news because a couple of Americans had been caught on camera a few nights earlier throwing some electric scooters down them, causing significant damage (and not particularly good press for the scooters). We traversed the Steps and snapped a few photos, then spent much longer trying to figure out how to get into the metro station underneath so we could rush home for a shower before dinner.

That evening, Amy’s parents stayed home with Griffin while Amy and I met up with our friend Lindsay Gabbard, who relocated from Santa Barbara to Rome seven years ago. Though she had a successful career in SB, she had decided to give it up and go all-in with her love of wine, getting certified as a sommelier and running off to Italy. There, she met her partner Alessandro and helped him found a wine bar (more on that in a minute). It had all been a challenging experience, and she said she still felt very much like the American amongst her group of Italian friends, but she says she’s staying for good. We hadn’t seen Lindsay since before the pandemic and were stoked to catch up. We met her at the wine bar, then immediately followed her on a vigorous walk back across Rome (another walk!), traversing many of the places we had seen earlier in the day. Our destination was a rooftop bar that she and Alessandro had helped set up on top of the upscale Hotel Nainer, a privileged vantage point from which we enjoyed incredible views over Piazza del Popolo and the city. Here, we met up with another pair of Lindsay’s friends from Santa Barbara, a couple that we didn’t know (but with whom we shared many mutual connections), who were just wrapping up several wonderfully refreshing weeks in Italy, mostly spent at a rented house in Tuscany. (Hmm…were they doing this travel thing better than us? I had to wonder.) We spent the next few hours sharing cocktails and some lively conversation while watching night descend upon Rome. It was lovely. (I also had a rather more awkward conversation with Alessandro and a Russian friend of his about the Ukraine invasion…which I was ill-prepared to discuss in such detail. But I did learn a bit a bit more nuance about it.)

Day 3

After our ambitious walking tour the day before, we made considerably more modest plans for the rest of the week. This morning, we walked the short distance from our apartment to the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran (San Giovanni in Laterano), a cathedral complex even bigger than all the amazing churches we had seen the day before. This is another of the four papal churches in Rome that are effectively part of the Vatican. Founded in 324 AD, it’s also the oldest public church in Rome and the oldest basilica in the western world. Interestingly, it’s this church, not St. Peter’s in the Vatican, that is the seat of the pope and the mother church of the Catholic faith. Geez, it’s like each church we saw in Rome was trying to one-up the one before! Regrettably, we only spent 5 or 10 minutes inside because we were in a bit of a hurry, we were kinda churched out from the day before, and we knew that even this impressive cathedral couldn’t compare to the one we would see that afternoon: St. Peter’s.

Outside, it was already blazing hot under the Roman sun at 11 in the morning, as we stood and waited for the hop on/hop off bus. We were hitching a ride across town to our next destination, and while It was cool to see a few more landmarks along the way, the recorded audio guide was (as usual with this sort of thing) almost unintelligible.

We finally arrived at the St. Angelo Bridge, built over the Tiber in 134 AD by Emperor Hadrian and topped much later with enthusiastic statues of angels conceived by Bernini. It leads to the foot of the imposing Castel St. Angelo, a distinctive round castle topped by another angel brandishing a sword, which stands watch at the entrance to the Vatican. This round structure was originally designed as the mausoleum for Hadrian and was once the tallest building in Rome; later, it was converted into a fortress and a prison. Together, this bridge and castle are probably one of the most photographed sites in Rome, and they no doubt got a boost after playing a pivotal role in Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons, which also takes place in the Vatican, the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, and plenty of other spots we were visiting. We traversed the bridge and entered the star-shaped park around the castle, which includes the (now empty and grassy) moat. I was on the lookout for the Passetto di Borgo, a raised passageway built in 1277 that connects the castle to St. Peter’s half a mile away. At least a couple of popes have used this as an escape route from the Vatican, and it too plays a key role in Angels & Demons. Most tourists probably have no idea it’s there, since it looks like a wall or an aqueduct; much like the Vasari Corridor in Florence, it’s a secret passageway hidden in plain sight.

After a quick lunch just outside the Vatican walls, we ducked under the Passetto di Borgo and headed in to see the day’s feature attraction: St. Peter’s Basilica. It’s really difficult to convey the grandeur and enormity of this, the largest and probably most famous church in the world. Everything in the Vatican City has been designed to frame and accentuate it. From the Castel St. Angelo, a wide boulevard leads to the basilica, dumping you into a huge elliptical square flanked by colonnades, ingeniously designed by Bernini, with a tall obelisk at the center. Over all this looms the massive façade and dome of the cathedral, rising 450 feet from a hilltop, visible from almost everywhere in Rome. The present basilica, considered the most renowned piece of Renaissance architecture in the world, was started in 1506 and took 120 years to build, with Raphael, Michelangelo, Bernini, and a half dozen others contributing to the architecture. As you step through the doors, the sheer size of this cavernous building is hard to comprehend; it’s only when you see how small the other humans are against it that you get some sense of its true height and breadth. The interior space covers nearly 4 acres and can accommodate 60,000 people—which means it never feels too crowded, even though somewhere between 10,000 and 50,000 people visit every day.

But Marty and I decided not to start in the nave, but rather to head up to the dome. After waiting in a lengthy line, I took the 320 steps up to the inner ring of the dome, while Marty took the elevator. From this vantage point, you have a pretty amazing view of the inside of the cathedral and Michelangelo’s massive dome around an above you. But we were determined to continue all the way to the top, so we scaled another 231 stairs (no elevator here) which get progressively more cramped and weird as they squeeze between the outer and inner dome. But the trip is worth it, once you pop out onto the upper deck, with all of Rome spread below you. It’s a testament to how big this place is that there were probably well over 100 people on that deck atop the dome, but you can’t even see them from the ground. We snapped photos and marveled at it all, before finally heading down to join Cathy, Amy & Griffin inside the cathedral, where they had been happily wandering for well over an hour already. With nothing else on the agenda, we whiled away another hour or two inside, admiring Michelangelo’s Pieta and Bernini’s massive bronze baldacchino and golden Cathedra Petri, and exploring the crypt, where dozens of former popes are interred.

Day 4

The next morning, we were looking forward to an experience we hadn’t enjoyed since Venice: a relaxing day in a public park. We were heading to the Villa Borghese on the north side of the city. Originally built by a wealthy cardinal named Scipione Borghese for his pleasure palace, it is now the closest thing Rome has to a Central Park, complete with a small lake. A few quick stops on Rome’s efficient (if fairly limited) underground put us at Piazza del Popolo, one of Rome’s more famous squares, just below the park, and as usual, it was already in the nineties when we arrived. So you can imagine our disappointment when we scaled the hill and found not a lush, green, manicured park, but a dry, dirty, and weed-infested space that would be an embarrassment to almost any other world-class city—but apparently not to Rome. At least there were plenty of trees to provide some shade. We were intrigued to find a large collection of busts of noteworthy Italians scattered through the park, though virtually every one of them had been disfigured, typically by having their noses knocked off. This was not the result of some orchestrated attack on the city or a protest, but just common vandalism. (The city has made a valiant attempt to repair many of them, actually creating casts of each one so that they can repair them on a regular basis, but they’re far behind in doing so.)

We wandered somewhat aimlessly until we reached the lake, which was just a sad, green pond—though it did have a cute mock Roman temple overlooking it. Griffin had his heart set on getting a rowboat, and we couldn’t talk him out of it, so we rented one for a half hour. It was pretty miserable padding around in the sun, until I backed the boat under a small waterfall to help Amy and Griffin cool off. Strangely, they didn’t seem to appreciate this gesture, and after they mutinied, I jumped out of the boat into the shallow water and waded to shore, letting them row back to the rental dock—which they didn’t seem to appreciate either, but eventually figured out.

After a quick but surprisingly good lunch at one of the cafés in the park, we headed to the Borghese Gallery, the palace built partially to house Cardinal Borghese’s considerable art collection. This is now its full-time job, but getting into this popular museum is no easy task; luckily, unlike the museums in Florence, Amy had reserved our entry well here in advance. The building itself is a bit of a work of art, with wonderful, dynamic frescoes on the ceiling of every room. But the real highlight, and the reason were were there, is the world’s largest collection of sculptures by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, of whom Borghese was an early patron, including the Rape of Proserpine, Apollo & Daphne, and David. Bernini, a prodigy who has been called the Michelangelo of the Baroque period, completed all of them in his early twenties. I don’t usually have much patience for art museums, but these particular sculptures are so vibrant and alive, and executed with such skill, that I become an instant fan of Bernini and spent quite a bit of time admiring these masterful works.

That evening, Amy’s mom Cathy stayed home with Griffin while Marty accompanied us to dinner. We were headed to Rimessa Roscioli, the wine bar that our friend Lindsay had helped create. Actually, it’d probably be more accurate to call it a wine & dinner experience, which seeks to showcase the treasures of Italian and European wine paired with small gastronomic delights to what seems like a primarily American audience. The Roscioli brand is an institution in Rome, originating as a bakery in the early 1800s. The restaurant concept is much newer, and it’s a fun, unpretentious place in a quiet back alley near the Tiber, with some original artwork of overweight and hung-over superheroes on the walls, sandwiched in between endless shelves of wine. Lindsay was our guide and had paired us up with another American friend of hers and the friend’s fiancée. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to spend much time with Lindsay, but over the next four hours, we did get to sample some marvelous wines, eat some wonderful vittles (including vegan ones for me), and engage in some strange conversation with the fiancée, who was a musclebound retired US Marshal. Conversation aside, it was a great time and worth the hangover the next morning!

Day 5

On our last full day in Rome, Amy and her parents headed out early to the once rough, now popular bohemian neighborhood of Trastevere across the river (the name actually means “across the Tiber”) for a private foodie tour that I had booked through Airbnb. I guess it was a hit, and Amy spoke glowingly of the young woman who led it. I stayed home with Griffin and nursed my hangover!

Mid-afternoon, we all rendezvoused back at the Vatican, where today we were touring the Vatican Museums. We could have done this along with St. Peter’s a couple days earlier, but it was probably best that we broke them up. Because these museums are truly vast. We’re talking 20,000 pieces on display (out of a total collection of 70,000) on a 4.5 mile indoor circuit which seems to take a minimum of 3 hours—and could easily take 2-3x that if you were really interested. The collection includes all manner of works, spanning thousands of years, right up to the present. My favorite part was probably the massive Gallery of Maps, a vaulted hallway longer than a football field, adorned with forty huge maps of various regions of Italy, all created in the 1580s. I guess this is what people used before Google Maps? But unlike our boring modern maps, these ones not only featured little pictures of towns and landmarks, but also cute scenes of important events that happened in those areas. A map and a history lesson! I was also impressed with some of the sculptures from ancient Rome, which proved that well over a millennia before Michelangelo and Bernini were born, there were already sculptors here creating evocative and masterful pieces…we just don’t know their names, which have been lost to time, and their work is a little more beat up.

But the prima donna of the museums is of course the Sistine Chapel, which is right near the end. Though we had started our tour at 3:30pm, we only made it into the chapel a few minutes before they closed at 6, but we still got a good ten minutes to crane our necks and admire Michelangelo’s masterpiece on the ceiling of this small, famous chapel. Though I’d seen it 17 years earlier, I was surprised to discover that I had no recollection of it; but the images are so iconic that they were nonetheless strangely familiar. What is strange to me is why Michelangelo’s ceiling is so much more famous than the frescoes on the walls (by Botticelli and other painters) or any of the other dazzling frescoes or paintings in the galleries before that chapel, many of which seem almost equally as masterful. I guess Michelangelo’s were somehow just a bit more masterful…or memorable.

I’m sure there were several galleries of priceless works of art after the Sistine Chapel, but they’re mostly a blur, because there’s nothing quite so strangely exhausting as walking around a museum for several hours. With five action-packed days of exploring under our belts ad our brains swimming with images of art, churches, & monuments, we headed back to our apartment to make some pasta, pack up, and get ready for a couple relaxing weeks on the Napoli coast. Ciao, Roma!

Now then…aren’t you glad that I made this post so much shorter and more compact than usual, without any of the usual history lessons? I thought so! 😉