My Favorite Graffitti

Graffiti is one of the oldest methods of transmitting information through words and/or pictures, and in Rome, something ubiquitous. It is an Italian word, after all. Even Pompeii has graffiti, and Ancient Rome was famous for it. Now, most of the graffiti tells me such important things as 'Flavio is lame' or 'Marco loves Giulia' (you'd be amazed at how much of the graffiti in Rome is declaring love in one way or another), but every once in a while I come across something really spectacular. The below picture represents not only my favorite graffiti in the city of Rome, but also the hard work of someone who might be a kindred soul:


If the text at the bottom of the image is too hard to read, it says:
YOU ARE 8851 STEPS FROM THE AURELIAN WALL
And below, the same in Italian. As you can see, this data is accompanied by a map of the city of Rome with the Aurelian walls marked in red. The red plus signs represent the places where this clever artist posted this graffiti, changing the number of steps at each location.

I am incredibly impressed that someone took the time to figure out how many steps it took to get from the old city walls (built in the 3rd century AD) to the wall on which this was painted. Also, this mysterious tagger somehow got or made a stencil in the shape of Rome, with some of the streets marked out. The photo here I was lucky to find, because the first time I saw this image was on a wall only a few blocks from my apartment. Not having my camera with me at that moment, I resolved to come back later and take the photo. However, when I returned, camera in hand, more graffiti had been sprayed over most of the map, declaring 'Via Induno Libera!' ('Free Via Induno!' From what, I do not know. I think it is a pun on another street in our neighborhood, which is actually called Via Roma Libera [Street of the Free Rome]). I tried to edit the writing out of the map, but my photoshop skills are not that honed. Within a week, both graffiti were painted over and the wall was blank again. I found this one recently on a wall behind the Forum, where I had wandered on an afternoon off from work.

Secret Ingredients

Around the corner from my apartment is a restaurant that does a pretty consistent business. It is a small place, and very clearly locally run. It is so local that it has no discernible name, it is just recognizable. I have never eaten in this place, because I usually eat in another local place just up the street when I am looking for basic, 'real' Italian food, but perhaps I should rethink this decision. Recently, I have noticed more and more people eating at this restaurant, and have wondered what is behind the upswing in business. Last night, however, as I was walking past this place (on my way home from my local), I caught sight of a sign that is advertising the secret ingredients that seem to be drawing a crowd of regulars:


Now, I have no idea how to put 'Italian Love' into a pizza, and definitely no idea what 'amazing' is, but clearly, this is a winning combination.

Rome in August...

...is a ghost town! It is also approximately the same temperature as the surface of the sun, except more humid. Last year I managed to get myself to Ireland before the dog days of summer really kicked in, but this year, I am in Rome, and working the whole month. The heat, however, is nothing compared to the silence in the city. My neighborhood is usually full of families and screaming children (which I don't miss as much as some other things), and the piazza has shops all around it that are now boarded up with signs reading: Chiuso per ferie!

In August, Romans get a big holiday, and I don't mean something like Labor Day weekend; they take 3 WEEKS of vacation, and most people leave the confines of the Eternal City for somewhere cooler, like the beach or the mountains. My own landlord went to Reggio Calabria, and said he'll be back at the beginning of September. (Here's hoping the washing machine doesn't blow up.)

However, it is not just the private citizens who head for the hills; all the shop owners go as well, and to my great dismay, this includes the men who own and operate I Suppli, a little hole-in-the-wall tavola calda that makes the best suppli in the entire world. They also make breathtaking pizza bianca. I was in there a few days ago, and they know my face (I am in there often enough that when I walk in behind a herd of little old ladies, I just wave at the guys behind the counter and they shout, 'Oh-o! Suppli! Ciao Alessandra!' This makes me very happy, because I get presto suppli, but I think it really angers the ladies.), and the main man started saying things really quickly to me in Italian. I hate to admit when I don't understand, so I did my typical smile and nod, and say 'si' a few times. The next day, however, I felt like a complete idiot, because there was the Chiuso per Ferie sign pasted onto the boarded up wall of I Suppli. They had been trying to ask me what I would do without them for 3 weeks. I still don't know the answer!

Venice

Dara and I went to Venice for the long weekend, as a little mini-holiday in the middle of the high tourist season. It seems a bit decadent to be taking off 3 days when we could be working, but having gone and returned, I can tell you just how wonderful (and almost necessary) it was. I always think of living in Rome as being on an extended holiday, no matter how long I am here, because Rome to me is a magical place, and regardless of my high level of familiarity, it is different enough from home to feel that way. Still, taking a holiday from Rome was an incredibly relaxing experience!

Firstly, I got to sleep in a bed that was not mine. Now, in fairness, the hotel bed was really hard (which made my own bed feel a million times more comfortable than it already

is when I came home!), but the room was air conditioned, and I actually went and a

te breakfast every day! Our hotel, San Giorgio, was adorable if incredibly rococo, but it was very near San Marco and we had a window that overlooked the canal. The smell of the canals wasn't as bad as I had expected, either; mostly, they smelled like the sea, which was actually quite nice.

Secondly, I went out every day with absolutely zero plans. It was fantastic. I am a notorious plan-lover, but to walk around a city without having a schedule was a rare treat. I still got to see plenty of art and architecture, but on a whim, Dara and I went out to one of the other islands, which ended up being absolutely amazing. It was San Giorgio Maggiore, home to a huge church and the yacht club, and nothing else, and we took off our shoes and went wading on the submerged steps. This is the island:

That's me, from a very great distance. Believe it or not, that is me with a tan.

As it turns out, the church had a bell tower, and we climbed it and were rewarded with incredible views of the whole lagoon. I'll leave you with a sample of those!

Mary Mary

The Virgin Mary is a very important figure in Italy, in both a religious and practical way. While the Catholicism of Rome is a variable thing (some are martyrs, some are Borgia popes, and most people oscillate between those extremes), Mary is constant. She is there when they baptize the Roman babies (and the Sicilian, and the Florentine, and all the Italian babies, for that matter) in an elaborate ceremony that revolves around a pampered infant in a frilly dress, who probably won't remember any of it, and she is there when those infants grow up and get married (another elaborate ceremony involving a frilly dress; the Italians seem to really love them). When people are trying to have children, they go write notes to the Virgin and leave them at the feet of her

statues. When those children, a few years later, fall off a playground, their mothers call on Mary again for help. She is not just for children and mothers, however; grown men invoke her name when they see a beautiful woman walking down the street (their eyes bug out and they yell 'maDONNA', with a great flourish and serious emphasis on the 'donna' part.)

In return for this constant work, however, Mary gets a few perks, and one of them, currently in process here in my lovely Trastevere, is a huge festival devoted to her. There are many Marys in Rome, but this festival is the Celebrazioni per la Festa della Madonna del Carmine, better

known in English as Our Lady of Mount Carmel, friend to the Carmelites. Technically, her feast

day is the 16th of July, but since 1996 (and I know this because there is a plaque put up by John Paul II on the church) there has been a big festival in this area that lasts for 10 days, the last of which was yesterday.

On the first day of her festival, they dress the large (almost life sized) statue of the Virgin in a beautiful dress (she gets a new one every year, though they always look the same) and a m

assive crown, and they put in her hands something called 'scapulars'. (A side story: it took me ages to figure out what these were called, because all the people I asked were too busy yelling to enunciate properly...) Having looked it up later, I found that while a scapular refers to the monk's cloak, which goes over the shoulders and covers the front and the back, what our Mary was holding is a devotional scapular, which in her case is a small rectangle of wood with a beautiful

silver overlay. She holds four of them, two in each hand, with her initials and a portrait of her with the baby Jesus on them.

Having dressed her up for the occasion, the population of Trastevere all crams into San Crisogono for mass, and then the statue is lifted up on a platform and processed around the neighborhood. For the occasion, some streets are decorated with Christmas lights. And there were masses of people waiting for the Virgin to appear. When she did, she was announced by a man on a loudspeaker, who sang (quite well, actually) Schubert's Ave Maria. When he was done, her procession moved up the street, and people were yelling her name and applauding. This is a picture of her being carried by the Carmelite monks, but that man's head got in the way of my camera flash:

Here you can see her processing up the street with all the Christmas lights:

She ends up in another church, Sant' Agata, where she stayed until this morning. At that point, as far as I can tell, she is sprited off to someplace upriver, and there she waits, until the evening. This evening, Dara and I were wandering around Trastevere, unaware of the impending arrival of Mary (unaware, in fact, that she had left Sant' Agata), but when we got to Ponte Garibaldi, we saw not only that bridge lined with people holding candles, but the bridges as far down as Tiber Island, and the top of the Tiber embankments on both sides of the river as well. Not wanting to miss out, we collected some candles and elbowed our way to the front of the crowd, and waited. The sun started to go down, which makes a beautiful light at that exact point in Rome (more on this in another post), and people started to light their candles. Eventually, Mary appeared, still decked out in all her finery, on a boat, majestically moving down the river. When the boat reached Ponte Garibaldi, Mary, after disembarking, was once more carried on her platform and processed towards Santa Maria in Trastevere, possibly one of the top 5 most beautiful churches in Rome.

More yelling and cheering accompanied her, as did throngs of people holding lit candles, which was a bit of an adventure. When the statue and her followers reached Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere, the bells of the church started to ring, and the statue was moved inside the church. At that point, there was a rush for tables at local restaraunts, and I could hear people thanking the Virgin when they managed to grab one of the prime, outdoor tables. The next day, in a much quieter and more solemn procession, Mary was returned to Sant' Agata and her festival garb removed, to face another year of being the go-to girl of Romans and Italians everywhere.

Tram Magic

One of the beauties of not driving in Rome is the public transportation system. While that might sound incredibly facetious, I am in fact a big fan of this system. Mostly because it is almost entirely free to use (to the intrepid and attentive, if morally ambiguous passenger), but also because it is diverse and generally air conditioned.

This is not to say there are not flaws in the system. I imagine that the Roman Transportation Authority (ATAC, ironically) feels that all the free rides are a flaw, but for the normal traveller, these flaws are things like overcrowding, noise, and the fact that none of the buses seem to have any sort of suspension (and Rome is a city of cobbled streets). I can't say anything bad about the scheduling, because buses, trains, and trams tend to be pretty regular.

I happen to live near one of the tram lines, which I love, because it is usually faster and cooler than the bus, and because it is the fastest way to get to the center of town. It is also quiet, and free from the plague of cobblestones. Still, the tram has its own problems, which would never happen on a bus, such as too many trams at the capolinea, the turnaround point, or abrupt stops due to electrical short circuits.

Today, however, one of the doors on the tram would not close. No matter how many times the driver pressed the button, the doors stayed resolutely open, even after everyone on board had moved far away from them. The button pressing and anxious glares went on for about 3 minutes before someone decided to take matters into his own hands. A little old Italian man got up out of his seat with a great air of command and wisdom, and approached the misbehaving doorswith both hands in the air. The driver pressed the useless 'close' button once more, before geturing to the old man to go on with whatever he was doing. The man eyed the doors speculatively, looked them up and down, and with a great movement of his head, sneezed on them.

They closed immediately.

Tivoli

Yesterday I went to Tivoli, because I had to practice giving a tour there, and because it is a lovely little town high in the hills, and it was a good excuse to get out of Rome. I haven't been to Tivoli in about 2 years, and it was even more charming than I remembered.

I took the metro and then the bus out there, which took only an hour and a half (and only cost 2 euro!), and once we left the city, the drive was beautiful. At one point we even drove past a travertine quarry. Perhaps this is not as exciting to all of my readers as it is to me, but travertine is the main building stone of both the Romans and the Catholic Church (and hey, the Fascists used a lot of it too, but I am not overly fond of their architecture), and therefore figures quite heavily into most of my tours.

It was a pretty relaxing day, begun at Hadrian's Villa, which is full of mosquitos, and ended at the Villa d'Este, which is gorgeous. I don't mean to discount Hadrian's villa, it is a really remarkable example of how talented the Romans were with brick and mortar (even if they did cover it with marble), but we had to walk quite far in the hot sun to get there, and then the biting insects seemed to find me particularly tasty. The site itself was uncrowded and vast, which was a nice change from Rome, and the temperature was nearly perfect by the time we left in the late afternoon. We got into the Villa d'Este at the last entrance, which turned out to be wonderful, as we were there when the sun began to go down, and the Villa's panoramic views are all to the west.

Not overly exciting, but a beautiful and calm weekend trip.

Brush With Power, Part III

You readers are probably getting sick of me posting so many articles with the same title, but Rome seems to be innundated with the famous and powerful lately. This must be better than Christmas for the police here in Rome, because I have never seen so many cavalcades, so many uselessly blocked-off streets, so many shiny police motorbikes.

In any case, I was giving a tour earlier tonight, and as we entered Piazza della Rotonda for the Pantheon part of the tour, we found ourselves blocked out of not just the building, but the main part of the Piazza itself. It was almost 6.30pm at this time, and if the unusually early closing time hadn't tipped me off, the sheer number of policemen would have indicated that something BIG was happening at the Pantheon.

Without exaggeration, I can tell you there were no less than 4 separate police forces in the not-very-large piazza. The Carabinieri were there, of course, in kevlar vests, and they were assisted by the Polizia Municipale, who wore their regular uniforms, but also their special white pith-helmet-like helmets. Not to be outdone, the regular Polizia had sent a delegation, outfitted with state of the art walkie-talkies, presumably because it was too much to ask the 15 or so Polizia to walk the 8 steps between one another to relay information. On the opposite side of the piazza from my group were the Guarda di Finanza, Rome's tax police. No word on why they needed to be there, but they had a huge truck, and were massed like a little army. Also present were actual members of the Italian Army. Everyone was impeccably dressed, of course.

After attempting to at least give a description of the outside of the Pantheon to my tourists, I gave the group the choice: stay here and see who was coming by, or continue with the tour. My group opted to stay and wait, and at this point, I was more than willing to acquiesce. We didn't know what famous person was supposed to visit the Pantheon, but more importantly, we had no idea what time this person was meant to arrive. I thought of asking one of the many policemen, but they were all pretending that the very large crowd was not there.

Eventually, we began to hear whispers that it was Michelle Obama for whom all the fuss was being made, which seemed to validate our by now hour long wait outside the Pantheon. At one point, a woman who was fortunate enough to be in a hotel with a window looking out onto the piazza made a loud and excited noise, so that we all turned to look at the road, and most of us missed her near fall out the window, which had been the actual cause for the noise.

When, after an hour and a half of waiting, a cavalcade of Carabinieri motorbikes and bulletproof Suburbans (clearly imported straight from America, as they had Washington, D.C. plates) pulled into the square, everyone got their cameras ready and prepared to see the First Lady. However, the police seemed to have seriously overstated the danger to her person, because Mrs. Obama and her party hopped out of the cars and literally ran into the Pantheon. Very disappointed at not even being able to tell which one was Michelle, most of the crowd opted to continue waiting until she was done with her visit.

A few minutes later, a well-coiffed woman in a yellow dress came to the front of the Pantheon and waved at the crowd, which got a half-hearted cheer as most of the crowd looked at her and thought, 'Wait a second, that doesn't look like Michelle Obama...' It turns out it wasn't, it was just someone who from a distance somewhat resembled her. Eventually, she did come out and wave at the crowd from behind one of the bulletproof Suburbans, but most of the assembled mass seemed to feel a bit let down. We had all waited almost 2 hours for what turned out to be a 1 minute wave from a great distance.

I wish I could say how elegantly she was dressed, or if she looked the way she does in pictures, but all I could really see was that she was wearing a black dress, and she had her daughters with her. I saw the two of them hop quickly into the car as their mother's arm waved from behind it, and the best glimpse I got was of Michelle's profile through the tinted window of the car as it drove off. Perhaps it is because this was the only non-accidental sighting of a politician or politician's wife I have had in the last few weeks, but I think I prefer it when it happens serendipitously, when you don't know that someone will be passing directly in front of where you are, and neither does anyone else, so you are really getting an up-close (sort of) look at this celebrity when they aren't thinking about being a celebrity.

Brush with Power, Part II

A mere week after my close encounter with Silvio Berlusconi, the Don Juan of Italian politics, I was lucky enough to happen across the path of another very large police cavalcade at just the right time. I was waiting for a bus to the Vatican when I heard the sirens. It is very easy to distinguish between the siren sound made by an ambulance and the siren sound made by a Carabinieri motorbike, and thus easy to decide whether to feel grave or excited when you hear one.

This was definitely the excited kind of siren, and there were an awful lot of them, according to my less and less useful eardrums. Fortunately, Italian drivers, once they are in their vehicles, are not impressed by anything that holds up traffic, no matter if it is Sofia Loren, a horrible accident, or a giraffe. To the drivers, all of these have one thing in common: they are making us late! So, the cavalcade didn't get as much room on the street as they would have liked, as the traffic going the opposite direction continued to do so as if everything were normal. Due to this bottleneck, the 4 cars of the cavalcade had to pass by us waiting at the bus stop slowly enough that we could see who was inside.

What with the story being all over the news and the sheer number of cars being escorted by the police, we could all guess who was inside, and were not disappointed to see the glamorous wives of the G8 leaders (and Angela Merkel's husband, we shouldn't leave him out). The only people who were missing are generally the only two that people can name: the outrageously stylish Carla Bruni, first lady of France, and from my home country, Michelle Obama. Apparently, they are too cool to come to Rome with all the other G8 spouses; from what I can gather from the Italian news on RAI (where apparently you are only hired if you can deliver the entire news in less than a minute), Ms. Bruni will be going straight to L'Aquila to examine the effects of April's devastating earthquake (she was born and raised in Italy, in fairness), and Michelle Obama will be here at some indefinite later point.

Brush With Power

While I will be the first to tell you that Rome is by far the best city in Italy and is obviously the capital, I sometimes forget that being a capital city means that government activities are carried out there. You'd think I'd be more on top of this, as Rome is the 5th capital city I have lived in during the past 5 years, but then again, I rarely hang out on the Quirinal Hill, which is where most of the governing happens.

In one of those rare occasions, however, I was giving an Angels and Demons tour, part of which is a long walk on the Qurinal from Santa Maria della Vittoria to the Quirinal Palace. As we were walking, we heard the unmistakable sounds of a Carabinieri cavalcade. This is not an uncommon sound in Rome, as the Carabinieri love any chance to wear their fancy dress uniforms and ride motorcycles before and behind (and around, if they can fit on the tiny streets) whatever dignitary or celebrity or wealthy businessman is riding in the Alfa or Mercedes or BMW with the removable siren on it. Sometimes I think they must practice with empty cars, as they (and the Polizia Municipale, come to think of it) always seem to be cavalcading something.

In any case, this particular group was making a lot of noise, an obvious sign of having someone very important in the nice car. I moved my group out of the center of the street, to give them some room to pass, but nonetheless, the entourage slowed as it approached us. We stopped, ever eager for a celebrity siting, and were not disappointed. Who should be inside this car that the big man, the Italian Stallion, Silvio Berlusconi himself! I do what 33% of people do when they see someone famous: I stood very still, with a very goofy grin on my face, but one of my tourists was at least mobile enough to turn to me and yell, 'Oh look, he's waving at you!'

As the cavalcade rolled off, I could see that indeed, Prime Minister Berlusconi had been waving, but I can't decide if it is because he wanted me to vote for him or because he was trying to invite me to one of his legendary parties...

Infestation

This week, I discovered something in my apartment that makes the cockroach, the mouse, and even the legendary cockamouse look like a welcome guest instead of a terrifying pest.

I should first explain that the bathroom of Casa Rolex is very... European. I don't know if I have mentioned it before, but whenever someone uses the shower, the entire bathroom gets wet. There are some who think this is akin to cleaning the bathroom, but I think it just makes everything damp and moldy. Apparently, however, this kind of environment attracts certain kinds of visitors.

I killed an enormous bug in there a few weeks ago, so when Melissa (who just got here today and is visiting for the week) announced after her shower that she had killed something in the bathroom, I assumed it was another one of the large, ugly, roly-poly bugs. Not so; it was something much more sinister: a scorpion.

No one believed her at first, but after being assured it was dead (very dead), everyone went in to have a look for themselves. Thankfully, it was more of a baby scorpion than anything else, but it was about 3 inches long, and I could not be more thrilled that a tough and seasoned New Yorker like Melissa was the one to see and destroy the monstrous beast, as I can't guarantee that I would have stayed to fight it.

I am more perplexed by the sudden appearance of a scorpion in Italy than I am surprised by its choice of my bathroom as a residence. I mean, this IS a really nice area, good restaurants, convenient transportation, new appliances in the apartment... But last time I checked, Italy was not on the list of scorpion habitats. I sincerely hope that this one wandered out of a pet shop or was someone's rogue pet, but just in case, I am bleaching the entire apartment tomorrow morning.

Neighborhood

I think I might be a local. This comes not from any sudden improvement in my Italian skills, nor from my dressing habits (which remain haphazard and clearly American, despite my best efforts), but from my experience at the coffee bar this morning.

It has been a busy week, with lots of morning tours. These, of course, are only feasible after a cup of coffee, so I have been making regular requests for 'capuccino e cornetto' in the bar on the corner all week. This morning, since part of my tour for the day was going to be in a car (as opposed to walking), I decided that I would just get a cornetto in the bar. However, when I walked in, the barista smiled at me and immediately started making me a capuccino.

I am pretty pleased to be recognized around my neighborhood, and the people at i Suppli, my regular lunch stop, are starting to prepare my suppli when I walk in the door now, long before I am near enough the counter to order it. The other side of that coin just occurred to me now, though: maybe I should 1. try to look less like I need coffee in the morning, and 2. try a different lunch place for once! Both of these seem unlikely, though, as it is the coffee that makes me look awake in the mornings, and those suppli are the best I have ever tasted...

More Italian Fashion: Accessories

Last night, while wandering around Trastevere, I found myself near Piazza Trilussa, which tends to attract large numbers of Italians. This is because it is not only in an area populated by wine bars and restaurants, but it has the one thing that attracts the bella figura more strongly than anything else: a staircase. Not just any staircase, but a wide and shallow staircase that faces the piazza and leads pretty much nowhere. The Spanish Steps are the prime example of this, and in the evenings, the beautiful people congregate there to see and be seen.

Piazza Trilussa's steps are not quite as glamorous as those in Piazza di Spagna, but they nonetheless attract many stylish locals. However, I am seem to be much further behind the trends than I thought, because last night there was a woman standing with her friends with a rabbit in her purse.

I'm familiar with the concept of tiny dogs that fit in your large handbag, but this woman was carrying an enormous white rabbit. I watched and waited for a while, but she made no attempts to perform any kind of magic tricks with it. I am forced to conclude that this bunny is her new take on the lap dog, but as a trend, I think I'll give it a pass...

Subliminal Messages

Today, as I was walking home from work at the Vatican, I passed the public telephones just outside Piazza San Pietro:


I think they are trying to tell me something...

Gladiatorial Fashion Advice

The piazza between the Forum and the Colosseum is full of men (and now women!) dressed as Gladiators and Centurions. I've written about them before, which will have to be enough of a description, since I can't take a picture of one of them without having to pay them €20 for the privilege. Suffice it to say that these are grown men and women, who sit out in front of the Colosseum all day in ancient armor, somehow making a living by yelling 'I kill your husband!' at pretty women.


Dara and I were walking out of the Colosseum today, and sure enough, one of the centurions (he had metal armor, as opposed to the gladiators, who have leather armor) started heckling us. 'Hey, bella, you take-a the picture!' he shouted at me, 'Nice picture to take home!' When I smiled and continued walking, he decided to try a different tack. 'Oho, jealous boyfriend!' he called, enough to make Dara turn around and laughingly say 'Si, yeah.' This pushed the centurion to new heights, because he looked at Dara, and said, 'Hey, you, you change-a your shoes! Those are good for Chinatown, not Roma!'

This was enough to reduce me to helpless laughter, and make Dara suddenly very aware of his plain black sneakers. I'm not sure you could call them sneakers, actually, because they wouldn't be any good for running, but they lace up and are flat with a rubber sole.

Getting fashion advice from a man in armor was a new experience, made all the more ridiculous by the accoutrements of the centurion uniform. It is not just armor, but also a helmet, which comes with one of two type of plumes: plumes that used to be a feather boa, and plumes that used to be a broom. This centurion wore the former. The ridiculous showgirl nature of his helmet was complimented by the tiny miniskirt he wore under the armor. I think these skirts get shorter and tighter every year, or perhaps the gladiator-reenactment business is suffering this year, and they all have to borrow skirts from their girlfriends. In any case, the skirt was tight and tiny, but the centurion seemed to be making the most of the gladiator sandal trend, because his shoes looked fairly well made.

The hilarity of this situation is fully appreciated, although Dara has put those shoes back in his suitcase...

P.S. I apologize for the possibly insensitive manner of recording this conversation, but this centurion had the most stereotypically Italian accent I have ever heard.

City Sound

Every city has a sound. It's more than just a noise, and certainly greater than the sum of its parts. Cities are different; Dublin sounded like buskers and rain, a lazy, happy sort of sound, but Rome sounds like people, talking, singing, selling you something, greeting each other. Perhaps it is better to describe it as a song, or a symphony, since it has tempo and rhythm, and every once in a while, a long solo.

Rome's song starts early. This morning, it began as my alarm clock, which is never a good sound for a symphony, but it quickly moved past this jarring intro to the gentle swish-swish-splash sound of the man cleaning the courtyard outside my window. While more soothing, this sound was nonetheless louder than the alarm clock, and the quick brushing sounds got me out of bed.

The movement of the morning is a larghissimo, absolutely, especially at 7am. It is not until the thick silence of the apartment is replaced by the sound of the espresso machine that this piece begins to move into the allegro phase, a transition that takes a long time, but is marked by the traffic solo and characterized by the heavy application of one of my least favorite instruments, the bus horn. The traffic solo is punctuated by cobblestones, which alert the listener that this part of the symphony (in Rome, at least) is prestissimo, the fastest part of the day. Actually, any bus ride is a reprise of the prestissimo traffic solo, and it is strong enough to induce actual fear on the tiny side roads. Despite having tiny roads, Rome sees no need for tiny buses.

Off the bus and into the Forum, we move to the adagio, my slow and stately tour route. It takes 2.5 hours to go through the Forum and Colosseum, so this is a long movement, and its main instrument is my voice, which thankfully gets the rest of the day off. I think some of my tourists might prefer if this movement were andante, at a walking pace, but I love the Forum, so it stays an adagio. Lunch is slow again; meals are always slow here, and the afternoon is much the same. Here there is actual music, not just the sounds of the city: one of my neighbors has a baby, whom she sings to sleep every day for his afternoon nap. She has a very nice voice, although her musical selection is... eclectic. Sometimes baby hears the Beatles, sometimes he hears Italian pop songs, sometimes he hears O Sole Mio, the unofficial National Anthem of Italy. Mostly, though, she sings 'My Heart Will Go On.'

The evening is my favorite part of this song, because it is the allegro grazioso; a bit fast, but graceful, full of the sounds of wine glasses and people talking, with the occasional ragazzi solo (the ragazzi are louder than anything else I have heard in Rome, including the building equipment and the Metro). This lasts long into the night, and seems to suit Rome best, because it includes almost all of the instruments except for the traffic.

It is easy to see Rome as a living, breathing thing, because nothing in it ever seems to stop. My apartment is quiet, with a little courtyard, but I can hear seagulls and someone's washing machine and the faint hum of Italian television coming from the second floor, punctuated by the occasional un-muffled Vespa speeding past the building, or one of the metal shutters being opened or closed. Every city has traffic, and birds, and washing machines and inhabitants, but in Rome these noises aren't just noises, they're the soundtrack of the city.

Ch- Ch- Ch- Changes

This is the second birthday in a row I have been fortunate enough to spend in Rome. Last year, I was flying from the States to Rome on my birthday, but this year I managed to make it over a day early, to get rid of some of the jet lag and to just crash in Casa Rolex. Dara, who you loyal readers might remember from last year's posts as the head of the tour company and il mio ragazzo, decreed that on my birthday, I would get to dictate what we did all day.

Unsurprisingly, I chose to do my favorite thing: fa una passegiata. That is, I went for a walk. A loooong walk. I live in Trastevere, which feels very central, even though it is on the opposite side of the river. We walked from the apartment to the Pantheon, past the Aventine hill and the Bocca della Verita, which Dara had never visited (shockingly). We each stuck our arms in, and were allowed to take them out again, which is a good sign. From the Pantheon we walked towards the Forum/Colosseum area, through Piazza Venezia. This piazza, frequented by me since 2007, has finally lost its dreary (if familiar) construction barriers, and the center of the square is now a beautiful area of grass and lounging people.

Other changes were in store for me, though, and some of them less welcome. Calling Rome 'The Eternal City' is fitting in a thousand ways, but there are some changes which just don't seem to work here. Take, for example, the horror that greeted me in the Forum. The oldest part of Rome, this little valley represents all that SPQR really means: temples and basilicas and arches from the Republic through the Empire, defying the passage of time and continuing to stand as momuments of the Senate and People of Rome. These ancient ruins are now accompanied by some modern scupture, most of which seems to represent very fat women curled up into balls, scattered thoughout the Forum. I don't know how long they have been there, but I hope they leave soon. It is wrong to put modern things in the Forum, it is like putting a baby bonnet on a wisened old philosopher, or covering your grandmother with glitter.

In slightly better news, the Soprintendenza is using some brand new radar/scanning equipment to survey the area of the Forum and Palatine. While this seems to have resulted in some annoying (and sometimes useless) path blockages, it is exciting to see archaeology in action. It is clearly a result of the weather damage sustained by some of the protective roofs a few months ago, because they have blocked off the whole area in front of the Curia Julia, where the Lapis Niger was found. The site is surrounded by clear glass barriers, though, so we can all see the excavations.

In the end, the changes in the Forum, both the exciting ones and the frightening ones, are not enough to change Rome herself, and I feel fortunate to be able to mark the passage of my own years by the steady continuation of this city.

And We're Back!

After a year long absence from this blog, I am making what I hope is a triumphant return to Rome and to a second aestas mirabilis, my second summer of wonders and miracles. As perhaps you can deduce from the last few posts on this blog from last year, I have been mostly in Ireland since leaving the Eternal City last summer. It was a wonderful year, but it feels just right to come back to Roma Homa, a city that somehow still feels like home.

Perhaps this feeling is aided this year by my return to another familiar location: Casa Rolex! Though Roisin is not my intrepid flatmate again this year, I think the name of the apartment has stuck. In planning this trip, I knew I wanted to come back to Casa Rolex, but this of course meant reconnecting with my Italian landlord, Riccardo. I can't remember if I ever mentioned him before, but if I haven't, let me tell you a story to give you an idea what he is like.

Back in April, I emailed Riccardo to see if Casa Rolex might be available for a longer rental period than last summer (3 months instead of 1). I was very friendly, saying he might not remember me, but that I rented the apartment before. He sent me back an email that said, "Ah, Alessandra, how could I forget you, lovely blonde girl! " For those of you who don't know me, this is made all the more amusing by the fact that I am not, nor ever have been, blonde. At least I was not wrong when I thought Riccardo was talking to my neck last year...

I am not so sure that Riccardo has noticed that I am not blonde yet, but he is at least a good and honest landlord. Casa Rolex was sparkling clean when I arrived, although the comfy chair (hideous leopard print but outrageously comfortable) was conspicuously missing. The most amusing change to the apartment, however, is the method by which one enters it. It is an old building, and the doors are all thick wood with metal reinforcements. My doors are opened by a large key, which is strong enough to unlatch the heavy metal bolt. This year, however, the key doesn't turn as well as it should, and now to open my doors, I need nothing more serious than a credit card. Not because it costs any money, but because I slide the card between the doors, pushing the bolt to the side, and push them open.

Riccardo has promised that someone will come to change the locks tomorrow or sometime (he is very vague), but I frankly can't tell how they would replace the lock without replacing the doors as well. I'm sure that will be an adventure, when (and if!) it happens, but until then, I will continue to break into my own apartment with a credit card, and hope none of my neighbors notice...