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.