A Pleasant Spot
Yesterday we arrived in Rome and suddenly went from another large airport (Leonardo Da Vinci Airport at Fiumicino), where, in typical fashion these days, we had to talk about 1.5 miles from the arrival gate to the baggage return. It took so long to walk that distance that our bags beat us to baggage claim area. I think of it as forced exercise, which requires you to broken-field dash through countless glittery Duty Free marketing of everything from huge Toblerone chocolate bars to extra-large-faced Swiss watches. Then, as soon as we have our bags, we pass through low-impact customs (that process may be one of the few at the airport that has become easier over the years, not harder), and before we know it, we are out at the taxi rank. There, a friendly and somewhat anxious driver uses his minimalist English to whisk our heavy checked baggage into the trunk of his cab and we settle in for our ride into town.
I am suddenly transported to 1968 as we speed down the road, lined with Pinus Pinea, the ubiquitous Roman Pines that so beautifully adorn all the roads the lead to Rome, which, as they say, they all do. Coming into Rome from Fiumicino is to ride in from the West and past the Via Aurelia, where my high school once sat. Notre Dame International School for Boys is now a Television station, but the area surrounding it looks very familiar with the exception of one Alta Moda designed building here or there. As we approach the walls of the ancient city, we move from an area that has undergone the normal amount of architectural and density change over the last fifty years into an area that hasn’t changed much for two millennia. We enter on the Cristofero Colombo, having whipped past EUR, where we used to live. I can see the Palazzo Della Civita Italiana, which looked as modern today with its white granite facade as it did fifty years ago. Set on a hill, it overlooks the area of Rome where Mussolini envisioned modern Italians would live in a modern urban-suburbia. It was a pleasant spot in 1968 and looks to still be a pleasant spot.
As we pass through the gate in the Roman wall, we are immediately in the midst of the ruins of the ancient city, high on the Aventine Hill, one of Rome’s seven hills that were made famous in the 1962 classic, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, where Jack Gilford, playing Hysterium, kept trying to run the seven hills of Rome. We pass through the Baths of Caracalla, where in 2015 we were lucky enough to attend the famous Elton John concert there. Then its past the FAO building, where my Mother worked as a Director for the last fifteen years of her international development career, and onto the Via di San Gregorio with the Palatine Hill of the Foro Italico on the left, the Church of San Gregorio on the Caelian Hill with the Colliseum directly ahead of us just past the Arch of Constantine. This is the heart of the ancient city by any standard and it all looks exactly as it did fifty years ago. We are staying the a hotel that is new to us that was recommended by our traveling companions Gary and Oswaldo. It is the Hotel Capo d’Africa in the area East of the Colliseum, half way to the Church of St. John the Lattern. It is a pleasant spot because it is tucked away in a small neighborhood, which on this Saturday night is populated by young urban folk that are enjoying a night out. We ate dinner at a friendly Trattoria that is typical of the fine restaurants that litter the streets of this city.
We very much like our hotel because it is comfortable and clean and yet is quite modest, perhaps the most pleasant combination one can have for an urban visit to a city where the pleasant spots are numerous and memorable all at once. Wandering the cobblestone streets at night feels so familiar to me that I feel right at home.
It is morning now and the Sunday light across the rooftops looking north is almost as pleasant as the golden evening light one sees across the rooftops looking West to the Junicular Hill, one of the great views of Rome with the dome of St. Peter mixed in with more of those Roman Pines on every hill and along every boulevard.
We will have breakfast on the roof in an hour and imagine we will see the top of the Colliseum from up there. Afterwards we will walk slowly over to the scene of the gladiatorial spectacles of their day (not the city’s best moments), past the forum on both sides of Via die Foro Imperiali with the famous Arc of Settimo Severo, a picture of which graces the wall of my Hobbit House. We will walk up to the Campidoglio, or Capitoline Hill, where the famous Romulus and Remus she-wolf statue sat on display for years along with the horse bound statue of Marcus Aurelius. I’m not sure which museum houses those great works now, but I’m sure we will relearn that today. After that, I expect we will wander over to the Boca Della Verita for the mandatory picture of Kim and me sticking our hands in swearing fidelity and honesty in deference to our latest Hobbit House imitation display.
After that we will be flexible based on how wearing all the ruin walking will feel. There is little interest in the group to go visit the Vatican for the umpteenth time, but we may go to Castle St. Angelo, along the Tiber River before wandering back through the old town, probably stumbling on Piazza Navonna and maybe, if I can prevail, stopping at Tre Scalini for a Tartufo delight that is permanently lodged in my imagination as Rome’s most pleasant spot for ice cream.
Since we are returning to Rome after our sojourn to the Amalfi Coast later in the week, and we will be staying at the base of the Spanish Steps, we don’t want to spend too much time wandering through the area we will have several days to explore as our finishing lap in the Eternal City. I’m not sure why it matters. I have walked into the Pantheon perhaps one hundred times in my life and I don’t think one more or less will change the wonder of the pleasant spot. My guess is that I have only passed in front of the nearby Trevi Fountain half as many times since it seems so much more a tourist trap base d on the 1954 film Three Coins in a Fountain, that starred Clifton Webb and Dorothy McGuire. The song behind that movie may be more famous than the movie since the quintessential Roman movie is the 1953 Roman Holiday with Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn. That is the movie that explained to Americans that in post-war Italy, the Vespa scooter was the transportation of choice and may have done more to mainstream motorcycling than any other movie while that same year Marlon Brando took motorcycling in the darker direction with The Wild One.
This city is nothing but one pleasant spot after another.