Advertisement
Published: March 25th 2007
For roughly the last month, my quiet, stoic Prague has been completely overrun by hordes of young Italian tourists. Like an invading army of the South, they have descended upon Prague wearing traditional uniforms (oversized sunglasses, tight jeans, fur-collared puffy jackets, pouty lips), brandishing threatening weapons (the flying hands that wildly accompany any and every conversation), and issuing forth their battle cry (harsh staccato laughter and loud soccer chants in the otherwise silent metro stations). Tan and trendy, they are - for better or worse - walking stereotypes. With this image of our Italian brothers in mind, we departed for Rome, expecting to find a city of boisterous hipsters. Rome has not disappointed in this regard.
After a generally uneventful flight, my first real view of the city came in the form of a cross-city cab ride from the airport. So far, my European experience has been limited to cities north of the Alps, and it is sometimes easy to forget that this hot-blooded, romantic land lies beyond the mountains. Palm trees are the first quintessentially Roman sights that dot the landscape on the outskirts. Warm Mediterranean pinks and yellows coat the facades of the buildings that line the crowded and vibrant streets leading into and through the city. And yes, the people are exactly as you would expect them to be.
On first glance, Rome is a city of capital letters and exclamation points. Loud and very self-confident, it is more similar to New York, in some ways, than any of the places I have seen in Europe. Perhaps Berlin is the only city to have come close to the sheer intensity of Rome - a city of “more.” More people, more noise, more traffic, more historic sites, more churches, more delicious food, more carafes of wine than anywhere else. At first, Rome is completely overwhelming, and I was not sure I would like it at all. If Prague is vanilla, Rome is raspberry-caramel-choco-peanut swirl with sprinkles and cotton candy topping and whipped cream and cherries. Maybe a bad analogy subject since Rome’s gelato is insanely delicious, but there is just a lot going on there.
On our first night in Rome, we took an evening stroll. Our first stop was the Spanish Steps, which are, unfortunately, just steps! The site is perhaps one of the most overrated tourist attractions I have ever seen, amounting to little more than a wide staircase leading from a church down to a fountain. The views from the top are amazing - especially during the warm pink sunsets of Italy - but the crowds that clog the staircase would suggest the steps were made of gold or pieces of Jesus’ cross or something. They’re not, by the way…
After the Spanish Steps, we walked to the Trevi Fountain. Another hugely famous tourist attraction, the fountain was truly beautiful. At night, the white marble statues that line Trevi shine with the light from under the water and from the hundreds of camera flashes going off around it. We did not throw coins in the water over our shoulders - perhaps because the exchange rate makes the Euro worth a hell of a lot - so maybe we missed out somehow on what makes the Trevi Fountain so popular. Either way, it was gorgeous.
After Trevi, we stumbled upon the Pantheon, a Roman temple that was once dedicated to all the gods, but it has since been converted into a Catholic Church. The Pantheon looks somewhat like a Greek temple with its rows of columns and a triangular pediment above the doorway. Perhaps the part of the structure that makes the Pantheon unique is the enormous dome which sits on top with a hole in its center to serve as an eye towards the heavens.
We ate our first dinner in the Campo di Fiori, a charming square lined with awesome family-owned restaurants serving authentic and rustic food. The following comparison might sound a little stupid and obvious, but the Campo di Fiori reminded me of Little Italy! Outdoor seating, grandfatherly waiters, candles, and flowing carafes of wine characterize the square, which has doubled as a vegetable and flower market for centuries.
I could talk about our meals for seven pages, but I will try to show a little restraint. The way meals work in Rome is that you order a first plate and a second plate. The first is a pasta, and Rome’s most famous dishes include arrabiata (spicy tomato sauce), amatriciana (bacon and spicy tomato sauce), carbonara (eggs and bacon), and pomodoro (fresh tomatoes). Second courses are so meaty, including any combination of grilled and roasted hunks of meat with some delicious and rich sauces. I found it hard not to order the same dish every time - chicken with tomatoes and peppers - but all the meals were amazing. Bread obviously came with all lunches and dinners. We were shocked to find that Czech bread may have actually been better than Italian bread in some cases!
One of the craziest things about our first night was that Rome was completely overrun with Irish tourists. Aside from the fact that Saturday was Saint Patrick’s Day, when the Irish are at their peak rowdy levels throughout the year anyway, the day also marked a rugby tournament in which Italy and Ireland were playing each other. Try to come up with a group of people who are louder and more boisterous than Italians and an obvious choice is drunk Irishmen. Put both groups together during a Saint Patrick’s Day rugby match and you get a lot of stumbling and a few embarrassing streakers.
The next morning was no quieter or calmer even after the Irish guys went home, as Sunday brought another batch of tourists - those who came to cheer for their friends in the annual Rome marathon. Of course. We had gone to Rome during a week when each day brought more and more crowds, noise, and traffic. Later that week, we had the good fortune of getting trapped in crowds celebrating San Giuseppe Day (Italy’s equivalent of Father’s Day) and even spectators watching a children’s choir on Capitol Hill marking the anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. It’s always something. But while wading through people became a little more precarious, the constant excitement created a buzz throughout the city. Something was always happening.
Sunday became our “Let’s-cram-all-of-Ancient-Rome-into-one-day” extravaganza. First stop was, predictably, the Colosseum. Since it remains one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations, it also remains one of the world’s most popular pickpocket havens. Perhaps one of the most despicable tricks we witnessed involved a gaggle of gross women carrying children who would bang their babies into unsuspecting naïve tourists, hassle them for being clumsy, and then try to snatch whatever they could in the confusion. It is impossible to fight back since the babies sit conveniently in the way. It is just truly disgusting. We made it through unscathed, but the experience left a bad taste in my mouth that could not even be covered by the spicy arrabiata sauce I ate almost every day for lunch.
Rome does seem to have a pretty serious petty crime problem, rivaling even Prague - and that’s saying something. Closer to the Colosseum, we witnessed first hand a scam that is talked about in all the guide books. Right in front of the ruins stand four gladiators dressed in crappy Halloween attire. They offer to take pictures with tourists and then demand wads of cash with threatening glares and raised voices. I guess you would have to be a little dumb to think they were just standing there out of the goodness of their hearts, but the sad looks on people’s faces as they hand over Euros makes it all a little difficult to watch. Not to suggest I didn’t watch. Because I did. A lot. Oh fine, I admit it - it’s a freaking spectator sport! A little ironic, considering how the Romans used to sit around and watch people being tortured only feet away inside the Colosseum.
The Colosseum is, as its name suggests, colossal. As immense as it was from the inside and the outside, it is hard to think of anything new to say about it that has not already been said. Yes, it was huge. Yes, it was old. Yes, there were gladiators. Yes, a chunk fell off in an earthquake. Having said that, I am still obviously glad I got to see it. It just left me a little cold. In fact, the ancient sites in general were a little disappointing. As a history major and someone who really loves classical literature and culture, I expected to be completely blown away by the places where the politics and history of the Roman Empire got their starts. Unfortunately, the fact remains that we are left with only ruins. So while places such as the Prague Castle, the Hungarian Parliament, and Schonbrunn Palace can wow me with a mixture of the visual and the imagined, so much of the ancient Roman tourist experience involves pure imagination. You constantly find yourself saying, “Wow, I wish I could have actually seen the Palatine Hill throne room instead of this patch of scraggly grass!” or “Hmm, is this column really all that’s left of this temple?!” or “Too bad the Circus Maximus is now just a field.” So, while I tried really hard to get myself super excited about the topics I have loved reading about since childhood, it was not as easy as I would have hoped.
The Palatine Hill, where Rome originated and where many emperors made their palaces, was nothing more than a series of scattered columns and blocks of stone outlining old rooms. Under the hill sat the Roman Forum, the headquarters of the politics of the Empire. Again, the area was filled with chunks of past greatness, but it was extremely hard to visualize. Some of the highlights include the remains of the Temple of Saturn and the triumphal Arch of Septimius Severus. While the Arch is mostly whole, the Temple of Saturn is not more than a section of columns and roof, but it gives some day of how grand the place must have been in days past.
After our day of ruins, we decided to seek out some buildings that were actually still standing. Since we knew a Vatican tour would be coming up the next day, we went to some of Rome’s “lesser” churches - the ones that aren’t St. Peter’s Basilica. It should be noted that the smaller churches in Rome are bigger and more amazing than most “big” churches in other cities. Our first stop was the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, which was huge but somehow not imposing. It is filled to the brim with layer upon layer of gold and Baroque decorations. Perhaps the most impressive part of the church is the piece of wood kept by the altar which is supposed to be from Jesus’ manger. It is one in a long line of religious icons whose origins are dubious at best. It just makes me wonder whether Mary had the foresight to break off a chunk of manger and put it in a fold of her robe before leaving Bethlehem with the hopes of selling it to a museum or a Plant Hollywood someday when her boy (or is it Boy with a capital “B”?) made it famous…
Next stop on the “Jesus’ garage sale” tour was the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano, an enormous church that houses a piece of the table used at the Last Supper. I laughed a little as I typed that. But in all seriousness, wouldn’t it actually be cool if it was real? While Saint Peter’s is obviously more famous as the head of the Catholic Church, San Giovanni is actually the “pope’s church,” the place where he sits as Bishop of the Diocese of Rome. The basilica is so large that it actually made me a little nauseous and nervous. As I have said in reference to the wide squares of Berlin, I sometimes experience this weird anti-claustrophobia, where wide spaces make me feel like I’m having a panic attack. I guess if this is my one crazy thing, I can totally deal with it…
While we could have continued seeking out the weird icons from early Church history, such as the chains which once bound Saint Peter, we decided instead to cross the river and see the quieter, earthier, some would say grimier side of Rome, Trastevere. The alleys and squares of Trastevere are reminiscent of the quieter sections of Prague, where a lack of tourist infrastructure (souvenir shops, fast food joints, international chains) has allowed charming neighborhood life to continue untouched without ugly modernization. We ate a delicious lunch in a mama-and-papa restaurant, followed by pastries in Piazza de Renzi - we thought the name was cool…
Tuesday was our Vatican day, which amounted to seeing some great sites and waiting in line for hours upon hours to get into them. We got to the line for the Vatican Museum, probably one of the greatest art museums in the world, in the morning. Since we were going on a guided tour, we didn’t expect to have to stand in the ridiculously long line which seems to encircle almost the entire nation of the Vatican City. Unfortunately, we still had to wait in line - for over two hours. To make matters worse, it started to hail or sleet or something as we waited. I don’t know what you call it when big chunks of ice start falling out of the sky, but it kept happening sporadically throughout the day. I think it might have been some kind of punishment for making fun of the religious icons the day before…
Once inside, the Vatican Museum is truly impressive, housing dozens of halls filled with Roman statues, giant frescoes, tapestries, maps, and paintings by Italian masters. There are so many highlights it is difficult to think of just a few to write here. The Laocoon, for example, shows the Trojan priest who tried to warn the people of Troy not to accept the Greek gift of the giant horse. Since the gods wanted the Greeks to win the war, they sent giant snakes to suffocate the priest and his sons. The statue shows the three figures being killed by the enormous snakes. Maybe its placement in the Vatican is a way for the pope to say, “So isn’t our God a hell of a lot better than the Greek gods?” Another really cool sculpture is the Belvedere torso, a fragment of a Greek statue of a nude male. Although it is missing most of its body parts, the torso itself was supposedly a major influence on later artists, including Raphael and Michelangelo.
These artists also play an important part in the Vatican Museum, as their paintings grace the walls of what used to be the pope’s apartments and chapels. Raphael’s works include battle scenes depicting the early history of the Church and "The School of Athens," an awesome painting showing the great philosophical and artistic minds of Ancient Greece together in the same scene. Some of the paintings were not actually completed by Raphael himself, since he died at a young age, but were instead based on his sketches and executed by his pupils. As a result, one of the paintings of a battle scene has a peeing dwarf in the corner, perhaps (as our tour guide suggested) because a student misinterpreted one of Raphael’s doodles as a part of the scene!
The tour of the museum ends in the Sistine Chapel, which is overwhelming in terms of its size and scope. It is one of those places where you can look around and see something familiar and famous in every corner: the creation of Adam, the Last Judgment, the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden. I was a little disappointed I could not take pictures in there, so that stuck like a thorn in my mind the whole time. The Japanese company which restored the works copyrighted the images, and only Japanese nationals are allowed to take pictures. I’m not even kidding. When we first stepped into the Chapel, my immediate first impression was that the paintings were almost gaudy, as huge blocks of bright colors (such as the robes of the figures and the trees) seemed to stand out from the paler backgrounds. When I remembered to put my glasses on, however, it looked awesome! I am pretty stupid when it comes to eyesight, and I always forget how much better I can see things if I just put glasses on. With the help of the glasses, intricate details stuck out and it became truly beautiful. I can’t even imagine how such a giant painting could have been created by one man.
While the Sistine Chapel may be impressive, it can not compare to Saint Peter’s Basilica, an outrageously gigantic church with gorgeous art and crazy decoration. Somehow, the immensity of the place doesn’t come across as overwhelmingly intimidating or imposing. According to our tour guide, the architects worked to shrink the interior spaces so that you do not feel like you are actually standing inside a place that is taller than the Statue of Liberty and deeper than two football fields. That's actually true. Just stop to think about that for a second because I think it is hard to imagine without actually being inside it. In order to make the place not feel like a hangar, the columns are slightly angled so that they enclose the spectator. In addition, the decorations become increasingly bigger the higher they are placed on the wall. The effect is that the cherubs that are really high in the air don’t look like tiny specks, and your eyes are therefore tricked into thinking the place is not as tall as it really is.
Walking into Saint Peter’s Basilica, you are immediately greeted with the Pieta, the famous statue of Mary holding a dying Jesus. It is far and away the most beautiful piece of art I have ever seen. Michelangelo captures the human form like no other, and it is almost impossible to comprehend how Mary’s soft skin, Jesus’ muscles, and the flowing robes could actually have been carved from a block of stone. The statue is housed behind a wall of bulletproof glass because it was attacked by a hammer-wielding Hungarian geologist in 1972. Weird stuff. The rest of the basilica is just a series of more and more cherubs, statues of saints, mummified popes’ bodies, and mosaics. Amazingly, and I don’t know how this is possible, it never at any point looks gaudy or ostentatious.
After our Vatican bonanza, we had an extra day in Rome to do all the random things around the city. The Quirinale is Italy’s equivalent of the White House, and it was pretty close to our hotel. The square in front had enormous statues of Castor and Pollux and great views of the city. While we were there, a black car with tinted windows pulled out of the gate and drove past us. I’d like to believe it was the president… Next, we walked past Trajan’s Market, a giant brick structure that was created during the reign of Trajan to serve as a marketplace. The ruins are still impressive, and the building seems to have fared better than other monuments of Ancient Rome. Above the ruins sits Capitol Hill, the smallest of Rome’s seven hills. The hilltop square was designed by Michelangelo and contains a bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius. In the square that day there was some kind of celebration, as the place was filled with Italian kids holding white balloons and EU flags and singing. I think it may have had something to do with the fiftieth anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, which established the European Economic Community, but I’m not exactly sure.
Our next stop was Rome’s Jewish Ghetto. A charming neighborhood that is definitely showing its age, it seems to retain most of its character from the past. The streets are lined with men selling artichokes from carts, and they looked delicious! Vicki tried to devise a plan to buy some and cook them in the hotel coffee pot, but we never did it. Near the Jewish part of town is the Largo di Torre Argentina, a square housing the remains of four Roman temples and Pompey’s Theater. The area now houses an outdoor cat shelter in which Rome’s homeless cats are allowed to play and live among the ruins, and tourists can come and visit them for free.
After playing with the cats for a while, we crossed the Tiber and looked at the exteriors of the Castel d’Angelo, a huge brick structure that served as the burial place for many Roman emperors. Since we were so close to the Vatican, we decided to go back. This time, we went under Saint Peter’s Basilica to the burial chamber of the popes, where we saw the grave of Pope John Paul II. It is amazing to see how much people really loved him, and it makes me wonder if anyone will ever think of the current pope in the same way. I don’t think so.
Leaving the Vatican, I had one of my trademark embarrassing moments. I took a picture (that I thought was pretty cool) of a Vatican City mailbox. Looking back on it, it might not have been that cool. To celebrate, I started singing, “All I ever wanted, all I ever needed is here, in this picture,” to the tune of the Depeche Mode song, “Enjoy the Silence” (“All I ever wanted, all I ever needed, is here in my arms!”). I don’t know if you know the song, but it is cheesy and not great. Anyway, I thought I was standing next to Vicki. Instead, I was standing next to a random Japanese tourist, and I turned around and sang directly into his face… Neither of us knew what to do, and I literally ran away.
Rome is a city of superlatives. While it took a while to get acquainted to the sheer amount of stuff there, I left Rome with a real sense of connection to the people and the city. As much as I love Prague, it has been a little difficult coming back to a place that lacks the constant buzz and energy of the Italian people and capital. I guess it’s a good thing I’m going to Milan in two weeks then, right?
Advertisement
Tot: 0.069s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 7; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0417s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
steve
non-member comment
what about the pizza and gelato?