wizard's blog: Rome Recap

The Rome Recap.

I left Rome almost a week ago, but I guess it deserves some sort of rundown on my time there.

Before I left for Rome, a friend of mine told me that his impression of it was that it was dirty...and this coming from a guy who lives in New York. And I'd have to agree with him to a certain extent. The thing about Rome is that there are so many old features to it that it becomes hard to adequately clean it. For example, the streets are still made of cobblestone: small bits of garbage get stuck in the cracks of the cobblestone and make it difficult to get out. Despite this, though, I love the cobblestone and the rest of the old parts of town because it really adds to the historic charm of the city.

They call Rome the Eternal City, but I tend to think it's more of a time capsule than an eternal city. Throughout my time in Rome, everything I ran into was historic...even the random buildings on the corner, but I didn't run into much that was contemporary. Except for the buses or street cars, everything in Rome was centered around its preexisting buildings. (And I don't mean any of this as a criticism of Rome). When you walk through Rome, you are just taken aback by all the history.

The difficult part is parsing through it all...because it really is just a clusterfuck of history. First you had the Roman Republic, then the Empire, then some Christianity, then the Popes, along the line Rome was kept up with contemporary society as Mussolini came to power then fell, until we've come to today. The relics of all this history are visible everywhere and it's interesting to see them all bunched up together. Rome has done a great job of preserving these buildings and incorporating their modern life into the historic buildings (for example, the President of Rome lives in an old papal palace instead of a newly constructed building designed solely for his purpose).

Without modern skyscrapers, most of the buildings in Rome aren't much taller than 10 stories, but because the streets are so narrow, you can't see much beyond one block from where you're standing. But as you walk a bit, you start to hear the murmur of a crowd of tourists, then you turn the corner and you're hit with an ancient temple or an old church or an old civic building. And this isn't even counting the normal buildings in the city where people live, but are still hundreds or even thousands of years old.

The thing about some of the ancient Roman Empire's relics is that they only exist as skeletons of themselves, not because of time and the elements, but because of one of the most beautiful things about Rome: the Vatican. And while the Popes and the Vatican have given us some of the most beautiful statues and basilicas in Rome, they got most of the marble to build it from the older Roman buildings. It's why the forums are only shells and bricks of their former selves and the Coliseum is only half there. In fact, when the Vatican rose to power over Rome, the Popes saw fit to reframe everything that was once pagan and make it Christian. It's why there's now a cross at every old temple (the Pantheon, which is now a church, was once a pagan temple). Not only did they do this, but they also put their name on everything...most of the important old buildings in Rome have a Pope's name on them.

There's way too much history in Rome for me to understand it all, but I'm sure I'll be back. Here are some highlights of what I saw.