For minutes I let the sun-shadow patterns play across my lids, then lift my head and look around.
From my perch on top of an open-air tourist bus, I watch the newsreel of Roman monuments move majestically by me.
• The wedding cake monument to Vittorio Emmanuel, first king of a united Italy, starkly white against the endless Mediterranean sky;
• the broad plane of Circus Maximus where roman
chariots once raced below the terraces of the Palatine;• the jewel-like bridges over the Tiber – rhythmic white arches over the swirling dark waters, topped with clusters of carved marble figures;
• the brutish Castel San Angelo , built to be Hadrian’s tomb but fashioned into a defensible Papal retreat;
• the elegant, square-domed synagogue on the banks of the Tiber
proclaiming the old Jewish Quarter around Campo de Fiori;• and at the top of the Via della Conciliazione, grand fascist avenue from the 30s, squats St. Peter’s, its pincher colonnades and regal façade by Bernini drawing the eye into Michelangelo’s magnificent dome.
The bus lumbers through the broad avenues of the Italian capital, under the warm October sun – cruising Via Veneto , Via Cavour, and Via Nazionale, leaving the sights in amongst the tangled alleys – the Pantheon, Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain – for another day.
But the cruising bus gives me a piano nobile view of the magnificent palaces and exquisite churches, the lush umbrella pine trees over picturesque squares, and clustered sidewalk cafes where elegantly dressed romans share space with shorts-clad, t-shirted tourists.
I’ve walked miles in Rome, and have photo-album memories of its main sights. But never before have I sewn it all together, seen the interplay between ancient, renaissance and modern, felt the flow of the neighbourhoods, understood the relationship between Santa Maria Maggiore and St. Peter’s, the Forum and the Coliseum.
Under the sun of a Roman October, the city begins to make sense to me.
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