Rome is a cliché. Usually that isn’t a good thing but when
the cliché is that a city is cool, full of life and gorgeous, the clichés can
stay. Rome is possibly the only European capital that can claim to rival Paris
in the popular imagination in terms of having an expectation around it. Even
Paris is now succumbing to parallel narratives due to the sheer size of the
city (much like London), with the immigrant experience less of an unknown story
(to non-immigrants anyway. Immigrants always knew it wasn’t cities paved with
gold they’d find).
Some combination of smaller population, less immigration and
the weight of centuries of civilization being still visible across the city has
allowed Rome to actually deserve the tag of “The Eternal City”.
My idea of Rome comes to me primarily from
Italian films of the 1960s. Rome is black and white in my mind just as it is on
Fellini’s film reel.
I had low expectations. Months in London had allowed
cynicism to set in. London itself was not particularly depressing but the idea
of moving to another capital such as Amsterdam or Paris was starting to seem
more appealing but scarcely possible. Everyone knows that London rains
perpetually and is always gloomy. Everyone thinks it can’t really be that bad.
It’s not true. [There’s a reason the English and the Dutch were the best
sailors. It’s because they couldn’t wait to get away. No one else sees the
Palestine desert or the Namibian veld and thinks of colonizing it, except
people who are fed up of rain. ] The grey skies and light drizzle when I got
out of Ciampino didn’t seem auspicious.
*
Italians are lucky because they have the best food in the
world. It’s something one hears a lot. Mostly from Italians. The thing about
such a statement is that only people who know they have good food would say
such a thing. So far no country that has been lazy with their culinary
development has been deluded enough to claim they’re the best (as far as I
know). Really, the French and the Indians are the only ones who could even
claim to try to match the Italians at food. Probably the Japanese too but I’ve
not met many boastful Japanese people.
Italian food being excellent was not something unexpected.
Having spent time in the Little Italy neighborhoods of Toronto and New York, I
doubted I could really be surprised by any pasta dish. I was halfway right. It
was the risotto that was of a higher quality than any I’d had before.
*
Roman architecture is world famous and historic. I already
knew this. Most of the world knows this. Being in Rome gives ones the sensation
of walking around an open air museum. But Rome is not a museum. Unlike other
beautiful cities such as Budapest, Rome is full of life. The monuments of Rome
are embedded into the everyday life of the city. In that sense they are not
monuments but markers of the history of the city.
London also has markers of history throughout the city and
like Rome; these are in close proximity to more modern aspects of life (St.
Paul’s being next to the Millennium Bridge and the London Eye across the river from
Big Ben are the most obvious examples). But while Londoners are used to having
these monuments in their city, it regularly seems as though they forget they
are there. It’s understandable enough. If one goes past the Parliament building
every day it soon loses its excitement. Yet it never seemed like that in Rome.
Romans regularly took interest in their city. They would take the time to stop
and admire the monuments they saw every day. Maybe not every time they went
past, but with regularity. Often when I would ask people who I assumed to be
fellow tourists (because I assumed people staring at buildings would be
tourists also) what they liked most about Rome they would answer and close with
“I always come and see this place when the weather is good” or “It’s important
that I stop and look at this. There is always time to see nice things again”.
All photos are property of Kevon A. Campbell
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