All Roads Lead to Rome

I write this standing at our kitchen counter in Rome (because that’s where the only outlet that works for our converter is located), in a thunderstorm, surrounded by a strong odour of drains, having learned that our flight has just been delayed. On this flight, David and I are seated in different rows, in middle seats, at the back of the plane. Can’t wait. Our travel travails began last week, with our train to Orvieto. It was ‘trains,’ actually, and buses; two buses and two trains. Google Maps had given us the route. We set out under the endless blue sky that greeted us every morning in Tuscany.

This is Volterra's blue sky, seen through the Etruscan city gate;

we stood under the same blue as we waited for the first

bus in Colle.

We made all the connections Google suggested. We hopped on the train to Orvieto with a minute to spare and went all the way to the front of the front car, looking for second class…and walked right into the ticket inspector. We pulled out our tickets. She frowned. “But these are for the Regionale,” she said. It turns out there are two different kinds of slow trains in Italy. One is the Regionale; it has lots of stops. The other is the Intercity. It also has stops, but fewer, and so it is the fast slow train. Who knew? She impressed upon us how much faster this slow train was, fast enough evidently to justify the difference in fare, which for one stop – a ten-minute train ride – was more than we had paid for the entire one and a half hour trip to Orvieto. The varieties of Italian trains are now firmly impressed upon our Canadian minds, though evidently not upon the mind of Google.

Rome: the Campidoglio

In our newfound wisdom we took the train to Rome, too – this time without incident – and two buses to our Airbnb rental, “A Loft with a Garden.” It turns out the buses are very well used in Rome, an excellent quality in a city, except when you are trying to get to the door with luggage through a crowd so dense there is literally no room to move. It was an adventure. Later we learned that what you do in that situation is to yell loudly and repeatedly, “Un momento! Un momento, per favore!” in the hope that the bus will not take off while you still have one foot inside.

At our “Loft with a Garden” there was no host, though they had said on the Airbnb site that they would be there to greet us. They did however send detailed instructions involving a lock box, three doors and five different keys, which according to the instructions might need to be inserted “inverted” or maybe not inverted. Try everything. So we did, with no success. Luckily a resident happened by and let us in the gate. After trying several more keys, inverted and right side up, on the building door we got in and followed the directions downstairs (wait – we thought – downstairs?) “to the door facing the stairs” where we found 4 doors facing the stairs; we stuck the key in one, holding our breath, and it turned. Yes, the “Loft with a Garden” was in fact a basement. It was, in the manner of basements, dank and dark and smelled of Roman drains. The bedroom, happily, was in the mezzanine (evidently the origin of the “Loft” idea), with windows and a view of the trees across the road in the park – though you can only see the advertised “sunset” if you are lying on the bed because the ceiling is so low. Luckily the bedroom was pleasant and the smell stayed mainly downstairs.

The advantage of having a dank and smelly apartment is that you don’t want to spend any time there. We saw a lot of Rome. That afternoon we walked over to the Villa Doria Pamphilij gardens, a large park with a stream running through it and statuesque umbrella pines lining the long path toward the villa.

It was beautiful in the late afternoon light. Is the light in Italy more golden than elsewhere? It seems so to us. Families were walking, children were running and feeding the turtles in the stream, people sat on benches and read books (real books with paper pages and bindings and varied covers), dogs ran by and friends sauntered along deep in Italian conversation. This is an area largely of flats; the park seems to be the communal back yard. In the golden light under the umbrella trees we walked and saw Testaccio and beyond laid out at our feet.

In the evening, we walked the other direction to Santa Maria in Trastevere and discovered a choir chanting Alleluias as the Mass of St Chrysostom began. Mosaics (late 12^th century) gleamed gold over the altar as the priests and choir chanted back and forth and the air was filled with smoke: the priests censed the whole congregation, row by row, as the service began.

Santa Maria in Trastevere - picture taken guiltily during the service,

though as you can see I was not the only one.

Notice the sheep. They are a theme in Rome's Christian mosaics.

Later, outside in the piazza, a pianist played Rachmaninoff and Mozart to cheering crowds, hawkers threw tiny glittering parachutes into the air, students sat around the fountain while church bells rang, and fairy lights sparkled in the restaurants. In our restaurant we had a terrible caprese salad (unripe tomatoes! In Italy!), hot focaccia, decent cacio e pepe pasta (Io) and some very good, very thinly sliced beef and little potatoes (Davide). The next night we fared better with Saltimbocca (Davide) and a focaccia pizza involving eggplant and artichoke (Io), and the best Tiramisu we have ever tasted. We loved the liveliness of Trastevere at night, and even though there was as much English/German/Spanish/ Dutch/Portuguese and Swedish being spoken as Italian, it felt not like a “sight” but a party, people briefly knitted together from all over the world.

The next morning we fought our way off the bus at the Circus Maximus and stepped into the first century.

There it is, that ancient Circus, standing in the middle of the 21^st century streets, cars whizzing around it, the columns of a Roman temple nearby, and up on the Aventine hill behind it Santa Sabina with its exquisite wooden doors carved with scenes from the Old and New Testaments in 430-432 AD. Still there, that church! Basically unchanged, inside and out, for more than 1500 years. (Hint to visitors: no tourists there, whereas around the corner at San Clemente the line stretches around a Roman city block, all the time. Someone must have blogged about it. We are determined to tell no one about Santa Sabina and its doors. You are all sworn to secrecy.)

The doors

At the very top, the crucifixion in its earliest known representation.

Moses and the Red Sea: Moses and the Egyptian magicians turning

their staffs into serpents at the bottom; the Egyptian charioteer

and horses being swallowed up the sea in the middle;

the Israelites making it to dry land at the top.

In the peaceful, open interior, the columns -

lifted in the 5th century from nearby Roman ruins.

Later that week we went on from Santa Sabina, past the lovely orange garden with its much-photographed views over Rome, to a secret place I had discovered 13 years ago and wanted to share with David. When I wandered up the Aventine Hill early one morning in 2013, I was the only tourist there. I shared the way with a group of school children walking to school like Madeline in a line. My guidebook had said, after you see the Orpheus mosaic (2^nd-3^rd century Roman in origin) hidden in the Benedictine monastery, find the nearby tall walls with their tall gates and peek through the keyhole. I did so, thinking “ummmmmm, why?,” and there before me was a magical miniature world, the gardens of the Knights of Malta perfectly framed by the keyhole, with all of Rome opening out behind. I laughed out loud, all those years ago: a garden within a keyhole, a secret garden, and I the only initiate. So I could not wait for David to see it too. We rounded the corner…and there was a line about 100 meters long. Two by two they went up to the keyhole, phones in hand, and got their picture, and a selfie with...a keyhole. They must have waited for hours for their shot (we did not wait to see). But their keyhole was not my keyhole. Mine was the secret garden.

View over Rome from the Giardino degli Aranci

We had other experiences of over-the-top tourism, sight-seers overwhelming the sight so that it is no longer seen – the Observer Syndrome?! – most amusingly in the Chiesa di Sant’Ignazio di Loyola. This is really just another baroque church. But it has an optical illusion ceiling: when the church ran out of money to build a dome, the Jesuit Andrea Pozzo painted a dome on the flat ceiling, and beside it St Ignatius rising into a 3D open sky out of the columns of the church, the nations of the world at the four corners. It is an impressive feat. There is a mirror underneath. We had it pretty much to ourselves (Caitlin, Sarah and I) in 2013. In 2026 David and I walked into the church and bumped into a line of people running all the way from the mirror to the doors. One by one they stepped up to the mirror, paid their euro, and took their selfie. I wondered what St Ignatius was thinking, looking down on it all. I wondered how many illusory domes are up there in the Cloud. And I thought: score one for Pozzo!

Taken by David right beside the line

It was a festival of churches, for us. San Pietro in Vincoli, with its Michelangelo, a horned Moses with the tablets of the Law tucked under his arm, tugging on his beard and frowning (was he hearing already the golden calf dance going on below?), and below the altar the chains themselves in a carved and gilded box.

The church seemed also to have a fondness for skeletons.

St Louis des Francais, the church of the French in Rome, with its three stunning Caravaggios, all about Matthew. My guy! On one side, an at-least life-size Matthew at his counting table counting out his money, his nice legs under the table shown off to advantage in fine hose and fancy pointed shoes; Jesus in a rough robe in the shadows, young, intense, 3-day beard and barefoot, pointing at Matthew with a finger that looks exactly (I think) like the finger of God touching Adam to life in the Sistine Chapel (homage to Michelangelo?); Matthew stunned, pointing to himself – who, me? – the light from the face of Jesus falling on his face while beside him a young guy and an old man sit in the dark with their faces glued to the table, still counting their money. On the middle wall, Matthew, barefoot now, writing his gospel, surprised by an angel who whirls above him and counts on his fingers – one! (Why “one”? We were not sure.)

And on the last wall, Matthew, barefoot again, surprised in the act of baptizing his Ethiopian converts who leap out of the pool almost into the room as the virile young soldier thrusts the old saint to the ground and draws his sword. The angel is there again, just in the nick of time, his body torquing in mid-flight as he holds out to Matthew’s outstretched hand the martyr’s palm.

In addition to Matthew, because it is the church of the French,

our old friend Jean d'Arc put in an appearance

Outside, a fire-breathing dragon

Caravaggio was a Rome highlight for us, those paintings and his St Peter and St Paul in the church on the corner of the Piazza del Populo, the young Paul knocked off his horse by the same light that hit Matthew, the elderly Peter being crucified upside down.

But it wasn't just Caravaggio. There are mosaics too. We stopped by Santa Prassede, with its remarkable 9th century chapel of Zeno, built by Pope Paschal I for his mother Theodora.

Santa Prassede, entrance to Chapel of St. Zeno

And, of course, we stopped by Santa Maria Maggiore. More early mosaics (5th century - contemporaneous with those doors over at Santa Sabina) telling the biblical story, and medieval mosaics telling its development, Mary crowned queen of heaven over the altar. And a lot of gilt. I was pleased to discover Bernini's burial place there, a simple plaque on the floor near the altar.

We also loved just walking around. Borromini’s dual with Bernini, the façade of Sta Agnese (St Agnes – vivid depictions of her stoning inside) designed by Borromini facing off against Bernini’s fountain of the four rivers in the Piazza Navona, with its lion and horse and sea serpents and fantastic armadillo; the Pantheon still rising majestically amongst the tourist hordes, the Trevi fountain (and those same hordes, ridiculous numbers of them) and best of all the Forum carrying the winds of ancient Rome.

Inside Borromini's church: martyrdom of St Agnes.

Enthusiastic stoners....

The Pantheon, and one of the many purloined Egyptian obelisks in Rome

Another one, sitting atop a charming elephant by Bernini

We ate lunch one day about 10 feet from Trajan’s column as a violinist played under a tree nearby and a seagull pointed its very pointy beak at our food (and the tour groups walked dazedly by). Around the forum the crowds were not so bad, for some reason; perhaps there is enough open space amongst the ruined columns to absorb us all.

A lunch with a view

Marcus Aurelius, still hanging in there

It never gets old

Rome also gave us some social contact, for which we were getting pretty starved. On Tuesday we went to the Eucharist at the Anglican Centre in Rome; anyone and everyone who wants to come is welcome. It took us a good half hour of walking around the same block multiple times before we found it – it is identified by a small plaque on the side of a large set of doors leading into the Dora Pamphili Gallery, where there is a closed gate and a sign saying “entrance on the other side.” But find it we finally did and enjoyed a rollicking sermon on Tyndale ending with an impassioned appeal to take the book in your hands and read the bible, already, from the Irish bishop of Limerick (and a few other unpronounceable places), followed by a large and tasty lunch served to all the guests in the wood-paneled, chandelier-lit rooms of the palace. We enjoyed meeting people from England, Ireland and the US, RCs and Anglicans – and from Canada: as we walked into the chapel whom should we see but Toronto’s Bishop Kevin Robertson sitting in the pew across from us. Small world.

On our last morning we caught the early bus to the Spanish steps (and got a close-up view of Roman traffic at rush hour; it makes Toronto seem tame: no rules and no fear). As the sun rose over the domes of Rome we stood on the steps – us and a pair of newlyweds taking wedding photos – and smiled. We were ready to go home…but what a city! At that moment, it was all ours.

This is already far too long: if you have made it to the end, you are a hero; thank you! So about Orvieto, our last stop before Rome, I will say only that it is enchanting. The cathedral is a wedding cake inside and out; Luca Signorelli’s Judgement Day frescoes are mesmerizing (and come complete with zapping angels, a beautiful damned woman riding the devil’s back, and Signorelli’s portrait of himself and Fra Angelico side by side). And the views from the town walls take your breath away. The pictures tell the story.