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In Which I Fall In Love With.. A City

May 20, 2008 by Mike

Castel Fusano

Route: Lido de Ostia - Castel Fusano (just under four kilometres)

Having got to Rome moments after darkness fell and moments before a thunderous storm, I'm glad to say I found a small pension on the seafront last night in which to collapse. But this morning I was back on the bike for the short hop to Rome's coastal campsite at Castel Fusano. All of four kilometres.

That makes it three kilometres' walk to the nearest Metro station -- which happens to be the station at the end of the longest line out from Rome. So, having erected the tent and set off in high spirits, I was wet and bedraggled and two hours older by the time I reached Rome proper.

The rain has caught up with me, and is punishing me for trying to get away. And I almost don't care, because Rome is so special.

Granted, the drivers are as bad as the rest of this contrary country. They've just elected a fascist (small f --: I believe he doesn't own up to it in name) as Mayor.. he's the first rightwing mayor of Rome since the fall of Mussolini. The roads are in a terrible state. Pedestrians here are as slow as the drivers are fast -- a conundrum wrapped in an enigma, that one. There's litter all over, not least the umbrellas discarded when they've broken in the wind. There's plenty of signs to say No Trespassing or Don't Lean On This Solid Iron Fence but no signs to say - this way to the Colisseum. You have to guess. There are no puddles caused by the rain, they're all small lakes instead. Roads and pavements have become impassable. The water doesn't drain away -- more failures of the infrastructure. It takes 35 minutes to log on in a cyber cafe by the time you've signed in triplicate and had your personal details (including passport) logged with central government.. shades of China, surely. And the headlines in the press here are still attacking the Roma, or at least not defending them from vicious attacks by violent thugs in the government.. oops, I mean violent thugs *and* the government.

All of which makes it hard to love Rome.

But how can I not love the city of the Palatine Hill? Of the House of Augustus and the site of Nero's fiddling? (I was particularly taken by the flowers and grasses gushing from the mouth of a retired fountain in the Farnasi palace and.. what? WHAT? Mike With starting to get interested in flowers and stuff? That's for girls.)

How can I not love a city that names roads after characters in Asterix - why here's the Via del Circo Massimo, named after Circus Maximus (cvan anyone remember which book he appears in? Or am I hallucinating?

How can I not love the city of the Trevi Fountain? The world capital of "Excuse me, would you take a photo of me and me girlfriend with my camera? You just press here.. no here.. that's right, Thanks." (Repeated here 22 times a minute in up to 29 different languages, eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year. That's a lot of blurred photographs of the top of peoples' heads with a fabulous fountain in the background..)

How can I not love a city where I can find myself in the middle of millions of people, on a Tuesday afternoon, in the centre of a thriving, throbbing capital city, in the middle of one of the wonders of the world, the Roman Forum, the Roman bloody Forum!, wrapped suddenly in complete silence with not a soul to be seen? It happened to me today, it really did: I turned 360 degrees, standing where the centre of the known world -- the centre of the universe -- has improbably survived two thousand years of Italian custodianship. There was no other person to be seen. Just me, birds singing brightly, heavy clouds overhead, half a dozen temples, a couple of triumphal arches, the home of the Vestal Virgins and assorted marble statues.

[NB I hear you ask - How do I remember these details? By taking photographs to remind me.

How do I take a photograph to remind me that I can't see any other people? Like this:

How do I take a picture to remind myself of the beauty of birdsong? Like this:
Well, you did ask.]

And that's as much as I manage on my first day in Rome.

I head back to the campsite smiling, because I happened to stumble upon the headquarters of Berlusconi's Forza Italia political movement on a chic side street off the Via del Corso as I made my way from the Trevi to the Metro Station.

Crossing the road to frame a shot -- a photograph, that is, rather than an assasination attempt -- I find myself in the doorway of the building right opposite: a "Gentlemen's Club" called Elite 2. The kind that rarely sees any 'gentlemen' and indeed chooses to advertise itself with pictures of naked women draped over chaises longues.. and soon to be draped over the 'gentlemen' too.

How appropriate that two shady organisations prepared to flout their contempt for the law, for anything approaching morals, and for the rights of the vulnerable, that exist to make a great deal of dodgy money safe in the knowledge that they have "friends" who'll keep them out of the courts, should be near-neighbours. In bed together, almost.

Forgive me, but I took this picture because I realised the man was doing a danged good impersonation of the church...

Beside the Seaside

In Which I Fall In Love With.. A City

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