Friday morning I woke up at my usual hour, only to find out that my morning class was cancelled. Around 2 in the afternoon I left for my afternoon class and walked down the mountain to get my train. Unfortunately, the ticket machine was broken. A man stood smoking a cigarette on the platform; I approached and asked, in my scrambled egg Italian, where I could buy a ticket. He reply was as frenzied as a fencing match, and I only understood the words "Top" and "Hill." I thanked him and turned to make the 300 stair trek to the top of the hill, only to find that everything was closed for the mid-day fiesta. I asked someone where I could buy a ticket, and he pointed me further up the mountain. After finding a place, I raced back down to the bottom of the mountiain to catch the train. The train never came. I waited for 45 minutes before a man came out onto the platform and told everyone waiting that the train wasn't going to come. He led us onto a bus and drove us to another train station. From here I got on a train to go to Rome. It was completely packed with people and there were no seats. The trains also have no air-conditioning. This was a "particularly hot day." The stench was suffocating. This train made it most of the way into the city, but then broke down, with Termini in sight. Twenty minutes went by before they finally pulled us in.
After I finished my lesson, without thinking, I started heading back to Marino. Claudio, my one Italian friend, has been busy with school, and my three French buddies were on vacation, so I had nothing to do. As I stood at Termini Station, I decided I'd go out, walk around. I needed an adaptor for my computer, so I had a little bit of an objective, but it wasn't imperative, and I wasn't going to be frustrated if I couldn't find one. I turned left out of the front of Termini; the streets all around are lined with peddlers from all over, trying to force onto pedestrians bootleg bags, shoes, sunglasses, etc. The taxis beep and honk and screech by each other, the red-faced drivers yelling at each other in a language I can barely understand; the motorinos buzz by, sounding like overgrown gnats flying into your ear. All around are travellers of every size, shape, color, creed, age, sex, religion, etc., each dazed by the glare of the Roman sun and dizzied by the fumes of the motorinos, some arguing about directions with each other, some just crouching pinch-faced over their little tourist maps. In short, I hate this place. Termini is easily my least favorite place in Rome, and it is also the place I see the most of. I quickly made my way away from it, heading south past all the internet cafes and kabob shops. Some of the internet cafes and kabob shops have joined forces, so that as you check your email in between sweaty strangers in an un-airconditioned room, you can smell the processed meat of the kabobs from the next room, and hear the Turks yelling out orders to each other. An unpleasant experience, at its best. A few blocks away, though, and I reentered the city I'd fallen in love with. I walked past the Piazza Cavour and looked at the giant, 16 century basilica that stood there. A woman sat feeding some very delicious looking bread to the pigeons, and I was tempted to snatch it from her. What a waste! To give bread to the flying rats when all around you people are starving and suffering. Take me for instance! Here I was, starving under the fierce blare of the sunlight. That is a joke, but what about the crippled gypsy woman sobbing at the trunk of the tree next to me, holding out her hand and begging for spare change. But, I diverge from my topic.
The day after I arrived in Rome the first time, my roommates and I set out to see the Colosseum and the Forum. None of us had had a chance to explore the city yet, so we didn't even know where to get off the subway. We ended up getting off at Cavour. As I walk past the square and look down the roads I can remember the magic of that first encounter with the heart of Rome. We had left our apartment just as a storm had errupted, but fortunately it was just a quick, summer storm, one that drenches everything before evaporating and leaving a blue sky behind. By the time we stepped out of the tunnel at the subway station the clouds had parted and the wet, brick streets gleamed like fish scales in the afternoon glare. Somehow, it seemed, the storm had momentarily stunned the city, and no one was outside; the silence was profound. We wandered down the same street I was walking down, looking for anything familiar, that is to say, anything we'd seen on postcards. It's funny, because an image like the Colosseum is so familiar to us that we don't even remember becoming acquainted with it-- it is something that has just seeped into our memories slowly and without fanfare. That is why, when my friend Joe suddenly said, "Look over there!" we were all dumbfounded for a moment. It was appropriate that he didn't say, "There's the Colosseum!" because it was so sudden and striking as to make us all forget momentarily where we were. I think I'd been busy looking down an alleyway, and Tom was looking in a storefront. To our left was one of the most famous and oldest buildings in the world. It was huge, much larger than any postcard had ever made it look, and it seemed to shine, though I'm sure that was merely a result of the sun and humidity.
After staring at it for a few minutes, we continued our trek down the main avenue, towards the Forum. The glimpse of the Colosseum was from over a wall, which prohibited us access. The Forum was deserted. I have been to the Forum at least a hundred times, and I've never seen it that deserted. We were the only people left. The rain was still fresh on the ground and the aroma of dew rose and drifted through the ruins. The Forum, to me, is one of the most fascinating places on Earth. I believe it is also my favorite, purely because of that first visit. I go back every once and a while and affectionately touch some of the pillars or duck my head into the shed where Gaius Julius Caesar was cremated (and where, to this day, people leave fresh flowers), and though people are all around oggling the arches and old temples, not knowing what they're looking at or what happened there, I still feel a certain quiet pride in this place, as if it is mine alone. In these strolls I simply imagine that first visit, and I blot all the tourists out.
But Friday I decided not to go to the Forum. I took a left down an alleyway and up through some stairs that went beneath an overhanging building. The alleyway was innocuous-- I had never noticed it-- but I saw an old German couple taking pictures, so I thought I'd give it a try. The walls were covered in ivy and some of it hung down in front of the stairs, like beads in front of a fortune teller's door. The stairs opened up into a small, fairly colorless piazza, on the left of which stood an old church. Considering it's bland facade, the concentric arches that made up its front side, and the lack of a dome, I guessed the church was built sometime in the early Rennaisance/Late Middle Ages. The Rennaisance is a difficult time period to define, since it started and ended at different times in different countries. In Italy, it blossomed early and petered out late. I put this church somewhere in the 1400's. I'd seen another practically identical to it in Florence, and if I remembered correctly, that was when it was built. I believe that that was the same church in which Galilleo, Boccaccio, Michelangelo, Petrarch, and many others were buried. A veritable Westminster Abbey of Italy. A few people milled around outside and I decided to go in.
Originally I had also assumed the building wasn't originally meant to be a church, but rather some more official, office type building. I have no idea if it was or wasn't, but if it had been, all traces of that had been removed and replaced with religious ornaments, frescoes, marble floors, small alters off to the sides for praying or lighting candles. Looking at some of the art I wondered if I had been wrong about the date of the building, but after reading a sign, realized I had guessed right-- it was built in the 1460's-- while Colombus was just a boy. The paintings and frescoes had all been added later. The church was unremarkable as far as Roman churches go, but as I walked down the ancient alleyways I noticed a small group of people taking pictures in a corner. I walked up and looked around-- it was Michelangelo's Moses. The last of his major works I had yet to see.
It was remarkable. Breathtaking. Serene. And a bit absurd.
Absurd? The experience was absurd. Joe and I had set out on a mission one Saturday long ago to find this sculpture. We peeked in every church we came across with no results. It was a half-hearted attempt, true, but we spent a large portion of that day looking. In the end I think we gave up and decided to get gelatto near the Circus Maximus (another time I'll write about the Circus Maximus). We could have found it on the internet, but where was the fun in that? We thought of it as "Church Hunting," like a treasure hunt, but better. And as I stood there, I thought, "What are the chances of this?" In Rome, very great. A better question would be, "What are the chances that I'll look into some random church and NOT come across something spectacular?" That's just the way Rome is.
I turned to the left and looked to see what was at the center of the altar-- the chains which bound St. Peter up after he was imprisoned by the emperor Nero. The authenticity of the chains is questionable (fake religious relics used to be "all the rage"), but they were undoubtedly old.
I left feeling a bit redeemed for my week and a half neglect of Rome. I walked back to Termini, no longer bothered by the throngs of people that bled from it. The initial magic I felt that first August day here, stepping out of Cavour into the steamy afternoon light, was still here, lurking, so to speak, in the dark alleyways.
-justin
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