The first grown-up movie I remember seeing was Roman Holiday. For those who have somehow managed to miss it over the past 75 years, it stars Audrey Hepburn as a princess who incognito escapes the constraints of her royal role, and connects with a newspaper reporter, played by Gregory Peck, for an exhilarating day of adventures in Rome. They buzz around the city on a Vespa, zipping by one iconic site after another and interacting with the locals, having fun normally out of reach to royalty. Spoiler alert: at the end of the day of adventure, she goes back to her life of royal duties and decorum.
The movie was first released in 1953 when I was only one year old, so I must have seen it in 1957, when it had a second-run revival. I’m sure my parents took me not because they thought I would understand it, but because they wanted to see it and they knew there was nothing in it that would traumatize a five-year-old. As best as I can remember, I liked it a lot.
I felt a bit like Princess Ann last week, when I had one day to spend banging around Rome before heading to Fiumicino to catch the plane home. It was a perfect antidote to the previous week spent in a tiny Tuscan village, most of it on my knees in the dirt, working on an archeological dig. I’m a city girl, but even if you’re not, it’s impossible not to be moved by the vibrancy of this wonderful place, and to be in awe of its history and its beauty.
Given the limited time, I wanted to take advantage of every minute. So I walked and walked and walked. I am lucky to have been to Rome before, so could skip the must-sees like the Vatican and the Coliseum, and just wandered and soaked up as much as I could.
Early October was an excellent time to be in Rome, with blue skies but none of the blistering summer heat. For sure, there were plenty of tourists, but nothing compared to what one would find in the summer months.
As I made my way around the city, I tried to soak up the daily life of the locals as much as I could. It’s a city that puts a premium on beauty, culture and history, and it’s no wonder, surrounded by several millennia’s-worth of it every day. Immersion like this would have to have an impact on the psyche.
I am willing to concede that Naples has the best coffee in Italy. But Rome is no slouch in that department.
My husband Ben is obsessed with making coffee at home as good as what you routinely get at every corner bar in Italy. Two of the iconic coffee bars in Rome are Sant Eustachio and Tazza Doro. So I brought him home a bag of beans from one of them, but no dice (yet). I don’t know if it’s the Roman water or some special method or their mammoth machines, but Ben still hasn’t come close.
It was surprising to see the shops stocked and decorated for American-style Halloween, with ghosts, skeletons, and pumpkins.
There are two serious religious and family-based holidays observed in Italy during Halloween time. November 1 is All Saints’ Day, a holy day celebrating the saints, and All Souls’ Day is on November 2, dedicated to remembrances of loved ones who have passed on. Families go to the cemetery, leave flowers, and tend to the graves. People in Italy are much more attentive to cemeteries than Americans; on any day, you can see people sweeping and watering flowers on the graves of their relatives, but especially on this holiday. I would love to know what Italians make of our Halloween, with our front yards decorated with inflatable graveyards and the terrifying movies that come out that time of year, but like all things American, our Halloween is apparently slowly making its way into their culture.
Two things happened in Rome that struck very close to home. When I first went to Italy in 1965, the bit hit was Il Mondo by Jimmy Fontana, an overwrought song where someone unlucky in love expresses amazement that the world keeps turning. Whenever I go to any situation where Italian music will be played, I am always hopeful I’ll hear Il Mondo, and I often do. On our last night, we went to Il Girasole, a lovely pizzeria, and they had a piano player, something I’d never experienced before in Italy. He asked me if I had any request, so of course…
And if I had been feeling homesick, I found this written on the ceiling of a trattoria in Rome. Stay classy, Philly.
So whether royalty or not, I can’t think of a better way to spend a day than wandering aimlessly around Rome, with all senses on high alert. And unlike Princess Ann, I know I can come back and roam the streets anytime. Lucky me! There’s so much more to see.
