Entries about rome

I left Rome in the gloomy rainy November dawn. It was very early, the streets were uncharacteristically quiet. Street lights glinted in the greasy puddles on the bitumen. The metro ride to Termini station was uncrowded, perhaps even pleasant.

I bought my ticket at a Trenitalia ticket machine at Termini, the terminal spitting out a stiff cardboard ticket of immense size, even more substantial than an airline boarding pass. I passed through the tall glass gates to catch the Leonardo Express, the train from Termini to Leonardo da Vinci Airport in Fiumicino some thirty kilometres to the west.

Trenitalia has no business calling this train the Leonardo “Express”. Yes, it runs non-stop from Termini to Fiumicino. Yes, it is a very nice train with high-backed seats, plentiful luggage space, and more than enough power points and USB ports. But it crawls along the tracks the entire way. The Leonardo Express shares the same tracks as all-stations suburban services and consequently gets stuck behind the slow trains. I felt that I could have walked to the airport quicker.

I was rather impressed by Leonardo da Vinci Airport. Once again I felt that eerie cognitive dissonance tinged with jealousy - how does such a dysfunctional country with such corrupt politicians and unstable governments as Italy manage to build such amazing infrastructure?

A cute little driverless people mover took me swiftly to a satellite terminal where I waited for my Qatar Airways flight to Doha. As the plane took off I got a good view of the mouth of the Tiber and the town of Civitavecchia, once Rome’s port, before the scene was obscured by the low clouds.

The clouds cleared by the time we crossed the Ionian Sea and passed over Greece. The Greek scenery down below was superb - stunning coastlines, soaring mountains, a cobalt blue sea studded with alluring islands, peninsulas and isthmuses. The plane also passed other Athens. I now understood why Athens has such intense air pollution. The city is a crowded metropolis of mid-rise buildings squeezed into a bowl-shaped basin surrounded by a ring of high hills. There scarcely seemed to be an acre of green space in the entire urban area save for around the Acropolis.

The clouds and desert haze returned somewhere after Cyprus. I passed the time watching Head Full of Honey starring Nick Nolte, a cloyingly saccharine film about a grandfather with dementia taking his granddaughter on a railway adventure across Europe to Venice. It wasn’t Old Nick’s best work. As schmalzy as the movie was, it brought back memories of my own beloved Granddad’s struggle with Alzheimer’s.

The plane landed at Hamad International Airport in Doha, Qatar shortly after sunset. I had a wait for a couple of hours in this rather pleasant, well laid out airport. I took the opportunity to stretch my legs, go for a long walk around the terminal and ride the people mover just for laughs to mentally and physically prepare myself for the long, long stretch home.

There was something about Rome that sapped my energy, my lust for life. I can’t put my finger on exactly what it was. Perhaps it was the beggars, scam artists and pickpockets that infest every tourist attraction. Perhaps it was the terrible public transport – by far the worst I have seen in Europe – that made getting around the city a blasted chore. Perhaps it was the insane traffic with kamikaze drivers of farty little Fiats pretending they were playing Super Mario Kart. Perhaps it was the grime, the disorder, the rip-off restaurants, the rudeness and aggression of many of the people. Perhaps it was all of these things combined.

Whatever the cause, I was sick of it. So the grey morning of Thursday, 14 November 2019 was yet another day when I took my sweet time getting ready to emerge from the Empire Suites, my last full day in Europe before the pandemic.

Stolpersteine on Viale Giulio Cesare

As I left the apartment building on Viale Giulio Cesare I noticed three little brass plaques embedded in the footpath. I bent over and took a closer look. On the plaques were inscriptions in Italian – basic biographical details of the lives of three people who used to live in the building. Giulio Mortera was born in 1870 and was murdered in 1943 in Auschwitz a week after being arrested in Rome. His daughter Jole, born in 1904, was also deported to Auschwitz and was killed at an unknown time and place. His wife Virginia, born in 1866, was arrested and murdered on the same days as her husband.

We all know of the horrors of the Holocaust in the abstract, but to see these unassuming little plaques telling me that I am staying in the same building as where Holocaust victims lived was a profoundly moving experience. The very stairs I had just descended were also used by SS officers to drag innocent people to their slaughter. To be honest, I had no idea that the tentacles of the Holocaust reached this far south – I knew that Northern Italy became a Nazi puppet state after the coup that deposed Mussolini’s Fascist regime, but I didn’t know that this puppet state, the so-called Italian Social Republic, went as far south as Rome.

There are plaques like these in pavements all over Europe. They are called Stolpersteine, German for “stumbling stones” – there is a project to install a Stolperstein outside the homes of every Holocaust victim.

I caught a very crowded metro train to the Colosseum. As I tried to alight from the train at Colosseo station I had to fight against a scrum of boarding passengers who refused to let people get off first. “Let people get off the train first, you f#$%ing morons!” I admonished. I was forced to lunge between two people just to exit the carriage and for my troubles some jerk pushed my back with such force that I almost fell onto the platform. God damn it, Italy.

I waited in an eternal queue to buy my ticket to enter the Colosseum and then climbed the stairs to the upper galleries of the stadium. I would like to say that the Colosseum took my breath. It didn’t. I had seen it in so many photographs and television programmes that I felt no sense of wonder. The Colosseum is also much smaller than I expected. I thought you would be able to host a football match in it, but it’s probably only large enough for a beach volleyball game – the oval playing area is eighty metres long and forty-six metres wide. (For comparison, the Sydney Cricket Ground is a hundred and eighty-six metres long and a hundred and forty-five metres wide.) Then there was the fact that everyone else took their sweet time taking the same photos over and over again and not being quick about it, thereby blocking me from trying to get around the place.

The Hypogeum of the Colosseum

Most of the field surface has been removed revealing the hypogeum, the intricate system of corridors, dressing rooms, service areas, trapdoors and the like through which the gladiators, animals, performers and condemned criminals were transported up to the surface. To be honest, I found this the only interesting thing about the Colosseum.

The Colosseum is right outside the Forum, the civic heart of Ancient Rome. Between the Colosseum and the Forum are two triumphal arches, the Arch of Constantine and the Arch of Titus, the latter being the inspiration for the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

The Arch of Titus is on the Via Sacra, the ceremonial axis of the Forum and essentially Ancient Rome’s main street. The Via Sacra still leads to the visitor’s entrance to the Forum.

The Via Sacra also contains the greatest concentration of scoundrels in all of Italy. I was accosted three times by these miscreants on the short walk from the Colosseum to the Forum. They are utterly merciless. Florence was teeming with these con artists too but at least there they had the good sense to take a firm yet polite “no, thanks” for an answer. Their counterparts in Rome were not so diffident.

Their schtick is the same as the ones who hang around the Trevi Fountain. They will step into your path with astounding dexterity and make it impossible for you to step around them. They will draw attention to your shoes. “Hi man, your shoes are black, just like Africa. I am from Africa. Where are you from?” And I suspect that while your gaze is directed at your shoes, they or an accomplice will rifle your pockets or backpack and rob you blind.

I was having none of it. I managed to extricate myself from the first two with some difficulty but the third boxed me in against a retaining wall along the side of the Via Sacra.

“Just leave me alone, I don’t want to talk to you,” I said.

“Why? Why don’t you like talking to the black man? Are you racist? You’re racist!”

“For f#$%’s sake, just let me pass!”

He then shouted to all the passers-by. “Look everyone, here’s a racist! He doesn’t like talking to the black man! Look everyone, a RACIST!”

“I’m not a f#$%ing racist, I just have the right to walk around this city without you miserable mangy mongrels blocking me wherever I go!” I shouted back.

“RACIST! This man’s a RACIST!”

He then let me walk away and he didn’t disturb me any longer. A Scottish family visiting Rome were passing, heard the exchange, saw that I was a little shaken and asked if I was OK. They let me walk with them the rest of the way to the ticket office.

When I reached the ticket office I saw a little corner in the retaining wall, stood there off to the side of the streaming crowds and discreetly looked back. I saw what they were trying to do. These rascals would only ever approach single travellers, occasionally couples. I saw one of these pieces of trash try to manoeuvre his hands towards a possible victim’s watch but never quite getting there. Then one of these contemptible criminals saw that I was looking at him. He flipped me the bird and gave me a look that let me know in no uncertain terms that I would most likely end up at the bottom of the Tiber river if I kept watching him.

The emperor's personal stadium at Domitian's Palace

Discretion was the better part of valour so I bought a ticket and entered the Forum. First I explored Palatine Hill. This is one of the original Seven Hills of Rome. It was the site of the emperor’s residence and is the place from which the English word “palace” is derived. Most of Palatine Hill is taken up by the ruins of Domitian’s Palace. This palace had its own stadium for the sole pleasure of the emperor. Though most of the roofs had gone, many of the walls and much of the brilliant white marble floors still remained.

Next to the Palatine Hill in a valley is the Circus Maximus where chariot races were held. The outline of the racecourse is still visible but it is now surrounded on all sides by busy roads.

Next to the palace on Palatine Hill is the Farnese Gardens, one of the oldest botanical gardens in Europe and founded in the Renaissance by a cardinal. The gardens contain a belvedere from which a view can be obtained over the Forum and the Colosseum in the valley below.

View of Forum and Basilica of Maxentius from Farnese Gardens

I then descended from the gardens down to the Forum. The Forum is strange. It is a stunning collection of ruins in various stages of dilapidation, from “still almost intact” to “an unidentifiable jumble of rocks”. The strange thing though is that it is surrounded on all sides by a very much intact city.

Here’s an analogy. The city of Sydney was founded in 1788 when the British arrived on the First Fleet; they established the colony on the shores of Sydney Cove around what is now Circular Quay – this area from the very beginning was the city centre and it still is; the area around Circular Quay probably has Australia’s greatest concentration of skyscrapers.

Now imagine that for whatever reason, some time in the nineteenth century, the area around Circular Quay had been abandoned. Meanwhile, the rest of the city was still active and Sydney grows up and expands around the abandoned area, but Circular Quay was left to fall into ruins. This is sort of what happened to the Forum.

In most European cities of ancient pedigree, the classical heart is still the city centre; whatever ancient buildings still exist are part of the urban fabric and sit alongside newer buildings. In Rome, however, the Forum seems detached from the life of the city, an archaeological park for the amusement of tourists, almost like a zoo but with columns and pediments instead of giraffes and elephants.

It makes sense when you learn more about the history of Rome. After the Western Roman Empire fell in the fifth century AD, Rome declined. And I mean, declined. The city lost most of its population, about seventy-five percent. The people who remained in the city clustered around the bend inside the Tiber river to the west of the Forum; this area became the new heart of Rome. Not only was the Forum abandoned, but over the centuries the Catholic Church thought it would be a smashing idea to pillage the Forum of stone with which to build their magnificent cathedrals and basilicas elsewhere.

Temple of Castor and Pollux at the Roman Forum

Hence the modern visitor to the Forum can see the eerie sight of a tympanum teetering on crumbling columns at the Temple of Castor and Pollux; the Basilica of Maxentius, an enormous basilica with half of the building missing revealing huge vaults enclosing the interior that bring to mind an empty egg carton cut lengthwise and turned upside down; and more jumbles of stones, foundations, crypts, steps and walls than you could possibly remember.

The Roman Forum was interesting enough but I had to keep exploring. I was accosted by two more ruffians asking about my shoes along Via dei Fori Imperiali. Thankfully this street is wide and windswept; it was easier to get away from them than in the narrow confines of the Via Sacra. When I got to Piazza Venezia I saw a building with a sign – “CARABINIERI”. A police station!

I went in, not to report a crime, just that I was curious about what these scam artists are up to. Surely they aren’t pickpockets. I don’t know much about picking people’s pockets, but these people were too loud and too aggressive – wouldn’t pickpockets prefer not to draw attention to themselves? They weren’t trying to sell me anything, they didn’t seem to have any wares with them. So what were they up to?

My extensive travels in over two dozen countries have led me to formulate Urban Reverie’s Theorem of Law Enforcement. It’s a simple rule: “the more corrupt, dysfunctional, authoritarian, ineffective, violent, incompetent or lazy a police force is, the smarter their uniform will be.” It is an ironclad law, totally beyond refutation. Take the Netherlands for instance, probably the most liberal, safest, least corrupt, best governed country on earth. Their police wear these horrible slobby tracksuit jackets with fluorescent stripes on them that make them look like roadworkers. Or how about Sweden? Their police wear these dorky little brimless hats that make them look like McDonald’s employees.

On the other hand, the uniforms of the Carabinieri are very, very, very smart.

I entered the beautiful yet dim police station. It really was a work of art. I walked across the tiled floor to the timber counter with its brass bars. Behind the counter were three Carabinieri officers. They looked splendid in their crisp black uniforms with epaulettes and white sashes and red stripes down the seams of the trousers.

The three officers – two men and one woman, if I remember rightly – were gossiping among themselves languidly. I think “languid” is the right word. If they had had any less energy they would have been comatose and I would have had to call 112 for an ambulance.

After a small eternity one deigned to finally notice my presence. I explained in my very broken Italian – none of them could speak a word of English – that I wasn’t there to report a crime, I just wanted to know what these men hanging around tourist attractions were trying to do.

“Nero?” one of them asked.

“Si. Nero,” I nodded.

Another of them yawned. “Si. Tutti nero.,” he said mid-yawn.

They tried to explain in Italian what they were doing but I couldn’t understand, so one of them turned Marcel Marceau and tried to explain by mime – something to do with watches; he kept stroking his fingers around his wrist with a circle.

So they were watch thieves! That explained it.

“But what are you doing about it? There are criminals out there right now almost within sight of this building trying to rob tourists left, right and centre! So why are each of you just sitting here doing nothing but yawning and gossiping? There is crime to fight out there! So get to work, you lazy bludgers! What the f#$k are the taxpayers of Italy paying you to do?” I wish I had said. But I didn’t. Mainly because my Italian isn’t good enough. The Carabinieri officers seemed to really resent my presence and the fact that I had interrupted their somnolent chatting, so I left.

Vittoriano

Across the Piazza Venezia is a monument of stupendous proportions, the Vittoriano. It looks ancient but it was only completed in 1935 in honour of Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of unified Italy. The Vittoriano is an orgy of ornamentation, a massive faux-Classical wedding cake of columns and quadrigae, a marble pile sitting on top of a hill of immense stairs. It almost hurts to look at the Vittoriano, not because it is necessarily ugly but because of its scale and the elaborate, ostentatious decorations covering every available square inch.

The sun was getting very low in the sky and I hadn’t had lunch yet. I came across a restaurant on either Via del Plebiscito or Corso Vittore Emanuele II. There was an English menu on the wall outside. I knew it wasn’t going to be great but I didn’t care, I was hungry. I think I ordered a lasagna with salad.

It was one of the vilest meals I ever ate, the customer service was blatantly rude and disgusting, my food took forever to arrive, and of course there was a massive hidden service charge added to my bill. I grudgingly paid and as I left, I finally figured it out – when in Italy, never, ever, ever eat at a restaurant that has an English menu. If you ever come across a restaurant in Italy that has any sort of English menu or signage, run and do not look back lest ye turn into a pillar of salt. Even if you can’t read a single word of Italian, don’t even think of going into such a restaurant. Don’t! I regret that it took me until my final day in Italy for me to finally learn this law.

Pantheon

A short distance north is the Pantheon. Visiting the Pantheon was a sure-fire antidote to the bitter taste in my mouth from that so-called “restaurant”. The Pantheon was originally a pre-Christian temple to all the Ancient Roman gods – “pan” being Ancient Greek for “all” and “theos” meaning “god” – but as was their wont, the Roman Catholic Church decided to adapt existing Ancient Roman religion to their faith. Stealing Christmas and Easter and the worship of virgins from the Ancient Roman religion wasn’t enough, they had to take their buildings too.

And what a building. The dome is so vast it is impossible to capture in a single photograph from the inside. In the centre of the dome is an opening to the sky; there is a drain on the floor beneath the opening to remove any rain that might enter the church. The Pantheon is also the final resting place of several members of the former Italian royal family; monarchists have placed wreaths at some of the sarcophagi which are placed at intervals around the edge of the vast circular interior.

I took a leisurely evening stroll through the centre of Rome. There was the Torre Argentina – nothing to do with the South American country; it’s a city square that has a concentration of ancient ruins in a sunken garden surrounded by streets on all sides. There was the Column of Marcus Aurelius with its frieze spiralling up the column. There was Palazzo Chigi, the rather plain residence of the Prime Minister. There was Piazza Navona, a very long square buzzing with life featuring the beautiful Fountain of Moro.

Tiber River at St Peter's Basilica at night

I reached the Tiber river. I did not see it foaming with much blood. Enoch Powell was lying. It’s not the biggest river I have seen nor the most beautiful per se. It does have, however, some amazing views around it. There is the Castel Sant’Angelo, a riverside fortress, and looking downstream an appealing vista presents itself – a long view up the wide boulevard of Via della Conciliazione to the softly illuminated bulk of St Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City. The river is crossed at regular intervals by stone bridges with attractive arches all artistically lit.

It wasn’t far back to my hotel room in Prati so I walked. All the better to avoid having to travel on Rome’s deficient public transport system. I stopped off at a restaurant down the street from my room which specialised in Neapolitan cuisine. Rome, being the national capital, attracts residents from all over Italy to work in the public service or in the many Catholic Church institutions or to study at its universities, so all of Italy’s regional cuisines are amply represented in the Eternal City.

Paccheri with three meat sauce in a Neapolitan restaurant in Rome

The restaurant in the basement of an apartment building was great. It was packed. I didn’t have a reservation but they let me in. A band played some jaunty tarantella, the traditional folk dance music of Naples. I started off with antipasto – flower of pumpkin, mozzarella and anchovy puff – like a samosa, but Italian. The main course was paccheri – smooth tubular pasta about the same diameter as a radiator hose – smothered in a rich three-meat tomato sauce. For dessert I had pastiera Napoletana, a dense tart made of ricotta and dried fruit dusted with icing sugar.

It was certainly a change from the rip-off merchant who dared to sell me a stale microwaved lasagna and limp, rancid salad a few hours earlier. The feast was also a most fitting farewell to Italy. Italy has many problems – corruption, ineffective government, petty crime and dishonesty, regional inequality – but my word, the food, the wine, the beauty, the art, the history and its people’s love of life and laughter must go some way to make up for it, surely.

Bravo, Italia, bravo.

Stolpersteine on Viale Giulio Cesare

Eastern end of Circus Maximus

Arch of Constantine

Arch of Titus on the Via Sacra

Column of Marcus Aurelius

Castel Sant'Angelo

Remains of temple at the Roman Forum

Flower of pumpkin, mozzarella and anchovy puffs

Pasteria Napoletana

The morning of Wednesday, 13 November 2019 was yet another dismal, drizzly morning in Rome. Yet again I wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about leaving my comfortable hotel room. But leave I must for I had an important date.

On Monday afternoon when I visited St Peter’s Basilica I approached a couple of Swiss Guards on sentry duty at one of the many checkpoints controlling access into Vatican City. I asked nicely if they could please spare me a ticket to the weekly audience with the Pope on Wednesday morning and they gladly obliged, giving me a little pink slip of photocopied paper. The Swiss Guards are the defence force of the State of Vatican City. They look decidedly un-martial with their baggy blue, red and yellow uniforms, berets cocked on their head, perfect grooming, smooth complexions, winsome smiles and sweet, polite demeanour. Would that all the world’s militaries were like the Swiss Guards! This planet would be a much more peaceful place.

In typical Urban Reverie fashion I arrived at the audience with Pope Francis a little bit late at about half past nine. The audience was an intimate affair, just me, His Holiness and about ten thousand other people.

On most Wednesday mornings when the Pope is in town, His Holiness will hold an audience in St Peter’s Square with the faithful and the not-so-faithful but merely curious. You need a ticket from the Swiss Guards which is free for anyone who asks. The Pope will make a speech to those assembled, his face shown on big screens for the benefit of those up the back. Portions of the speech will be translated by other priests in various languages; I recall English, German, Portuguese and Spanish being used. Most of the Pope’s speech will be only in Italian and left untranslated.

With the possible exception of Queen Elizabeth II, Pope Francis is now the most famous person I have ever seen with my own eyes. He was a long way away; a mere cream-coloured dot on a podium surrounded by black-robed priests, but I saw him nonetheless. The crowd was silent and respectful; dotted through the multitude were various national flags flown by groups of people who had come all this way just to see His Holiness – Argentina, the Philippines, the Czech Republic. About half of the immense expanse of St Peter’s Square was occupied by the audience.

I must admit I was slightly disappointed. I sort of half-expected that the majesty of the moment would fill me with reverence and awe while I would be struck by a lightning bolt from Pentecostal skies like what happened to St Paul on the road to Damascus and God Himself would say to me in a booming voice, “Urban, my dear child, give up thy sinful ways and follow my path of righteousness!” Instead I spent most of my time wiping the drizzle off my glasses with my handkerchief, trying to decipher Pope Francis’s Italian – the Duolingo course only got me so far – and wondering when the speech would ever end.

The audience did finally come to a close; the Pope led the crowd through the Lord’s Prayer in Latin – the text was helpfully printed on the back of my ticket – and His Holiness blessed the crowd, also in Latin. The audience had the opportunity to meet the Pope afterwards; many had brought along religious items such as Bibles and Rosary beads to be blessed by Pope Francis, but I was getting wet and hungry so I went off to a nearby municipal covered market to marvel at all the amazing fresh produce and have some lunch.

I had booked a ticket to the Vatican Museums for the half past twelve slot. I joined the long queue and was granted entry. The next five hours were a blur. The sheer amount of art, sculpture, architecture, artefacts – it was too much to take in. It was far more overwhelming than the Uffizi in Florence. The Vatican Museums are dizzying; I passed from gallery to gallery, corridor to corridor, courtyard to courtyard and only remember little bits of it, there was far too much for one brain to absorb in just one day.

Note that the correct name is Vatican Museums; plural, not singular – they truly are several museums in one complex. I would advise visitors to set aside an entire day and book a morning slot, half past twelve didn’t leave me enough time before closing.

The range of exhibits covers the entire gamut of human civilisation; from Egyptian mummies to post-modernist paintings, from Ancient Greek statues to Renaissance frescoes. The museums aren’t just galleries of Catholic religious art; they are also ethnographic museums; statuaries; natural history museums; contemporary art galleries. The Vatican Museums are every great museum in the world distilled into one location.

My favourite part of the Vatican Museums was the Gallery of Maps. This is a long, elaborately decorated, barrel-vaulted corridor with enormous painted maps along both sides; each map depicting a different region of the Italian peninsula. This gallery was commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII in 1580. I spent at least half an hour just marvelling at the detail and skill. By the cartographic standards of the sixteenth century these maps are incredibly detailed and accurate. I found all the places on the Italian peninsula that I had visited and travelled through so far.

A little further on I entered the Sistine Chapel. I took a few steps into the hall, extracted my phone from my pocket and took a photo. One second later a security guard came up to me and snarled at me. No photos! Photography forbidden! I apologised profusely but he didn’t seem mollified. I didn’t see any sign prohibiting photography in the Sistine Chapel but apparently it is. He didn’t make me delete the photograph from my phone so I have included this TOP SECRET ULTRA-ILLEGAL CLASSIFIED INFORMATION photo here for your enjoyment.

I found the Sistine Chapel rather unpleasant. It wasn’t that Michelangelo’s art wasn’t fantastic; of course it was. But the chapel was much dimmer than I expected; I had to squint to see some of the ceiling frescoes. Also, the priests running the show were simply horrible. There was a strict rule of silence in there, but of course people would whisper to each other in hushed reverential tones about being surrounded by such amazing art. People would begin to whisper quietly and the priests would bark at everyone at the top of their lungs – NO TALKING! THIS IS A SACRED PLACE! Then silence for a few seconds, a few of the hundreds of people in the Sistine Chapel would begin whispering once more, and thirty seconds later the priests would again bark at us – NO TALKING! DID YOU HEAR ME? NO TALKING! THIS IS A HOLY PLACE! RESPECT THE HOLINESS OF THIS CHAPEL! Honestly, the only people desecrating the holiness were the vicious, snarling priests acting like sadistic prison guards in some dystopian horror movie.

Another interesting thing were fragments of a moon rock. The crew of Apollo 11 brought back rocks from the moon and US President Richard Nixon sent little samples of them preserved in glass to every country in the world including the Vatican City. The last thing I visited was an ethnographic museum showing artefacts from indigenous cultures around the world; my country was represented with a large collection of dot paintings, woomeras, coolamons, boomerangs and Arnhem Land burial poles.

In the evening I went to a restaurant near my hotel. It was recommended in my Lonely Planet travel guide. I tend to avoid restaurants found in travel guides but I was sick of getting ripped off by scam artists posing as restaurateurs and I thought perhaps Lonely Planet would do a better job than I could at picking the genuine Italian places from the con jobs.

I thought correctly. Hostaria Dino e Toni is an old-fashioned trattoria in the neighbourhood of Prati and ought to be the greatest tourist attraction in all of Rome. The Colosseum? The Roman Forum? Pffft. They can’t even hold a candle to the greatness that is Hostaria Dino e Toni.

The place doesn’t look like it ought to be a great restaurant. Hostario Dino e Toni is a cramped little place with unassuming signage. The interior looks like it hasn’t changed much since the 1950s with battered green walls and chequered tablecloths. Yet the food was out of this world.

The two elderly proprietors, the eponymous Dino and Toni, constantly shuttled between the kitchen and the tables. There was no menu; whatever is being cooked on a given evening is what you get. Plate after plate of delicious food was placed on the table by the ever-smiling Dino and Toni. First, there was antipasto – salami, prosciutto, suppli, and spinach and ricotta pastry on a separate plate. This was followed by the first course, primo piatti – two pasta courses, really; rigatoni carbonara and rigatoni all’amatriciana in separate bowls; all washed down with a carafe of delectable house red wine and sparking mineral water. Dino suggested the second course, secondi piatti, various grilled meats and fish, but by this time I was more than full. I obliged by consenting to be served dessert, a nearly overflowing bowl of tiramisu.

Not only was the food divinely inspired but the atmosphere was fantastic. Dino and Tony were so friendly and happy and they made me feel like I was an honoured guest in their home. The courses were not only made with skill but made with love; love of food, love of life, love for their customers. It was rather expensive but I didn’t mind, it was worth every cent and then some.

While at Hostaria Dino e Tony all the bad things I had been thinking about Italy melted away. I had finally found the real Italy. And I learned a lesson: Italy is great. It’s just great in different ways to other countries.

Yes, Italy is disordered, dysfunctional, corrupt, barely belonging to the First World. But what life, what passion, what beauty. Thanks to Dino and Tony I no longer regretted coming here.

Ceiling fresco in the Vatican Museums

Egyptian mummy at the Vatican Museums

Statue of Ancient Greek statesman Pericles at the Vatican Museums

Adoration of the Magi at the Vatican Museums

Map of southern Italy in the Gallery of Maps at the Vatican Museums

Rome in the Gallery of Maps in the Vatican Museums

San Marino in the Gallery of Maps in the Vatican Museums

Moon rock samples at the Vatican Museums

Scale model of the entire country of Vatican City at the Vatican Museums

Payphone with Vatican City coat-of-arms at the Vatican Museums

Spinach and ricotta pastry at Hostaria Dino e Toni

Rigatoni carbonara at Hostaria Dino e Tony

Tiramisu at Hostaria Dino e Toni

I awoke at midday on 11 November 2019, my first full day in Rome. I am not ashamed of this fact. I needed the sleep. It was also raining rather heavily outside. And Rome kind of sucks and the city could wait. Yes, Rome has an impressive list of must-see sights that ought to be on every traveller’s bucket list. But that doesn’t change the fact that Rome still kind of sucks. I needed to recharge in the cosy, elegantly minimalist confines of my room so that I could summon the strength to face whatever crap the city could throw at me.

I eventually shuffled out of the Empire Suites, had breakfast – lunch, really – at a nearby organic eatery that had the most confusing system of ordering one’s food that I have ever seen, and walked the short distance to Vatican City. Even in the driving rain, St Peter’s Square is a wonder to behold. It is massive and makes you feel like an insignificant ant, yet the circular colonnades that almost completely enclose the square give it an intimate air. The obelisk in the centre of the square serves as an anchor, a point of reference that helps to make the lonely individual standing out in the open square feel not quite so lost.

Standing watch over the square is St Peter’s Basilica, the mother church of the entire Roman Catholic Church, the most powerful religious institution the world has ever known. There was a lengthy queue winding around the square in the shelter of the colonnades with thorough security screening before you could enter the church.

And what a church! There is no other building anywhere on Earth that is so expertly designed to inculcate in the visitor a stunned, unavoidable reverence for a Supreme Being. I was so awestruck that I had to restrain myself from begging one of the many priests to baptise me into the Christian church right then and there.

In my daily life in Australia, my attitude to religion oscillates between “apathetic indifference” and “trenchant hostility”. When I think of religion, I typically think of people like Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Reverend Fred Nile, Lyle Shelton, Cardinal George Pell, Margaret Court and other hypocritical, self-serving, sanctimonious Bible-bashers who pervert the words of Jesus Christ – the great man who they claim to worship – and try to impose their twisted, deformed beliefs on the rest of society to justify bashing the poor and unemployed, discriminating against LGBT people, oppressing women, and exalting the wealthy and privileged. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see religion sent to the bottom of the sea. It’s fairly safe to say that religion and I are not close friends.

When I travel, something weird happens. I become not only interested in religion but appreciative of it. I love visiting churches, temples, mosques, and learning about the history of the religions in the countries I visit and what those religions believe. I even occasionally pray in some of the places of worship I see. That’s not like me at all. The last time I prayed while not travelling was on the day Donald Trump was elected – sometimes prayer is all we have.

St Peter’s Basilica was no different. I ambled around the immense space of this chief church of Catholicism for a long time – I lost track of time, it was several hours, I believe. There are so many chapels off to the side, so many paintings, so many grottoes, so many murals, so many tombs of dead Popes, so many altars, so many gilded ceilings, so many inscriptions.

Taking pride of place in the Basilica is the Baldachin, a structure over the Papal altar and the tomb of St Peter that looks a bit like one of those old four-poster beds. This bronze shelter is so elaborately carved with impressive fluted spirals billowing up each of the four posts that it would make a famous tourist attraction in its own right.

Closer towards the entrance to the Basilica is a chapel containing one of the world’s most famous statues, Michelangelo’s Pietà. This harrowing depiction of a mournful Mary embracing the corpse of her son Jesus is pure perfection in brilliant white marble. Even the stigma on Jesus’s right hand looked so realistic that I half-expected it to start bleeding.

While I was looking at all the magnificent art and trying to decipher the many Latin inscriptions a procession entered the Basilica and slowly went up the aisle. There was a priest carrying a large crucifix at the head of the parade but most of the people behind him were laity. I am guessing they were from the Latin America. The look of devotion and of ecstasy beaming from their faces as they chanted a Spanish hymn while their hands were clasped in front of their chests made me wonder if my irreligious life and upbringing isn’t missing something.

I left St Peter’s Basilica shortly after sunset and had a late lunch – or possibly an early dinner – at a nearby restaurant. It was yet another tourist rip-off joint serving microwaved pasta and stale fruit cake with an exorbitant service charge that didn’t appear on the menu added to my final bill. I wish there was an easy way of telling apart these places from the genuine Italian trattorie.

I caught the metro to the Spanish Steps. I don’t get it. They are just steps! Yes, they’re somewhat more ornate than most steps, and they have appeared in a lot of movies – but they are just steps! I climbed the steps anyway and promptly climbed back down them. I can get exactly the same experience just by climbing up and down the steps in my apartment building. The nearby Column of the Immaculate Conception, a pillar topped with a copper statue of the Mary the Queen of Heaven crowned with a ring of stars dedicated in 1854, was far more interesting.

Also far more interesting was another sight not far away, the Trevi Fountain. Now this is something worth seeing. What a wonderful fantasy in stone and water with billowing carvings of rocks, of vines, of horses, of angels. The surging throngs of tourists couldn’t detract from the magic of the Trevi Fountain.

As I walked away from the fountain up a side street, one of the teeming hordes of scam artists, pickpockets and beggars accosted me. He was at least six foot six tall and intimidating as hell itself. He stepped into my path.

“Hey, man! Your shoes! They’re black! Black, just like Africa. Where are you from?”

At the best of times I don’t like strangers on the street trying to strike up conversation with me. Perhaps it’s my British ancestry that makes me so reserved. But considering Italy’s reputation for rampant petty criminality, I was on high alert. I guessed that he was trying to draw attention to my shoes so that he could pick my pockets while my gaze was directed down at the ground. “No thanks, I’m not interested,” I said firmly.

“Why? Why don’t you want to talk to me?” I tried to sidestep around him but he kept blocking me no matter which direction I tried to go.

This pushed my buttons. “FUCK OFF!” I shouted as loud as I could with a decidedly un-British lack of reserve. The street was crowded with tourists and I hoped that drawing attention to him might stop him from proceeding with his nefarious intentions.

It worked. He was visibly shocked. Perhaps not many tourists have given him the expletive-laden ear-bashing he so rightfully deserved. As I walked away there was mock outrage. “What? Fuck you too, man! What did I ever to do you?” he shouted at me with the most unctuous air of fake offence.

God damn it, Italy. A First World country would have at least a half-competent law enforcement system that would effectively deal with these thieves and liars and scammers. Perhaps Italy is not a First World country.

I get the feeling that Italy, along with other similar countries on Europe’s dysfunctional Mediterranean fringe, trades upon its past greatness. Look how great Rome was two thousand years ago! Look how great Florence was five hundred years ago! This is all well and fine. Perhaps it would be finer if Italy tried being great now.

I tried catching a metro to Termini station to explore a bit more of Rome’s public transport system, but the metro station was closed for repairs. Apparently it had been for many months. I found a bus stop with a large crowd of other people waiting in the rain. I waited forever and ever. I looked at the list of bus routes on the bus stop sign, there were at least half a dozen going to Termini. I waited. I kept waiting. After about fifteen minutes a bus finally appeared. It was so full that hardly any of the people at the stop could get on. Stuff this for a joke.

I ended up walking to the next metro station in the heavy rain. I’m glad I did, otherwise I wouldn’t have come across the circular Piazza della Repubblica with its centrepiece fountain and gently arcing colonnades surrounding the roundabout.

From there I caught a jam-packed Line A train to San Giovanni and changed to an even more crowded train on the new Line C that serves the south-eastern suburbs. I got off the driverless train at Mirti in the suburb of Centocelle. I emerged from the underground station into a pleasant working-to-middle-class neighbourhood of peach-painted apartment buildings and buzzing squares. The rain had cleared, families and friends were ambling through the neighbourhood in large groups chatting loudly and amicably – the famous passeggiata, the evening stroll that is such an integral part of Italian urban life.

I stopped at a gelateria and bought the yummiest gelato ever, two massive scoops and a cone for only two euros. It would cost me about three times as much in Sydney. People on the street greeted me with a smile. I stopped at a real estate agent and looked at the window. One-bedroom apartments in Centocelle were selling for €120,000; two-bedders for €180,000 – about one-third of the price of apartments in my part of Sydney. I found a cosy little tavern and had an entirely creditable beer and pizza, not microwaved trash, for a very cheap price and served by friendly staff. I couldn’t believe I was still in the same city as the scoundrel who assaulted me the night before with his baby’s stroller, the restaurateur who charged me a small fortune for microwaved fettucine carbonara or the pickpocket who wouldn’t get out of my way. Perhaps the bad things I was thinking of Italy were unfounded to an extent.

It was getting quite late and it was time to get back to my hotel. There was another railway line nearby – the Giardinetti Line. Rome has three railway lines called “local railways”, they are isolated lines that connect outer suburbs to various points on the metro network. The Giardinetti Line feeds into Termini station from the south-eastern suburbs and is operated by ancient little yellow and white trains – more like trams, actually – on narrow 950-millimetre gauge track. My train back to Termini was noisy, draughty, a little bit sketchy but great fun. Who needs transport museums when you have Rome’s decrepit public transport system?

St Peter's Square

Nave of St Peter's Basilica

The Chair of St Peter

Dome of St Peter's Basilica

Michelangelo's Pietà

St Peter's Baldachin

Tomb of Pope John Paul II in St Peter's Basilica

The Spanish Steps

Column of the Immaculate Conception

Trevi Fountain

Piazza della Repubblica

Gelato in Centocelle

Giardinetti Line train at Centocelle station

On board the Giardinetti Line train

My train to Rome was not due to leave Firenze Santa Maria Novella station until 12:17 on Saturday the tenth of November 2019 so I had plenty of time to squeeze in some more Florence sights before I left.

Or so I thought.

I was silly, I thought seeing things would be as simple as rocking up to the venue in question, waiting a short while in a queue, buying a ticket and going in. Hardy har har. Combine the dysfunctional organisational skills of Italians with the insane numbers of tourists that would put even the famous efficiency of the Swiss or the Japanese under unbearable strain and you have the recipe for hordes of disappointed visitors who should have been smarter and bought their tickets online.

First, I tried the Palazzo Vecchio, the fourteenth-century castle-like building that was the administrative centre of the Republic of Florence. Apart from the magnificent apartments of the Medici clan, the chapels and the banquet halls, the Palazzo also has a reputed art gallery. I eagerly joined the long queue. After several minutes I realised the queue was not moving. I thought that perhaps the Palazzo was not yet open, but I peered over the shoulders of people in front of me and the ticket counters were indeed open, it’s just that the staff were so slow and inefficient that the queue never moved.

I decided to give the Palazzo Vecchio the flick and head to a nearby church, the Orsanmichele Church. The front door of this significant fourteenth-century place of worship was open. Yay! So I went in, but couldn’t go any further than a couple of metres because the church was closed for renovations. Bugger. At least I got a few glimpses of the stained glass windows and the back of the splendidly Gothic tabernacle.

After having no luck getting into the Duomo the day before, I thought I might have a better shot today. But of course, it was Sunday! And the Duomo is a cathedral. Which means it is a church. Which means that people use that church for worship. The Duomo was closed to the public all day for what appeared to be a never-ending succession of Masses, as were the Basilicas of San Lorenzo and Santa Maria Novella.

There was one sight I managed to experience before catching my train – the Mercato Centrale (Central Market). This is a two-storey affair, not especially historic (I am guessing it was built in the late nineteenth century) but attractive enough. The bottom floor is Florence’s wholesale produce market. Being a Sunday this section was closed but it was just the same grotty collection of forklifts, pallets, carboard boxes and the overpowering stench of rotten cabbage that you find in wholesale produce markets all over the world. Upstairs was open though, and what a great place it was! There were rows of fancy food shops – delicatessens, butchers, gelaterias, wine bars, cheese shops – underneath an impressive glass canopy.

The Mercato Centrale was a foodie’s paradise and I regretted that I had already eaten a distinctly crappy breakfast at yet another rip-off restaurant. I had enough space in my stomach for a cannolo though. Cannoli are reasonably common at cake shops in Australia, a doner kebab-like roll of pastry with a sweet cream filling, but the cannoli I have had back home cannot compare to the one I had at the Mercato Centrale. The dusting of crushed pistachios made what was already a superior cannolo simply divine.

Time was fleeing so I went back to Tina’s apartment, fetched my backpack from my room, exchanged heart-felt farewells with Tina, and hauled my pack the short distance to Firenze Santa Maria Novella station.

I didn’t have to wait too long until my train appeared. There are two companies that run high-speed rail services in Italy – the government-owned Trenitalia with its Frecce services, and the privately-owned Italo. My Italo train, a sleek, stylish thing the colour of Sangiovese wine, glided silently into the platform, came to a stop, and I waited while a scrum of people trying to get on were pushing against plenty of other people were trying to get off. God damn it, Italy!

I finally settled into my seat in the Prima ambience. Italo trains don’t have classes like normal trains, but ambiences. The marketing guff is that no ambience is better than one another, they are just different, and passengers get to choose which ambience suits them the best. It just so happens that some ambiences are more expensive and have more room than other ambiences – in descending price order, Club, Prima, Comfort and Smart. It’s a load of advertising industry bullshit if you ask me.

Despite the cringeworthy wankery of Italo’s “ambiences”, it was an awesome train. The service was great, the carriage was antiseptically clean, the seat was comfortable, the Wi-Fi, USB ports and power points were greatly appreciated. An attendant came around with a trolley and served a free and entirely creditable cup of espresso coffee with an apricot pastry as I watched the scruffy Tuscan countryside speed past at 250 kilometres per hour.

The Italo train arrived at Roma Termini on time at 13:50, only ninety-three minutes after leaving Florence. Roma Termini is not the most pleasant station I have ever seen, but it is enormous and rather dizzying. In terms of size, its bland glassy modernist architecture and the kinds of retail and fast food outlets that clog all the corridors, it reminds me more of an international airport than a railway station. It took me forever to find the Rome Metro platforms.

I finally found my Line A platforms – the signage in Roma Termini was nothing short of appalling – I bought a weekly Rome public transport ticket and I boarded my dirty, crowded metro train for my six-station trip to Ottaviano. I know it was very early in my stay in Rome but I disliked the city already. There was a harshness of manner among the people I encountered at Roma Termini and on the metro that I found a little disquieting. It seemed as if many people had a chip on their shoulder, a hardness in their eyes, like they were just waiting for the opportunity for someone to look at them the wrong way so they could punch them. The clashing scrums of people trying to get on and off the train at the same time at the various stations seemed like further evidence that Rome wasn’t going to be a nice city.

I basically had to fight my way off the train at Ottaviano. I emerged from the grim, dim, brown metro station onto the street above. This neighbourhood wasn’t too bad. Prati is an affluent suburb of neat late nineteenth-century apartment buildings on broad tree-lined avenues; this neighbourhood was built to house all the public servants who moved to Rome when it became the capital of the unified Kingdom of Italy after the Risorgimento. Prati seemed in a way more Parisian than Roman.

I found my hotel – a large apartment divided into about five hotel rooms, really – called the Empire Suites. The elderly owner greeted me like a long-lost friend. Perhaps I was wrong in my first impression of Rome.

“My-a son, he-a leeve in Ow-strah-lia,” he said.

This happens a lot in Italy. Every man and his dog has a close relative who lives in Ow-strah-lia. “Wow, that’s nice.”

“He-a leeve in Seedanee. Where in Ow-strah-lia you leeve?”

“I’m from Sydney too.”

“My-a son, he-a leeve in Manly. You-a know heem?”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that Sydney has over five million people, a population greater than even Rome’s, and that unfortunately I had yet to make acquaintance with each and every Sydneysider. “No, sorry, I don’t know him. Manly is very nice though. It’s expensive. It has a very nice beach. Lots of pine trees along the beach.”

He seemed pleased that his son had made enough of a success of himself to live in such an agreeable and wealthy suburb.

After checking in and dumping my backpack in my room I went for a walk. It was fairly late in the afternoon on a Sunday, I wouldn’t be able to explore any museum or major sight. I decided to indulge in my love of geography instead.

The Empire Suites was a fifteen-minute walk from the State of Vatican City, the world’s smallest country. There aren’t many countries where you can walk around the entire country in a leisurely ninety-minute stroll. I had yet to walk around any country. I was determined to change this.

I started at the north-eastern corner of Vatican City and walked clockwise around the country. The country is only forty-nine hectares, about twice the size of Australia’s largest shopping centre. The border is quite easy to follow, the vast majority of it consists of a very high brick wall enclosing the church property within – the Apostolic Palace, St Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican Gardens, the Pope’s personal railway station and heliport.

Many people think the State of Vatican City is ancient, as old as the Roman Catholic Church itself. In reality it is a twentieth-century invention. For over a millennium the Pope was not only the spiritual head of the Catholic Church but also the ruler of the Papal States which covered most of central Italy. When Garibaldi and his troops invaded the Papal States in 1870 and reunified Italy in the Risorgimento the Pope refused to recognise the new Italian kingdom. A succession of Popes for six decades refused to leave the church’s headquarters on the Vatican Hill – they described themselves as “prisoners of the Vatican”.

In 1929 the Pope and Italy’s dictator Benito Mussolini came to an agreement, the Lateran Treaty. In return for the Pope recognising Italian sovereignty, the Catholic Church would have its own sovereign state, the State of Vatican City, which would likewise be recognised by Italy. This sovereign state, as miniscule as it is, would at least allow the Holy See to conduct diplomatic relations with other countries and provide a secular base from which to manage the entire Catholic Church worldwide, just as the old Papal States did. It is no coincidence that Vatican City has the same flag as the erstwhile Papal States.

After one and a half hours and four kilometres I completed my circumnavigation of Vatican City. Hooray! How many countries have you walked around the entire circumference? I’ve walked around a whole country and you haven’t. So nur nurny nur nur.

The sun was setting and I decided to explore some of Rome’s public transport system. It’s not very good. To be honest, most Australian cities have better public transport than Rome, which is a rather unusual thing to say about a European city. Only a small part of the Rome metropolitan area is covered by the three-line metro system, the trams are dirty and ancient and also only cover a very small part of the urban area, the buses are infrequent and difficult to navigate, signage is abysmal and transport services are often so crowded you can’t get on board.

I caught a route 19 tram from Piazza del Risorgimento to the Policlinico hospital on Rome’s eastern side. Route 19 travels in a long arc from just outside Vatican City in the west through Rome’s northern suburbs and then out to the east. The tram was battered, filthy, ugly, slow, rattly, draughty and uncomfortable.

After what seemed an eternity I alighted at the tram stop at Policlinico. The tram stop was a narrow platform squeezed between the tram tracks and the traffic lanes of a busy arterial road. A pedestrian crossing was at the far end of the tram platform. The tram I was on was occupying the track. In front of me was a wizened, hunched old woman – perhaps deaf, perhaps demented, perhaps both – standing in the centre of the platform. I kept asking politely if she could move so I could get past her. “Scusi? Spiacente? Umm ... hello? Buona sera? Could you move over a bit, please, so I can get past? Umm … ciao? Scusi? Hello? Can you hear me? Per favore? Hello?” No matter what I said, the old woman wouldn’t budge.

I soon felt a series of very sharp jabs in my calves. I turned around to see a young father pushing a stroller with his baby in it against my legs with his wife just behind him. “Scusi!” he snarled.

I snapped. Like most people, I don’t take too kindly to being physically assaulted. “What? Are you f#$%ing blind, you dumb c#$t? Can’t you f&*%ing see that there is this old bitch in front of us who won’t f@#%ing damn well move? For f*$!ing f*#&’s sake!” It’s very hard to be angry in a language you don’t know well so I reverted to English.

“No! No! No!” he shouted at me, assaulting me even harder with his baby’s stroller. He looked like he was about to smash my face in. Thankfully a small gap in the traffic suddenly appeared and I was able to jump off the platform onto the street and run across to the footpath.

Stuff Rome and stuff Italy.

I took the metro four stations on Line B from Policlinico to Colosseo. The Colosseum wasn’t open being well after sunset but it was pleasantly lit in a soft golden hue. I reflected upon the absurdity of how the Ancient Romans built a stadium and it is still standing two thousand years later while the government of my state of New South Wales is wasting $2.3 billion on knocking down two perfectly good stadiums built twenty and thirty years ago and building new ones to replace them. I would have to return in the daytime when it was open.

I then caught a bus back to Prati. Without an Italian SIM card (thanks a bloody lot, the Gorizia TIM shop), it was hard to find public transport information. The bus stop signs just showed a list of routes with no maps or timetables. After stumbling around the neighbourhood for ages I finally found the stop for the bus route I wanted. I then waited forever for the bus. In most European cities the buses, trams and trains are so frequent that you don’t need timetables, the vehicles just seem to magically appear as if your mere presence at the stop is enough to conjure it from thin air. Rome is not your typical European city. I was grateful when my bus finally appeared so I could grab dinner and retreat to my hotel room. I had the feeling that I would need to recuperate in order to strengthen myself for whatever Rome might throw at me over the next few days.

Orsanmichele Church in Florence

Mercato Centrale in Florence

Cannolo at the Mercato Centrale in Florence

On board the Prima carriage on the Italo train from Florence to Rome

High-speed Italo train at Roma Termini station

Antique 1940s tram in Rome

Pontifical Swiss Guards on sentry duty at the Vatican City border

Most of the border of the Vatican City is a very high, sloping brick wall

Tram at Piazza del Risorgimento in Rome

Train on Line B of the Rome Metro

The Colosseum at night