By
Susan Spano from Rome
Los Angeles
Times Staff Writer
May 30, 2008
Last fall, I
asked myself where I really wanted to be.
I had just
returned to L.A. after four months in China and, before that, three years in Paris. I was living
temporarily in a furnished studio apartment near the beach in Santa Monica. Road-weary, feeling like
flotsam, with most of my belongings scattered in storage units around the
world, I was finally ready to settle down. I knew without deliberating where I
should be. ............ Rome.
So here I am
in an apartment overlooking the Roman Forum, next to an early Christian-era
church. I awake every morning to the sound of pigeons scratching against the
skylight over my bed. I make espresso on the stove and try to concentrate on
what needs to be done.
But I cannot
go out to buy a newspaper without getting waylaid, and it's worst on Sunday mornings, when the doors
of every church in Rome
stand open. On a recent Sunday on the way to the Santa Susanna lending library
near the Piazza Repubblica, I peeked into
elliptically shaped San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (affectionately known as San Carlino),
a Baroque jewel more like a pincushion than a church. When I emerged, I heard
bagpipers playing in the courtyard across the street at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church of Scotland.
I am overcome
by the warmth of the Romans. It took me months to defrost the shopkeepers in
the Paris
neighborhood where I lived, but here, the wedding photographer who has a
storefront office next to my front door accepted two suitcases delivered to me
when I wasn't home. Here, the owner
of the hardware store down the block -- which has one of everything
in a space the size of a bathroom -- embraces me when I pass by, and his breath
doesn't even smell of wine.
It would
take volumes to say what I love about this city, beginning with the
old-fashioned Nancy Drew keys to my apartment, the big windows in the living
room overlooking my neighbor's
terrace and the clothesline on the roof where sheets dry in no time under the
hot Roman sun.
I love the
lost little Piazza Madonna dei Monti,
where a recent weekend festival meant free red wine from jugs and cooked broad
beans that people cracked open while sitting around the fountain, listening to
a uniformed band play movie theme songs.
I love to
drink cafi macchiato -- espresso with a
touch of foamed milk -- at the Antico Caffi del Brasile
on the Via dei Serpenti. I
love the 117 mini-bus, which winds through the neighborhood between the Forum
and the church of
Santa Maria Maggiore,
crosses Via Nazionale, takes the tunnel under the Quirinale
Hill and then arrives at the Spanish Steps, which was decked with purple
azaleas this spring.
I love the
slightly rancid taste of fresh pecorino cheese, the local bag lady with her
hair in curlers, and, of course, I adore the Roman Forum just outside my door.
But I'm of two minds about the $16.50 admission fee
instituted in March, which was intended to cut down on pick-pocketing and
underwrite further excavation. With entrances now monitored, the erstwhile
center of the Roman World is no longer like a public park. You can't stop in to eat a panino
or sit and think on a block of travertine.
One recent
morning, I was the first person to enter the Forum from the Via dei Fori Imperiali
and had the place to myself. The sun cast oblique shadows on old stone, red
poppies preened among fallen Corinthian capitals and sea gulls wheeled. I
walked up the Via Sacra, paused to inspect an inner bas relief on the Arch of
Titus, then climbed the Palatine Hill.
My goal was
the House of Augustus, a modest residence purchased by Julius Caesar's grand-nephew Octavian, who ruled the empire as
Augustus Caesar from 27 BC to AD 14. After years of restoration, four
exquisitely frescoed rooms opened for viewing there this spring. Owing to the
fragility of the wall paintings, just five people are allowed inside at a time,
and Augustus' second floor study can
be viewed only through Plexiglas.
Its frescoes
are the most complete, featuring bright vermilion decorative borders like a
page from an ancient interior design catalog and shapes that coalesce into dim
figures the longer you look at them.
Down at the Colosseum, costumed gladiators were getting off motor
scooters for another day of posing for pictures with tourists. The lines were
already long by 9 a.m. I went in with a tour led by a guide who claimed to have
watched the movie "Gladiator" 19 times, but I peeled off from the
group to check out Time Machine, a new way of touring the Colosseum.
It uses hand-held video monitors that show digitalized images of what the place
looked like when the Romans were watching those blood-filled games. I've found numerous changes since my last sightseeing
trip to Rome
some years ago. In any other city, new developments are welcomed. But people
who care about history and art don't
want anything to change in Rome.
Fortunately, some of the changes make it an even more crucial place to see.
Last year
brought the opening of the Imperial
Forums Museum,
a stunning restoration of Trajan's
Markets just east of the Via dei Fori
Imperiali. An electric tram now connects the historic
center with the movie, restaurant and night-life hub of Trastevere
across the Tiber River. And the divine little Basilica of
Santa Pudenziana, with its apse mosaic dating from
the 4th century, is now a thriving Catholic worship center for Rome's
Filipino community.
Museum
exhibits this spring seem more compelling than ever. They include "The
19th Century: From Canova to the Fourth Estate" at the Scuderie
del Quirinale and "Il 40
a Roma" at the Museo del Corso,
on the life and arts of the city in the 15th century.
I've often wondered why travelers respond to certain
places and not to others.
Rome has filled me with
passion and joy from the outset, but Paris
was a city I had to learn to love. Perhaps it's
a matter of psychology and genetics. I'm
Italian American, after all. And maybe I will become disenchanted the longer I
live in chaotic, illogical Italy...
There are
practical problems too. I am going broke living here, given the weakness of the
dollar. Rome is
a nesting ground for mosquitoes, and my windows lack screens. I'm still waiting, though two months have passed, for
a high-speed Internet hookup and a telephone in my apartment, though my cellphone works if I stand on the tiny piazza outside my
front door.
Anyway, it's nice out there. I can see the ruins of Augustus
Caesar's Forum while I try to make
calls.
I wonder if
I'll ever get to know Rome. Probably not,
because every time an archaeologist digs a hole in the Forum, something new is
unearthed. That's the kind of
development I like.
I'm glad I lived in Paris and will always have it. But I'm happier in sun-struck Rome. It's
all right with me if I never get to the bottom of it. For now, at long
last, it feels like home.
susan.spano@latimes.com