In Rome, Nero fiddled, Mark Antony praised Caesar, and Charlemagne was crowned. Today, you can walk in their footsteps past the masterpieces of Michelangelo, sip your caffè in the shadow of Mussolini, and dodge Vespas speeding by Baroque palazzi and Egyptian obelisks. The ages of history live on in this, the Eternal City.
However you arrive in Rome, you can tell by the traffic that you are entering a grand nexus: all roads lead to Rome. As you enter the city proper, edifices, icons, and images to match your expectations take shape: a bridge with heroic statues along its parapets; a towering cake of ornate marble decorated with allegorical figures in extravagant poses; a piazza and an obelisk under an umbrella of pine trees; a massive stone arena, even bigger than you imagined, that you realize with awe is the fabled Colosseum.
More than Florence, more than Venice, Rome is Italy's treasure trove, packed with masterpieces from more than two millennia of artistic achievement - for this is where Republican Rome once bustled around the buildings of the Roman Forum, centuries later Michelangelo Buonarroti painted the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel, and in modern times, Federico Fellini filmed La Dolce Vita and 8½ at Cinecittà Studios.
Rome's 2,700 years of history are laid open with every step. Ancient Rome rubs shoulders with the medieval, the modern runs into the Renaissance, and the result is like nothing so much as an open-air museum, a city that glories in its glories and is a monument to itself. Ancient Romans, Vandals, Popes and the Borgias, Michelangelo and Bernini, Napoléon, and Mussolini all left their physical, cultural, and spiritual marks on the city.
Today, Rome's formidable legacy is upheld by its people. Students walk dogs in the park that was once the mausoleum of the family of the Emperor Augustus; Raphaelesque madonnas line up for buses on busy corners; a priest in flowing robes walks through a medieval piazza talking on a cell phone. Modern Rome has one foot in the past, one in the present - a delightful stance that allows you to have an espresso in a square designed by Bernini, then take the Metro back to your hotel room in a renovated Renaissance palace.
"When you first come here you assume that you must burrow about in ruins and prowl in museums to get back to the days of Numa Pompilius or Mark Antony," Maud Howe observes in her book Roma Beata. "It is not necessary; you only have to live, and the common happenings of daily life - yes, even the trolley car and your bicycle - carry you back in turn to the Dark Ages, to the early Christians, even to prehistoric Rome."
However you arrive in Rome, you can tell by the traffic that you are entering a grand nexus: all roads lead to Rome. As you enter the city proper, edifices, icons, and images to match your expectations take shape: a bridge with heroic statues along its parapets; a towering cake of ornate marble decorated with allegorical figures in extravagant poses; a piazza and an obelisk under an umbrella of pine trees; a massive stone arena, even bigger than you imagined, that you realize with awe is the fabled Colosseum.
More than Florence, more than Venice, Rome is Italy's treasure trove, packed with masterpieces from more than two millennia of artistic achievement - for this is where Republican Rome once bustled around the buildings of the Roman Forum, centuries later Michelangelo Buonarroti painted the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel, and in modern times, Federico Fellini filmed La Dolce Vita and 8½ at Cinecittà Studios.
Rome's 2,700 years of history are laid open with every step. Ancient Rome rubs shoulders with the medieval, the modern runs into the Renaissance, and the result is like nothing so much as an open-air museum, a city that glories in its glories and is a monument to itself. Ancient Romans, Vandals, Popes and the Borgias, Michelangelo and Bernini, Napoléon, and Mussolini all left their physical, cultural, and spiritual marks on the city.
Today, Rome's formidable legacy is upheld by its people. Students walk dogs in the park that was once the mausoleum of the family of the Emperor Augustus; Raphaelesque madonnas line up for buses on busy corners; a priest in flowing robes walks through a medieval piazza talking on a cell phone. Modern Rome has one foot in the past, one in the present - a delightful stance that allows you to have an espresso in a square designed by Bernini, then take the Metro back to your hotel room in a renovated Renaissance palace.
"When you first come here you assume that you must burrow about in ruins and prowl in museums to get back to the days of Numa Pompilius or Mark Antony," Maud Howe observes in her book Roma Beata. "It is not necessary; you only have to live, and the common happenings of daily life - yes, even the trolley car and your bicycle - carry you back in turn to the Dark Ages, to the early Christians, even to prehistoric Rome."