[325] Rome: Stories & Traditions, 23 Aug 2010

The history of Rome, according to British Journalist H.V. Morton, is both “exhilarating and oppressive for the traveler.” What ways have you found Rome exhilarating and oppressive?


I find that the most exhilarating, and equally most oppressive, part of Rome is its “fatal charm.” Authors have spent chapters trying to define this charm, and we spent a class dissecting the idea. Barzini explains the opposing forces that draw people to Rome in his book, The Italians. He writes that Rome is visitd for its spiritual, as well as its pagan significance, and that tourists flock to see ruins of the past, along with the opera stars of the future. This essential contradiction does not limit Rome, but, is its fatal charm. Man connects to Rome because this city is a manifestation of himself: opposition brought together in one space.


Rome is the site of the history of man. It seems as if there is nowhere to turn that hasn’t been conquered by guided tours of the city, or made it onto a list of “top-ten things” to see, eat, or do. After being awed by a building Mussolini built, my friends and I turn the corner and ran into Trajan’s Column. From the vantage point of this column, we could see street vendors, gelaterias, and your run-of-the-mill Colosseum. It seems as if there are no breaks for the senses. Although the proximity to the world’s history is exhilarating, the constant bombardment of dates, characters and significance is oppressive.


Take the Via Appia Antica. This road is paved with history: composed of black stones that have seen twenty-three-hundred years of traffic, and stories of ancient cultures that crop up from the funerary relics on the side of the road. I viewed all this history behind the handlebars of a rented bike. The experience of biking the Via Appia Antica portrays how quickly exhilaration becomes oppression, even on the basic physical level.

The group set out on the Via Appia Antica, stopping at various points of interest on the way. After discussing the Tomb of Cecilia Metella and the church of San Nicola, we raced down a long hill to the Basilica of St. Sebastian. The wind whipping past my face and the constant jostling, provoked by uneven stones, transported me to bliss. I felt in control and strangely independent in a group of seventeen. It wasn’t the sights that inspired my relentless smile, (in fact, I stared directly at those uneven black stones in front of me) but the feeling of motion – propelled not by time or machine, but by my own two feet.

This breathtaking feeling turned to breathless agony as the group headed back up the hill we glided down minutes before. Still focused on the path, and the new sensation of my burning quads, I felt the sting of being charmed. Everything in Rome is built on a hill. To reach the sites and taste the food that awes many a visitor to this country, one must first face the physical pain of planting their own two feet on the ground and stepping forward.


I bring my own internal opposition to this city that charms me with its contradictions. While I was biking, I was thinking about how to properly share that experience with my friends and family at home. See, I am not just here to explore Italy and myself, but to report back to the States, letting others live through me. I constantly feel the pull of experiencing Rome for me, and experiencing Rome for others. As I contemplate my ambivalence, I am also trying to figure out how each site I am seeing fits into history, and more importantly, how it fits in with me. But maybe, I am just thinking too much, because “simply letting yourself live is beautiful in Italy.” (Heine, cited by Barzini, 55)


Simplicity - that is what’s so charming about Rome. It’s not the opposition that charms us, it is the permeating sense of wholeness in spite of opposition. Ginzberg understands, “Our feelings for cities, like our feelings for people, are always rather confused […] we don’t love cities for reasons that can be enumerated [...] we love them for no reason at all.” (Smiles of Rome, 273) It’s nothing, and yet it’s everything about Rome that challenges me and inspires me.