Of all Italy's historic cities, it's perhaps Rome which
exerts the most compelling fascination. There's more to see here
than in any other city in the world, with the relics of over two
thousand years of inhabitation packed into its sprawling urban
area. You could spend a month here and still only scratch the
surface. As a historic place, it is special enough; as a
contemporary European capital, it is utterly unique.
For the traveller, all of this is much less evident than the
sheer weight of history that the city supports. There are of
course the city's classical features, most visibly the Colosseum,
and the Forum and Palatine Hill; but from here there's an almost
uninterrupted sequence of monuments - from early Christian
basilicas, Romanesque churches, Renaissance palaces, right up to
the fountains and churches of the Baroque period, which perhaps
more than any other era has determined the look of the city today.
There is the modern epoch too, from the ponderous Neoclassical
architecture of the post-Unification period to the self-publicizing
edifices of the Mussolini years. All these various eras crowd in on
one other to an almost overwhelming degree: there are medieval
churches atop ancient basilicas above Roman palaces; houses and
apartment blocks incorporate fragments of eroded Roman columns,
carvings and inscriptions; roads and piazzas follow the lines of
ancient amphitheatres and stadiums.
All of which is not to say that Rome is an easy place to absorb
on one visit; you need to approach things slowly, even if you only
have a few days here. You can't see everything on your first visit
to Rome, and there's no point in even trying. Most of the city's
sights can be approached from a variety of directions, and it's
part of the city's allure to stumble across things by accident,
gradually piecing together the whole, rather than marching around
to a timetable on a predetermined route. In any case, it's hard to
get anywhere very fast. Despite regular pledges to ban motor
vehicles from the city centre, the congestion can be awful. On
foot, it's easy to lose a sense of direction winding about in the
twisting old streets. In any case, you're so likely to come upon
something interesting it hardly makes any difference.
Rome doesn't have the nightlife of, say, Paris or
London, or even of its Italian counterparts to the north -
culturally it's rather provincial - and its food , while
delicious, is earthy rather than haute cuisine. But its atmosphere
is like no other city - a monumental, busy capital and yet an
appealingly relaxed place, with a centre that has yet to be taken
over by chainstores and big multinational hotels. Above all, there
has perhaps never been a better time to visit the city, whose
notoriously crumbling infrastructure is looking and functioning
better than it has done for some time - the result of the feverish
activity that took place in the last months of 1999 to have the
city centre looking its best for the Church's jubilee. On the
surface the city still looks much as it has done for years. But
there are museums, churches and other buildings that have been "in
restoration" as long as anyone can remember that have reopened, and
some of the city's historic collections have been rehoused, making
it all the more easy to get the most out of Rome.