Roma

Rome is the most beautiful city in the world, but to avoid sounding arrogant and presumptuous, I must limit myself to saying it’s probably one of the most beautiful cities in the world. I need to reconsider its top spot on the podium because – I admit – living in Rome isn’t always easy. First of all, because we Romans don’t walk the streets of the city center every day with the luxury of letting our gaze wander over the horizon, bursting with a thousand colors and a thousand eras and epochs that unfold before us. No. We live crumpled inside furious cars, stuck in city traffic jams that make you beg the Universe to let you live in the Sahara Desert, alone. So, we’re not always ecstatic about Rome.

However, I carry Rome in my heart, and I probably love it most when I’m far away. The thing is, images of Rome are everywhere. Once, I was in Bariloche, Argentina, and in a small, remote hotel in the south of South America, there were prints depicting the Appian Way. As it happens, I was born right near there, and the Appian Way, which today is traversed by hundreds of thousands of tourists, at that time felt like our special gift, a place trodden by only a few people, including the great Valentino who lived there, or Franco Zeffirelli, or Gina Lollobrigida. Unique places chosen by unique personalities. Not me, I was just anyone, but I still lived nearby. From my home’s balcony, one could see, in the distance and very tiny (but luckily, at the time, my eyesight was still good), the dome of St. Peter’s. If I climbed the olive-tree-filled hill that secretly ran alongside the Appian Way, I could see the Basilica of St. John and the Castelli Romani. I  had expanses of historical eras before my eyes, traditions, olive trees, flowers, palaces, cobblestones, and everything that makes Italy and Rome unique spread out before me, and I didn’t know how lucky I was because I was born there. I used to go for track and field practice at the stadium beneath the Baths of Caracalla, passing by the Tomb of Cecilia Metella and the Catacombs of San Sebastiano. Every day, always. Everything was normal to me.To live Rome with acceptance, you either have to be born there, or you either love it or you hate it.

Seeing the print of my childhood places in such a remote spot as Bariloche made my heart ache, and I wondered: why did I leave Rome if, in reality, everyone wants to live there? Good question. Because, in truth, in my heart, I always dream of being somewhere else, anyway. Who knows, perhaps precisely to experience the nostalgia for Rome, to feel its presence in my soul more than in my memory, because despite making me angry and curse, it is an unforgettable city.

I had to leave and live in distant lands for many years to truly understand how beautiful Rome was. But the beauty of Rome isn’t just its monuments and parks, its baroque palaces and a thousand churches. The beauty of Rome is within its people, the Romans. In their coffee, in their way of walking, it’s in the taste of what you eat, that something you can never explain because: how do you explain a taste? Rome is the gelato, the real one, the one tourists have never tasted because they’re caught up in other things. Rome is truly eternal, because you really can’t get it out of your head. These are the cultures I want to experience when I move to another country, and I fell in love with many other cities and countries, knowing though that everyone carries their own roots inside, but the beauty of the world is to live its soul.