Rome, Even When It Rains

I just finished a devastating novel called Last Summer in the City. It was published in 1973, the first novel by a screenwriter named Gianfranco Calligarich, and it is the Catcher in the Rye-style tale of Leo Gazzara, a journalist adrift in Rome on the eve of his 30th birthday. When I started reading it, we had just arrived in Arezzo, Tuscany after three whirlwind days in Rome, and Calligarich’s descriptions, animated by my experience, leapt out from the page. Though this was my fifth visit to Rome, my time there is usually brief. But even I’m aware of the city’s reputation as a knotty, frantic place: plagued by loud traffic, besieged by the worst kind of tourists, famously garbage-strewn. Last Summer in the City‘s protagonist, a Rome transplant from the north, seems to feel Rome as both a cresting wave and a whirlpool: capable of lifting you to euphoric heights or sucking you down, drowning you. 

He writes, “Rome by her very nature has a particular intoxication that wipes out memory. She’s not so much a city as a wild beast hidden in some secret part of you. There can be no half measures with her, either she’s the love of your life or you have to leave her, because that’s what the tender beast demands, to be loved” (9).

He continues to explain that if you love Rome, it opens itself up to you: 

“You’ll have summer evenings glittering with lights, vibrant spring mornings, café tablecloths ruffled by the wind like girls’ skirts, keen winters, and endless autumns, when she’ll seem vulnerable, sick, weary, swollen with shredded leaves that are silent underfoot. You’ll have dazzling white steps, noisy fountains, ruined temples, and the nocturnal silence of the dispossessed, until time loses all meaning, apart from the banal aim of keeping the clock hands turning. In this way you too, waiting day after day, will become part of her. You too will nourish the city.” (9-10).

This rumination concludes on a slightly less hopeful note: “Until one sunny day, sniffing the wind from the sea and looking up at the sky, you’ll realize there’s nothing left to wait for” (10).

Calligarich’s story is one of deep alienation and sadness, though the point of the novel is not that our protagonist is destroyed by Rome — instead, Leo sees in the city’s own vices and volatility a reflection of his own. His inclination is to get away, but he ultimately realizes that no city is more suitable as the backdrop to his self-destruction.

Once I finished this haunting novel, I couldn’t help but think a bit more deeply about the Rome I had just experienced. Does Rome really encourage the darkness and despair that Leo thinks it does? Is it the type of city one must fall in love with or leave? Are all the world’s major tourist destinations this enrapturing and also cruel? Similar things have been said, after all, about New York and Paris (just for two examples). When in Rome this summer, even before my thinking was infected by Calligarich’s bitter prose, I had been trying to wrap my mind around the average Roman tourist’s intentions and impressions. Why visitors flock to this city is obviously, but what do they hope to find, to feel, once they get there?

Faces of Rome

I’ve been every kind of tourist in Rome, and it seems to show a different face each time I visit. I’ve rolled in as a clueless undergraduate backpacker in 2004, thrilled by the ease of wandering through the Forum (no ticket required in those days) and dutifully visiting the Colosseum and Vatican. In 2011, my longest stay yet, I enjoyed a quasi-insider’s view from a friend’s apartment up a hill north of Piazza del Popolo, dining with hipsters in Pigneto and drinking clandestine champagne at the foot of a monument on the Isola Tiberina. I’ve stayed, in 2018, mere blocks from the heavy tourist district and strenuously avoided it, passing a two-day idyll in the Doria Pamphilj and Barberini Galleries and walking the Jewish Ghetto at night. And in 2021 I braved the tourist areas again with a study abroad program, for the first time in the smartphone era, only to find them delightfully half-deserted in a post-pandemic hangover. I suppose Leo Gazzara would say I loved Rome, for each time I had to leave it I felt disappointment rather than relief. 

This summer, however, again accompanying a student group, I found myself carried along by circumstances beyond my control, thrust again into the heart of summer tourist Rome and somewhat stunned by the ferocity of its crowds. It was this year, exposed to the ugliness of overtourism, that for the first time I felt perhaps an inkling of relief upon leaving. I thought I had loved Rome, but which Rome? If I only love Rome with its most hellish tourists redacted, does that even count? What follows are some reflects on my most memorable moments in Rome – with still much more enchantment than misery.

Trevi Fountain Terror

First up: the Trevi Fountain. It is, perhaps, the biggest obstacle standing between me and an embrace of the eternal city. Completed in 1762 and thus fairly new by Roman standards, the fountain was popularized with tourists in the 20th century when it was featured in a series of films set in Italy, including the middling 1954 Clifton Webb feature Three Coins in a Fountain, which introduced the idea of—you guessed it— throwing coins in the fountain. (Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, the classier film to prominently feature the fountain, encouraged the now-illegal practice of jumping in à la Anita Eckberg.) For some reason, people enjoy throwing money in fountains, even better if a movie has imbued this action with a sense of superstition. At least it is less harmful than attaching locks to beautiful old bridges.

And so despite being one of Rome’s more minor attractions, the Trevi is a tourist magnet on par with the Colosseum, (and it’s particularly popular now that people are not allowed to sit on the Spanish Steps). Tourists clamor to get a seat near the fountain’s cloudy blue waters, and others simply gather around to take photos, throw coins and then ultimately stand, some jostling strollers of crying children, to stare into the heart of tourism for tourism’s sake. It is here, on my second day in town, that I started to wonder what tourism was really all about. I looked around at the tense, sweaty faces, the iPhones held aloft, the dripping, overpriced gelato cones and the beleaguered families settled at tables outside cynical tourist cafes with congealing pizzas in the windows, and I wondered if anyone was having any fun. But maybe “fun” is not what tourists, trained by Disney to adopt a theme park mentality of ride-hopping, are really looking for.

To wit: Too many minutes near the Trevi Fountain is detrimental to a love of Rome or even a love of humanity. Too many minutes near the Trevi Fountain, and nothing makes sense any more. 

Piazza Navona Splendor

But then! Once one extricates oneself from the Trevi Fountain, hurries past the snaking line to get into the Pantheon, ignores the husbands with sour faces ignoring their wives and the bossy Americans trying to return cheap puro lino clothing, one can break free into beautiful Piazza Navona. Piazza Navona, which never did anything to anyone (except overcharge them gratuitously for cocktails and coffee). Piazza Navona, where the history is casual and the feeling of the sun on your shoulders is priceless. 

Piazza Navona has fountains, but seeing as no one ever made a movie about them, people don’t clamor to see them. These fountains are coinless, and one of them—La Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi—is a baroque masterpiece by Bernini. The piazza is big enough to absorb the impact of crowds and retain its sunny sense of calm, a silent smirk barely visible behind its cream-colored awnings. The cafes are host to tourists but don’t pander to them, and there’s always an empty chair in a sun-dappled setting for those who can accept a 10 euro cover charge.

In some of Last Summer in the City‘s more hopeful passages, Leo Gazzara makes the journey to Piazza Navona to meet his doomed, drunken friend Graziano:

“‘I’ll wait for you here,’ he said, ‘it’s a real beauty.’
The beauty was Piazza Navona, and when I got there I had the usual stupid idea that the sky was more beautiful there than over the rest of the city. I spotted Graziano immediately. He had on one of his legendary white shirts and was sitting in a small armchair at Domiziano’s, his pale face turned to the sun, his eyes shielded by a pair of dark glasses. He’d let his beard grow and both his hands were occupied, one holding a glass of beer and the other a glass of scotch” (66).

When he’s feeling down, Leo Gazzara often seeks refuge in Piazza Navona, and once you’ve been there, you can see why. During my visit to Rome, after I escaped the Trevi Fountain, I too sought refuge in Piazza Navona, where I sat on a bench and waited for my husband and our friends to emerge from the Pantheon. Piano, piano, as the Italians say, the sun came out. And we settled down in a cafe and everything was suddenly coated in a soft, hopeful light.

Peaceful Palazzi

The Doria Pamphilj Gallery

Which brings me to my favorite place in Rome, to date, for seeking refuge: the Doria Pamphilj Gallery. The Doria Pamphilj is a private art collection housed in a 17th-century palace that sits mere blocks from the Trevi Fountain and Pantheon and a short walk from the Roman Forum. Given its location and its high quality collection, featuring major works by Caravaggio, Titian and Velazquez, among others, I was shocked when I first visited on a sunny morning in 2018 to find the place nearly deserted. Wandering its incredibly still, grand hallways lined with painting and sculpture, adorned with chandeliers and lit by tall windows and gilded mirrors, I felt a sense of awe over this tranquility in the heart of such mayhem — an awe on par with any I had experienced over Rome’s more attention-getting landmarks.

Of course, this is not to say that the Doria Pamphilj is neglected. Each time I’ve visited (now three times in total, including last week), I am in the company of a small handful of art lovers. But the gallery’s great strength is that despite being in a palace, is it not clearly visible from the street. To enter, one must locate a small sign that leads up a long corridor to the ticket office. After that, you proceed through the garage where the heir to the Pamphilj fortune keeps his sports car, and then scan yourself in through unmanned turnstiles. It’s kind of like waking up alone at a rich person’s estate and being granted access to wander through while they’re out shooting clay pigeons or yachting (or whatever it is people who own a palace might be doing). It’s one of Rome’s many under-appreciated treasures.

The Barberini Gallery

Rome’s neighboring Barberini Gallery offers another opportunity to see excellent art in a palace atmosphere, but no doubt due to its splashy signage and grand presence on a major thoroughfare, it lacks the Doria Pamphilj’s degree of quietude. It is also somewhat aggressively overstaffed, with ticket-scanners popping up repeatedly during one’s journey through the labyrinthine palace grounds, inordinately concerned that one might be sneaking in (though it seems unlikely anyone ever has or would, especially considering the modest price of tickets). But nevertheless, the Barberini offers a similarly enchanting atmosphere to the Pamphilj; once while wandering through I witnessed a string quartet practicing in a gallery, preparing for some event, and this time I was happy to discover a room in which lounge chairs were lined up in front of a grand display of tapestries, inviting guests to sit awhile and study them, as though looking up at the night sky. 

These two galleries call to me each time I’m in Rome, and they illustrate the fact that this city is simply brimming with arts and culture, so much so that despite its massive amounts of tourists, there are still plenty of incredible places you can discover, peacefully.

The Rain and Revelations

To conclude this lengthy post, perhaps my tolerance of Rome’s weather is an ultimate sign of enduring love. In the past I’ve staggered up hills in record-breaking heat, seeking refuge in the Borghese Gardens and learning to embrace the sticky-skin feeling of July and August. This year’s visit, alternately, was hampered by periodic downpours. These have the desired effect of scattering the tourist hordes, but cut short the kind of exploratory walking I enjoy.

Naturally, Roman weather plays an outsized role in Calligarich’s novel, which begins on our protagonist’s bleak, waterlogged birthday. He observes the rain’s impact on the city:

“Torrents of rain hammered down on the decapitated statues of the Forum, the collapsed columns, the palaces in the paved squares, the desolate afternoon arenas, the ornate churches, and, absurdly, the overflowing fountains. For a while I waited in a doorway, splashed by rain and cursed at by passerby — other castaways seeking salvation, like me, in the dark, cavelike entrance — then, taking advantage of a break in the weather, I ran, hugging the walls, until I reached a small movie theater nearby” (18).

I had to smile when reading this, as it was almost exactly what we experienced during our Roman visit. Buoyed by our time in Piazza Navona, our group ambled out on foot to the shores of the Tiber, winding our way to the Castel Sant’Angelo with its magnificent bridge. (It is on this bridge that, fresh off the plane in 2011, my husband, friend and I bought beers and joined a number of young revelers in drinking and taking in the sunset.) Realizing that the afternoon was waning (we had a group dinner with the students later that evening), we followed the river back up just as the first drops of water began to fall. Far from our hotel, we decided to wait in a taxi line until, after a few moments, we realized that no one was coming or going. Taxi plans abruptly abandoned, we embarked upon our 30-plus minute walk back. The downpour that quickly ensued was much like Calligarich describes, and seemed to bring the city to a standstill. 

Like Leo Gazzara, our group sought refuge in the doorway of a particularly down-and-out looking cafe, and I was pleased to find that Romans, unlike Americans, don’t particularly care if you loiter in their place of business and don’t buy anything (at least when it’s raining, and all bets are off). The proprietress was a dramatic and charming woman who jumped at each loud crack of thunder and joked in Italian and English with her international clientele. After about five minutes of the rain continuing full throttle, we gave in to the charms of this strange tourist dive and settled in to a booth on a raised platform at the back. We ordered some of the world’s cheapest wine and shook out our raincoats as our hostess infected everyone with good humor; I began to hope the rainstorm wouldn’t end, so attached was I becoming to this quirky little place and this warm company.

Conclusions

The more I visit Rome, the more I start to understand how challenging it is, and also how multifaceted. Rome is not a theme park, despite tourists treating it as such; it is not, as Calligarich’s novel emphasizes, the Happiest Place on Earth. It has a garbage problem and a drunken tourist problem and traffic problems and a lack of taxicabs; but it remains, even to the most casual visitor, an absolute wonderland of history, art, culture. It’s a place at once peaceful and chaotic, solemn and gregarious, and it’s hard, really hard, not to love it.

A casual tourist can’t really know a place, and our memories our selective: upon each visit to a city, there are parts we choose to remember and those we choose to forget. I choose not to dwell on the obnoxious, unhappy tourists I encountered, the long lines and the sad pizzas and the glowing smartphones. I choose instead to remember the knockout skies of Piazza Navona; the still, gold-flecked hallways of the Doria Pamphili; Caravaggio’s Penitent Magdalene bowed with hair flowing; the rain ricocheting off centuries-old statues; the greasy cafe with the sticky floors and the warmth that carried us off into the night.