As the Romans Do

“Only in Rome is it possible to understand Rome.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

In the quiet hour around and just following sunrise, the streets leading down to the Colosseum and Forum are largely deserted. A few shops are slowly opening up for the day, rolling back their shutters to the waking sun. It is my favourite time of day to run around Rome, unhindered both by tourists, who travel slowly and stop frequently to take photos and marvel at the sights, and by locals, who travel slowly and stop frequently to gesticulate wildly and emphasise their story before continuing on.

At this time of the day, it is just myself and a handful of other runners. The national guard setting up their post by the Colosseum. The Colosseum guards changing from night to day shift, who call out as I run past. 

“Ecco la gladiatrice!” Here comes the gladiator.

The only better time to roam this area is by night, in those golden hours after the sun has set and most are still eating dinner. The sunken areas of the Forum are lit by golden lamps, emulating the torchlight they once would have been seen by. There is often a busker playing from within the ruins, and the music will carry far down Via dei Fori Imperiali. 

If the early hours of the morning, as the sun peeks through the arches of the Colosseum, are those that remind me of the lasting history within its modern city, the late nights by the Forum remind me of the centuries past. One night, as I’m walking back along this favoured route with a friend, I stop her – not to gesticulate wildly and emphasise my story but to draw attention to where we are.

“Isn’t this unbelievable? That this is our route home? Through all of this?”

Fortunately, she doesn’t just tolerate my impassioned outbursts but also agrees with me. We’d sat for several hours at a small bar in Trastevere, enjoying the slow pace of Roman life as compared to where we respectively came from, and now had the privilege of ambling home through a veritable open-air museum of civilisations past. 

It had taken around ten days to come to this feeling, as I was finding to be typical in settling to a new place in these short stints. Here, I had significant advantages to finding a sense of home: not least that I already spoke some Italian, and between the extended stay and immersion classes, my language was coming back stronger and more confident day by day. 

But there is a lot more to feeling at home somewhere than just speaking the language. There are all the little mannerisms and customs of a place, varying not just country to country but sometimes even city to city. Despite it being culturally so different to where I’d grown up, I had spent enough time in Italy over the years that this adaptation came more naturally than it would elsewhere.

I learn to board and exit the Metro like a Roman: that is, cramming inside, always making way for the elderly, and loudly proclaiming “uscendo!’ when it was my stop. I learn to cross the road like a Roman: that is, charging out into the street without the slightest regard for traffic, continuously mesmerised that this method does actually cause cars, motorbikes, and buses to stop, without fail, and with full respect that I was following the rules of the road. 

(As an aside, crossing the road like this does appear to be culturally restricted to Rome. I tried the same thing in Firenze and got yelled at by many a driver and nearly hit by a car more times that I’d like to admit. Livorno, a town on the Tuscan coast where I would find myself later in the month, is even worse: here, drivers are courteous and will indeed stop, but only if you are helpfully standing at the crossing and making furious eye contact. And, as it turns out, unlearning to cross the street like a Roman is much harder than learning it.)

I fall in love with Rome quickly and furiously. It’s not my first time in the city but my previous visits were short enough to get no real sense of the place beyond its famous landmarks. That I have a routine here, and an engrained social circle, helps immensely. For all of my flitting around and unstructured lifestyle, I do benefit from a sense of routine, not least in helping me feel as though I have a place somewhere. That I have a purpose. Never do I feel as isolated as an individual in the world as I do when I lack purpose outwith whatever four walls I am living in.

Within my routine, I’ve found my places. I’ve built my own little Rome, made up of my local spots. A café bar where I can drink a cappuccino with my book of Italian short stories in the early afternoon or a glass of wine with a friend or over a notebook as it falls to dusk. A paninoteca that makes the best porchetta sandwich in the city, run by a friendly guy who leaves little notes on my sandwich bags. My local cinema. The park where they hold festivals on weekends. The espresso bar next to school.

Leaving Rome, unsurprisingly, is not easy. If it weren't for the fact that I get to see my parents for a few days at my next destination, I’m not sure if I wouldn’t have tried to stay on. I eat my last porchetta sandwich in the warm kitchen of my apartment and wonder when I’ll be back.

Maybe I couldn’t live here forever. Italian bureaucracy gives me a headache and I’ve barely had to touch it during this month, and for it to be this hot already in February doesn’t bode well for surviving the summers here. I could see a version of my life where I live here for a year or so. A version where maybe I could have, if I’d chosen other paths.

This is the problem I’m starting to come up against: the endless onslaught of time, or rather, the lack of it. I can’t reconcile the parts of me that would like to live in Rome for a year, before settling elsewhere, with the part that is desperate to settle. As much as I stand by the conviction that this nomadic year is the right thing for me, its appeal is as much in the promise that at the end of it, I get to start putting down roots. I get to start building a home. 

And I can’t do that if I keep committing another year to living here, or there, floating from destination to destination.

But if there were ever a place with the power to try to keep me forever and a day, it would be this: the Eternal City.