A Crisis of Expectations
Believe it or not, when I first saw Rome, I was disappointed--and disoriented. In my studies in the Classics department, I had read so much Roman literature that I expected to find the city of Rome the way I had always imagined it: ancient as the Iliad, grand as the Caesars, holy as the Catholic Church. Instead, I found dirty streets, snack-hawking vendors, and Vespas that threatened to run me down. I couldn’t believe it--Rome, Roma of my reveries, an ordinary city like any other?

A Crossroads of Time
Dispiritedly I tagged along with my fellow students, who were taking in all the Roman “must-sees.” I had never heard of most of these places, having largely confined my studies to Latin poetry of the Late Roman Republic. Blithe and ignorant, I trailed the others to Trajan’s Fountain...to the Wedding-Cake Building...to the Pantheon. It was fun, but it still wasn’t my idea of Rome. So the next day I went out wandering on my own and wound up on the Palatine Hill. The Palatine worked wonders on my attitude--this was more like the Rome I wanted to see: grassy fields rife with wild poppies; ancient ruins felled across the landscape, as common and ordinary as lumber. But the real moment of epiphany came when I found the Colosseum. “Found” isn’t even the right word. I turned a corner and all of a sudden, there it was---right in the middle of the litter-flaked, tourist-mobbed, Vespa-zooming city--an enormous monument from ancient Rome, as familiar to me as Santa Claus and, until then, just as unreal. This is the wonder of Rome: it’s a casual meeting of two worlds, one ancient, one contemporary. The ruins are not barred off like animals in the zoo: they are the city, waiting around every corner. Once I finally recognized this, I got what I had wanted from Rome.

Hail Gladiatores
Click here to hear more about my visit to the Colosseum.

“Giovanni Paulo!”
My other noteworthy Roman adventure was seeing Pope John Paul II preside over a Vespers. Now, the Pope normally does not come out except on Wednesdays--but when my classmates and I noticed that the square of Saint Peter’s Cathedral was cordoned off and completely empty, we suspected that something was up. Discreet inquiries revealed that yes, the Pope was coming--and so all the Catholics in our group immediately camped out in line to see him. Hours later, when the Pope emerged to the public view, I could have sworn I was at some immense, overjoyed soccer game. Everywhere I looked, thousands of Italians were waving red scarves over their heads, singing hymns in unison and shouting, “GIOVAN-ni PAU-lo!” in the rhythm of a cheer.