mi piace roma

// I like Rome
Fontana Trevi, Piazza Spagna, Vittorio Emmanuele, Piazza del Popolo, Santa Maria Maggiore, Pantheon, Piazza Navona, Quattro Fontane, Colosseo; Rome is monument after piazza after monument. Everyone I've met here has been here for a whirlwind three days, seeing the sights and running around in the heat, rushing from one must‑see to the next. It's an insult to the city, in fact it's an insult to any city but especially to Rome.

My favourite hours here have been spent wandering the streets at night (don't worry mum there are always people staying in the hostel who come with me). The Trastevere quarter is especially charming at night, with bars and shops lining the Fiume Tevere (the river that runs through Rome) and a little island where you can sit on cushions, sip a spritz and marvel at the beauty of Italian men. Sadly it's only the old ones who ask me out, upon my polite refusal each of them has said "well, I am Roman, it is in my blood to try. Buona sera, bella."

In a city as ancient as Rome there are of course many idiosyncrasies and it's these that I have been seeking out. I've been rewarded with many little discoveries, such as the coolest shoe shop in the known universe tucked away in Trastevere. I've also come across 17 of the 666 known Madonna and Child mini ‑ sculptures (there would be a word for them but I don't know it) adorning the street corners throughout Rome. I was delighted to stumble across a pyramid a little south of the centre on my way to a whole suburb made up of thousands of ancient broken pots. There's even a Necromancer's Magic Doorway just near my hostel. The inscriptions lining it are the remnants of the notes written by a necromancer who fled mysteriously sometime before the 9th century. A marquis had been funding his research, and after the experts of the time were unable to translate the Latin inscriptions, the marquis had them carved into a doorway in the hopes that someday a passerby might be able to translate them. Indeed, they were eventually translated, but not until 1963, several centuries too late.

The Cappucin Monks are an old favourite that I returned to; monks who celebrated death as merely the portal to the next life, and used each other's bones to decorate their chapels. You come face to face with Death as he should be; grinning at you from between a pelvis, finger bones and femoras making up his scythe and scales. He reminds you that "what you are now, we once were and what we are now, you will be".

Un piccolo giro ‑ a quick trip ‑ around the ruins of Rome leads one to marvel at how the seat of ancient civilisation has evolved to become the centre of such a chaotic nation. Nevertheless, Rome is everything it should be and more, and even though I didn't bother to throw a coin into the Trevi Fountain, I know I'll be back.