To my Roman Summer

Few things can make me as nostalgic and dreamy as thinking of Rome in the summer. My city, that I grew up in and whose arms hug me in a warm embrace every few months, paired with the long days, soft breeze and birds chirping of the warmest months of the year, the perfect combination that codes for the most intense and emotionally charged of experiences.

I found my little heaven in a tiny apartment with a wooden ceiling in the centre: in the way the light would come in through the old-style blinds early in the morning, in the yellow wall that faced the window and in the creaking noise that the floor would make every time someone walked on it.

Stepping out of it, paradise continued in a seven minute walk to the Colosseum through stunning streets filled with flowering trees; these flowers were in full blossom, all pink, white and purple, kissed by the soft heat and perfect sunlight and dreamy eyes of whoever passed by.  And, when we actually got to the Colosseum, I always thought we had the most beautiful view; enclosed by trees, from uphill it seemed as if we were the only ones there and there wasn’t thousands of souls sweating to take pictures of it or waiting to get inside. It was our little, private angle of history, with only a few street artists and a man that played Despacito on the trumpet every single afternoon.

That walk was golden with laughs and excitement which slowly faded into the loud and hectic atmosphere that is the heart of the historic centre of Rome. What had, before, been a bunch of touristic attractions took a whole new meaning; in how enormous and stunning they were, they didn’t scare me anymore but rather became familiar.

After the Colosseum, we’d go through the Fori, perhaps one of the most beautiful landmarks in Rome that I will never be tired of walking past, accompained by more street artists and music; then all around the centre, through Piazza Venezia, Via del Corso, Piazza del Popolo, Villa Borghese, Piazza di Spagna, Via del Tritone, Fontana di Trevi and all little vicoletti to try and find a fountain where to drink water from.

Rome is a magical city that made me happy no matter how tired my feet would be from walking through the whole Centro Storico; it was worth it to simply to think back on the stunning walks and the way that the golden light in the late afternoon hit the people, the trees, the buildings and monuments. It is so beautiful, to me, that I cannot put it into words. Most times, when I consider something beautiful that I might cry if I try to express it, I just live it, enjoy it in any possible way, cherishing the sole existence of that place, in that time, and of me. Because of this, Rome to me has always been spontaneous, in its million of little food and gelato stops, its laws that are not really there, the weird friendliness of the people that inhabit it and the creative ways of crossing the street. It’s pure living, so real and rough that you can see life around every corner.

Exploring Rome and its streets came paired with sore feet after a few days and a slight tan from the hours passed under the sun; ice cold water sold on the streets was the sweetest contrast we needed when the temperature was peaking and we could not find a bench in the shadow where to sit. At around six in the afternoon, while the light of the golden hour captured everything around it, making it bright yellow and beautiful, we’d walk home; we’d lay on the bed, play a generic pop hit that we would somehow found relatable and repeat that we were not bothered to actually cook anything, like every evening.

Rome in the summer made me love going out at night, even before I would have thought that it could be too late to catch the metro or too dark to walk around. We had grown confident in which way to take to find a little club in Largo Argentina that grew familiar night after night (Shari Vari: good music, tiny and international; Thursdays and Saturdays are the best days); with that, I had grown confident to walk around no matter how many times I fell on the sanpietrini in Trastevere. There were amazing and terrible clubbing nights, night buses that took until morning to take us home with a weird company, Irish pubs in dark alleys and eating pizzas at questionable hours.

There was a night of coincidences and encounters, when we randomly ended up in Campo de’ Fiori; we walked around the square and the alleys around it a good three times, looking for a group of people that we now call our mates even though they probably don’t even remember our names, that tried to teach us British slang. We ended up in a little pub with a terrible bathroom but good company: there was a Cuban guy that taught us how to take tequila shots South-American style and messed up our pronouns, a group of Dutch girls that we awkwardly kept on meeting everywhere and an English guy that always knew what to say but never ended up knowing what he wanted.

There were dawns we saw from the windows and drinking water from mugs and laughing until one of us fell off the bed, remembering something that could have only ever happened to us a few hours earlier. There was a lot of pizza al taglio, for breakfast, snacks, lunch and dinner, to the point that all the pizza shops in our street knew us as soon as we walked in because we were not bothered to cook something that was not pesto pasta or a boiled egg.

There was watching the World Cup while drinking amazing Prosecco and tuning on the channel early for the national anthems to rate how attractive the players were; while for some days we kept on walking around between bars and restaurants, avoiding to actually sit anywhere but just looking at the screens they had, hoping to win our little bets with friends and family.

There were vendors with anklets and roses, the Pincio view and somehow renting a mini car even if none of us knew how to drive or had an actual license; there was the rooftop bar in the Rinascente, a stunning sunset, an aperitif we drank standing because there were no seats available, and paying way too much for a caffellatte.

There was waiting for bus 87 which never actually showed up, running to get the tram and never actually buying a public transport ticket (because no one does it in Rome); guessing where we were since there were no announcements and seeing areas of the city I had personally never visited. There were museum and art days, spent among the timeless remains of the golden and ran-down eras, hours spend wondering around the art and dreaming of being able to see it every day.

There were warm, tequila-flavoured beers before a Macklemore concert, one of the best I’ve ever been to, dancing around and singing the songs on top of my lungs and waking up the next morning with scratches all over my leg (I still have the scars and no idea of how I got them).

One of my favourite things was walking around the Tiber and the carnival that they set up every summer along the waters, with multitude of little shops and food and drink stalls. I met an old man that owned one of the stalls; he sold used records, books, posters and any kind of vintage knick-knack you could possibly wish for. He spoke slowly and I ended up spending hours at his stall, talking about 60s and 70s music and the hippie movement. He told me that his house looked like a museum from the multitude of things he had collected over the years, that he loved the vintage-looking jewellery I had and that he was glad that young people like me were still interested in the past and its wonders. I ended up leaving with a Led Zeppelin IV record that had allegedly been signed by Robert Plant himself, a smile on my face for how sweet he’d been to me and my heart warm from our conversation and our shared passion for rock music.

A summer month spent in my little Rome house later, my soul felt as full as it had probably never been before; there was a calm I found within me and my little routines, a yellow robe, the supermarket across the street, the numerous cacio e pepe pastas and the area that was becoming more and more like my own home.

I wish I’d taken more pictures.

Not just of the landmarks, but of the daily life we had; I hope that my words were a valid substitute, that they made you hear the thousands of sounds of life and see the absolute miracle that is Rome at sunset.