Submitted by Stephen Harris on the 2015 spring semester study abroad program in Rome, Italy…
I spent a fair bit of my Sunday yesterday walking around the city of Rome. I visited the Pantheon, the Piazza Navona and the Trevi Fountain. Even with these incredible sights before me, it only took an hour or so of walking for me to regret not taking a cab home.
Roman architecture seems to be a spectacular mess. The streets form a type of patchwork, each one housing its own creative jumble of loose stone and cracked pavement. Each alleyway and main street curves, too, so subtly that you don’t even realize you’ve been turned around before you’re already lost. It’s nothing like the efficient, grid-like system we see in American cities.
But because of that, every street is a bit of a marvel. You can walk in almost total silence from the cars and mopeds, take six or seven wrong turns, and suddenly find yourself in front of a temple fused with the walls. One time, on my way to buy textbooks in the northern part of the city, I stumbled upon a street that only had art galleries. After going in one of them, I had a pleasant discussion with a lady who invited me to an exhibition that her gallery is having this Thursday.
I know in the cityscape, you never know where you’re going to end up when you just follow your feet, but in Rome this idea was part of the design. You can spend the day completely lost and still get a day stock full of historic sights, looming architecture, and good pizza.
