 Of
all Italy's historic cities, it's perhaps Rome which
exerts the most compelling fascination. There's more to
see here than in any other city in the world, with the
relics of over two thousand years of inhabitation packed
into its sprawling urban area. You could spend a month
here and still only scratch the surface. As a historic
place, it is special enough; as a contemporary European
capital, it is utterly unique. Perfectly placed between
Italy's North and South, and heartily despised by both,
Rome is perhaps the perfect capital for a country like
Italy. Once the seat of a great empire, and later the
home of the papacy, which ruled its dominions from here
with a distant and autocratic hand, it's still seen as a
place somewhat apart from the rest of Italy, spending
money made elsewhere on the corrupt and bloated
government machine that runs the country.
Romans, the thinking seems to go, are a lazy lot, not to
be trusted and living very nicely off the fat of the
rest of the land. Even Romans find it hard to disagree
with this analysis: in a city of around four million,
there are around 600,000 office-workers, compared to an
industrial workforce of one sixth of that.
For the traveller, all of this is much less evident than
the sheer weight of history that the city supports.
There are of course the city's classical features, most
visibly the Colosseum, and the Forum and Palatine Hill;
but from here there's an almost uninterrupted sequence
of monuments - from early Christian basilicas,
Romanesque churches, Renaissance palaces, right up to
the fountains and churches of the Baroque period, which
perhaps more than any other era has determined the look
of the city today.
There is the modern epoch too, from the ponderous
Neoclassical architecture of the post-Unification period
to the self-publicizing edifices of the Mussolini years.
All these various eras crowd in on one another to an
almost overwhelming degree: there are medieval churches
atop ancient basilicas above Roman palaces; houses and
apartment blocks incorporate fragments of eroded Roman
columns, carvings and inscriptions; roads and piazzas
follow the lines of ancient amphitheatres and stadiums.
Inevitably, Rome is not an easy place to absorb on one
visit, and you need to approach things slowly, even if
you only have a few days here. You can't see everything
on your first visit to Rome, and there's no point in
even trying. Most of the city's sights can be approached
from a variety of directions, and it's part of the
city's allure to stumble across things by accident,
gradually piecing together the whole, rather than
marching around to a timetable on a predetermined route.
In any case, it's hard to get anywhere very fast.
Despite regular pledges to ban motor vehicles from the
city centre, the congestion can be awful. On foot, it's
easy to lose a sense of direction winding about in the
twisting old streets. In any case, you're so likely to
come upon something interesting it hardly makes any
difference.
Beyond Rome, the region of Lazio inevitably pales in
comparison, with relatively few centres of note and a
landscape that varies from the gently undulating green
hills of its northern sector to the more inhospitable
mountains south and east of the capital. It's a fairly
poor region, its lack of identity the butt of a number
of Italian jokes, and it's the closest you'll get to the
feel of the Italian south without catching the train to
Naples. Much, however, can be easily seen on a day-trip
from the capital, not least the ancient sites of Ostia
Antica and the Roman Emperor Hadrian's villa at Tivoli -
two of the area's most important ancient sites. Further
afield, in the north of Lazio the Etruscan sites of
Tarquinia and Cerveteri provide the main and most
obvious tourist focus, the slightly gloomy town of
Viterbo the best base; Romans, meanwhile, head out at
weekends to soak up the gentle beauty of lakes Bracciano
, Vico and Bolsena . The region east of Rome is sparsely
populated and poor, though scenically appealing, its
high hills unfolding beyond the main, rather dull,
regional centre of Rieti . The south, on the other hand,
is the one part of Lazio where you might want to spend a
little longer, especially if you're beating a leisurely
path to Naples. You can see coastal resorts like Anzio
and Nettuno as a day-trip too, and they make the best
places to swim while based in the capital. But the coast
beyond demands more attention: resorts like Terracina
and Sperlonga are relatively unknown outside Italy; and
islands like Ponza one of the loveliest spots, out of
season at least, on the entire west coast. Inland, much
is mountainous and fairly inaccessible, but that's part
of its appeal: the monasteries at Subiaco and
Montecassino are just two worthwhile stops on what might
be a rewarding and original route south.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT
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