Stories From The Road

Italian towns are photogenic the way a lot of old European cities are, but Rome is unique. Rome is like the drawing room of Italy where mortals live amidst antiquities, where past personalities loom large in the presence of official and non-official rulers who are living prove that egos are easily inflated to caesarian sizes that are difficult to abort. Spread across this urban drawing room are ruins testifying past empires, victories and legends like museum treasures spilled over the floor after glass covers of display cases have been taken away. One can stroll through the exhibits, touch it, hear the stories which seem as relevant as the daily news. Rome preserves its past in a raw and unadorned way. i.e. by not ‘preserving’ them at all and letting the effects of weather, the periodic flooding of the river Tiber, and destruction of time be a part of its raw charm and by doing so it comes to life in a culture where everyone and everything seem to live too fully in the moment to care what posterity will think.
The Vatican is a different story. Lush and gilded details reveal splendor and the fact that the church cares too much, attributing God with omniscience and preserving everything with fervor including outdated canons causing existential cracks under the polished finishes. To preserve or not to preserve is a choice, a collective one. To be or not to be is neither a choice nor a question, unless one likes tragedies of Shakespearean magnitude…