Adventure Awaits!

After spending my high school years in a small town in the South of Italy, at age 19 I moved to Rome. There I met and became friends with a young agronomy student from Naples – Salvatore. For us, everything about the Eternal City was exciting, new and ravishing: we were inebriated by the history condensed in such a small portion of space. We wanted to embrace all that and emerge ourselves in the timeless beauty that adorned the city.

We planned weekly ventures, searching for the hidden spots in caput mundi. At the time, we didn’t have portable technology devices that could help us get somewhere, anywhere, quickly: embracing the unpredictable was our prime guide.

One day, we decided to meet near the Baths of Caracalla. The idea driving us was to wonder around the Aventine Hill, let our steps be moved and inspired by the angles and colours of the neighbourhood: he loved the greenery, I was moved by the architecture. We circumnavigated the thermae, passed along the Caelian Hill and ended up standing by the Pyramid in rione Testaccio. Passing through Via Marmorato our eyes were caught by a white and red flag swinging in the wind. We decided to turn around, climb into the Aventine Hill, once again, and unfold that mystery.

On the peak we reached the square of the Knights of Malta and a few steps away entered what would then become one of our favourite spots in Rome: Parco Savello, also know as the Orange Garden. It was late spring and the fruits were ripe, the trees in bloom: an ecstatic, fresh citrus perfume hailed and lead us into the garden. Following the designed path, I reached an altar erected at the deep end of the locus. From that panorama, with just one glance you could see all the marvels of Rome: to the right the refined Romanesque villas that distinguish the Aventine Hill; in prospective the Altar of the Fatherland dominated by the statues of goddess Victoria riding on quadrigas; next, the Tiber Island adorned by its majestic pines and in the rear the Mosque in Parioli Hill; to the left side of the vista the Janiculum; and, at last, right in the middle Saint Peter’s dom.

We were overwhelmed. In that fragment of time, my desire to travel and savour other magnificent human and nature constructions grew and was rapidly nurtured by that scene. Not to too far away from home I had encountered the Other, one that is sculpted in time. Everything had to be different now: I had to see the world.