To Divinity and Beyond

I woke at half past eight to a Rome that had decided, against all meteorological pessimism, to be radiant. The forecast had threatened days of rain: gray and somber skies, sodden stones, and a city in mourning. But instead, there was a sharp blue firmament and an eight-degree chill that made the light feel earned. From my window, the sun struck the terracotta roofs and ochre walls with a kind of absolution. Breakfast downstairs was as perfunctory as the reviews had warned: a limp croissant, indifferent coffee, hospitality by obligation. Still, it was free, and I have never trusted a man who travels for breakfast.

From Manzoni, I took the metro to Barberini, surfacing into a Rome that seemed less a capital than a museum still in use. The streets narrowed into cobbled arteries polished by centuries of sandals, boots, and now sneakers. The buildings leaned toward one another in conspiratorial shades of yellow and sandstone, their shutters half-lidded, their roofs tiled in the burnt clay that has come to signify Italy in the popular imagination. Walking toward the Pantheon required patience; Rome does not yield her monuments easily. She prefers that you earn them by getting lost.

The Pantheon, when I reached it, was less a church than a stubborn survivor. Raised for pagan gods and later adopted by Christianity, it has outlived emperors, invasions, and fashion trends. Beneath its dome, the oculus opened to the same sky that had surprised me that morning. I thought, fleetingly, of thrillers and symbologists with Robert Langdon beside me, of fiction grafted onto fact, but the building resisted narrative embellishment. It was enough to stand there and feel the cold stone underfoot and the disciplined geometry above—an empire distilled into concrete.

Hunger drove me to a nearby trattoria where I surrendered, without protest, to the economics of tourism. The Aperol arrived first, bright as a traffic signal, accompanied by an indecently generous heap of potato chips and torn sourdough. The carbonara, cheap by Roman standards, was unapologetically rich, a reminder that simplicity, when done properly, borders on the sublime. Fifteen euros well spent. Afterward, I wandered, purchased sunglasses I had conveniently forgotten to pack, and a bottle of my preferred perfume. Pilgrimage, it seems, does not preclude consumerism. At the Trevi Fountain, now regulated by a modest two-euro entrance ticket, the crowd was thinner, the spectacle more bearable. Even romance, in Rome, requires crowd control. How thoughtful.

Later that day, I was waiting for my turn to enter the premises of the Trevi Fountain, where tourists performed their ritual devotion. Coins arcing through cold air, wishes flung backward over shoulders with rehearsed hope. I obliged, of course. One coin, not for romance or superstition, but as a quiet contract with the city. The fountain roared with theatrical confidence, baroque excess in full display, water cascading as if Rome had an endless supply of drama.

Toward late afternoon, I went to Vatican City, a short journey in distance but not in symbolism. Entering St. Peter’s Square, I felt an emotion that surprised me by its intensity. Bernini’s colonnades curved like open arms; the basilica’s façade stood stern and theatrical against the winter sky. This was the epicenter of a faith followed by a billion people, a place I had known only through catechism, headlines, and televised masses. I stood there, not as a theologian nor a model believer, but as someone measuring the improbable geography of his own life. Memory, ambition, disappointment…they assembled quietly in that vast square. I let them settle. Faith, I realized, is less about spectacle than about endurance.

That evening, I sat alone at a neighborhood bar and ordered two more Aperol spritzes. Rome at night is less didactic; she does not instruct, she insinuates. The day had given me sun instead of rain, stone instead of theory, ritual instead of rhetoric. Whatever uncertainties awaited me elsewhere seemed briefly negotiable. Travel does not solve one’s life, but it rearranges it, like colored tiles in a mosaic. Under the Roman sky, with the cold lingering and the glass sweating in my hand, I felt the quiet assurance that things eventually find their place.

In the greater scheme of things.

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Read my Italy series:

Part I - All Roads Lead To Rome
Part II - To Divinity and Beyond