Rome
Rome is the city of echoes, the city of illusions, and the city of yearning. —Giotto
Rome will exist as long as the Coliseum does; when the Coliseum falls, so will Rome; when Rome falls, so will the world. —Bede the Venerable
A fool is one who admires other cities without visiting Rome. —Petrarch
Above: How Great Thou Art.
Last week, I had the honor of attending the Builders AI Forum at Casina Pio IV in Vatican City.
Hosted at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the event “aim[ed] to foster a new interdisciplinary community of practice dedicated to supporting the development of AI products that serve the Church's mission.” It did that and so much more.
I found it transformational intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally. As my fingers race across this keyboard, I feel the Holy Spirit guiding, guarding, and leading me.
Put simply, I am aflame with Faith, Hope, and Love.
More on that in the near future, however, my all-too-brief week in Rome reanimated my strong feelings for this wondrous place.
It had been twelve years since my last visit and this trip—my third time—was indeed the charm. When walking Rome’s black, cobblestone streets, I was reminded why I fell in love back in 2007, how that love grew in 2012, and what it means to me now.
On the long, slow plane ride back home, I scrawled a few lines that became this love letter to il mio tesoro, Roma.
Rome is a city of contradictions.
A Starbucks sits a stone’s throw from the Sistine Chapel.
McDonald’s hawks Happy Meals next to Hadrian’s Pantheon.
Modern graffiti covers ancient walls.
Shrewd Romans scoot past slow, meandering tourists.
Tiny cups balanced on fragile saucers hold droplets of coffee that pack heavy, caffeinated punches.
These many contradictions should be discordant—jarring even—but they are not.
Somehow, they produce a beautiful, unapologetic harmony.
Set to this eternal soundtrack, some things change and others stay the same.
A gaze over the languid Tiber is but a passing dream; the city’s lights wink softly in the dark water.
All is cheerful and filthy and crowded and ebullient.
An intense leisure enlivens everything; the whole city is no more than a sensory overload to which you cannot help but gleefully surrender.
She is an old, worn treasure chest overflowing with precious gold and priceless gems.
Her gifts and surprises are legion: to turn down via or vicolo is to uncover another ancient ruin, towering monument, or delectable gelateria.
It makes sense that life here revolves around good food and drink.
Rome isn’t a place to visit or a spectacle to behold, it is something to drink in, to swallow whole. To spend time here is to long to devour it.
Like the ubiquitous pizza and pasta and panini, the city nourishes, sustains, provides energy.
It is meant to be had all at once, for that is when it tastes best.
Rome is inherently antifragile.
She has survived sackings and fires and floods and yet still stands.
She is a monument to humanity’s persistence and ingenuity, our collective dent in the universe.
Construction is everywhere—not to build anew, but to sustain.
Here history is not dead: its traces live on in ruins, rituals, and more.
To walk her winding streets is to re-enact the past in the present.
That’s what makes her eternal: she has all the benefit of tradition but none of its structure.
Her black cobblestone streets together form an imperfect, ever-growing mosaic that reaches across time and space and culture and creed.
Each cobblestone serves a purpose, every one has a story to tell.
Here walked Cicero and Caesar, there strode Mussolini and Michelangelo.
Without every single tessera, it all falls apart.
One is not enough, infinity is too few.
Such is her breadth and depth.
This old dame—this eternal city—has never looked better.
She’s getting old fast, yet she is like fine wine: only better with age.
Her worn face beckons with laugh lines and a warm, wide grin.
If you look closely, you can see a kindly nonna in her silhouette.
If you love Rome, she will love you right back.
That is why no trip is ever the last, there will always be another.
It’s not goodbye, but arrivederci.