June 2009
There are so many excellent reasons to go to Rome practically any time of the year, but I must say that there are months that always seem particularly splendid. May is one of them. The summer heat has not quite arrived, but the piazzas are filling as Romans kick into summer mode and start to augment their weeks with seaside weekends. But although I had some business in Rome, my main reason had nothing to do with the seasons except that it was mid-May and the Champions League Final was to be held there. The event is held a short distance from the centre near the Ponte Milvio, famous historically because Constantine defeated Maxentius there (and actually threw him off the ponte (bridge) in 312. The Foro Italico, which is part of the complex where the stadium is housed, was actually conceived by Mussolini in the late twenties and is a modern form of Roman architecture. Not as good—and incidentally—all the statues in the complex are of Mussolini. He was a vain chap. In the Stadio Olimpico, which was built for the Olympics in 1960, football (calcio) is played. Actually both the Roman teams share the space, Lazio and Roma, which is the case in all of Italy where there are two teams in one city. It has a good degree of economic sense, but can be odd when there is a local derby!
Needless to say, my favorite team got beaten methodically by the Spanish Catalan giants of Barcelona. Although it’s never a lot of fun watching your team lose, it was a beautiful two days spent in a city that I know and love well. I was the guide and interpreter for my football friends and managed to condense a lot of history into a short space, interspersed with cafés, restaurants and the occasional bar or two.
And of course Wednesday was the Papal audience, so we even got a glimpse of the Pope. Even the Vatican Museum was easily accessible, as football fans tend to have other things on their minds than visiting the insides of great museums on warm summer days. I know what they mean!
The night of the game, Andrea Bocelli sang the theme from Gladiator as the Madonna of Monte Mario silhouetted high above the stadium next to the crescent moon. It was noisy, loud, and colorful, and goodness knows somebody had to lose, and if you are going to lose, there is no better place than Rome on a warm summer evening.
My entourage of friends from Dublin was treated to the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, the Capitoline Hill and all the piazzas and campos I could manage to squeeze in between lunches and dinners, cappuccinos and a few beers. There was an alcohol ban in the city for 48 hours, which worked very well until it didn’t work, which was most of the time. Various scatterings of policia sat huddled, three to a car, watching the proceedings like tourists themselves. Something about Italy always makes me feel like I am in a film.
We were a band of brothers in the city, all 100,000 of us—our origins scattered across Europe and the far corners of the globe, descending on Rome like barbarians in the 5th Century, ready to claim Rome for ourselves. Veni, Vidi, Vici. Well, not quite, and in the end of course, the light, the color, the warmth, the glow, and the Italian personality were the winners of it all. Even the three policeman huddled together in a tiny Fiat all talking on their cell phones!
See you out there somewhere.
Peter Jones
President and Co-Founder, ACIS
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