I have returned to Rome at least once a in the memoir — late-Renaissance and baroque year, usually twice, for the past 20 years, Rome, what I like to call My Rome. Mostly especially after the publication of my narrow streets and cobbled lanes, representing books. I have my “haunts” and these still my itinerary from one bookstore to another. I take me back to my first year in Rome. I fell in love with books because they screened like evening scenes when the shops the world of Rome that I still wasn’t sure I liked, close and the Romans head home.
I still love the gleaming cobblestone as the city starts to empty a bit on streets such as Via Frattina and Via dei Condotti, which I discovered on my second or third day in Rome as an adolescent. I love that these streets are now closed to traffic so that you can amble about in the middle and not think of cars. But I also love the city in the early afternoon, when the sun pounds the streets and the narrow lanes bask in light, emptied of people. Now that I think of it, I like Rome when fewer people are about. Then, when it’s quiet, my mind wanders and I begin to think that it is my home forever.
