Why Rome
I first met Rome in the movies in the ’60s when my family spent Easter week watching Ben-Hur and The Robe. Later I sighed at her heroes in Gladiator and King Arthur, and still turn to Roman Holiday and Three Coins in the Fountain for escape, classic style, and fun frocks. And though recently I giggled at Brit Wits Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in The Trip to Italy based on their pilgrimage to places poets Percy Shelley and Lord Byron lived, I do love teaching literary legends —particularly The Romantic writers who lived in Rome. Long before the Left Bank of Paris brimmed with expat genius, Rome was a muse to many artists. For centuries they have transported readers to the Eternal City via memoir, fiction, and poetry. Still, nothing is like being in Rome for real.
There’s a power struggle going on across Europe these days. A few cities are competing against each other to see who shall emerge as the great 21st-century European metropolis. Will it be London? Paris? Berlin? Zurich? Maybe Brussels, center of the young union? They all strive to outdo one another culturally, architecturally, politically, fiscally. But Rome, it should be said, has not bothered to join the race for status. Rome doesn’t compete. Rome just watches all the fussing and striving, completely unfazed. I am inspired by the regal self-assurance of this city, so grounded and rounded, so amused and monumental, knowing she is held securely in the palm of history. I would like to be like Rome when I am an old lady.
—Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
Why Did I Roam Rome In 2016?
*The text in this section was originally posted on April 3, 2016. It remains here because my expat era (2014-2017) was one of the most transformative chapters of my life. Since visiting the museum on this third trip to Rome, I wrote and taught a university course on the English Romantics and Their Legacy (Sustainability, Social Justice, Self-Discovery). If you’re a fan of Lord Byron, the Shelley-Keats House is hosting events in Rome and online in 2024 (200 years after his death). See Below.
Traveling and living abroad changes us. My mission is to inspire and empower travelers.
The date on this post is the last time I updated travel information/content and links to help you plan a trip to Rome.
Since moving to Morocco in 2014, I began planning my Dream Week for Spring Break 2016. I didn’t know if I’d stay abroad after my initial two-year work contract, so I saved the best for last. I’d fallen in love with Italy in 2000 and have since returned eight times; but in 2004 I was swept away by the Amalfi Coast and hoped this year to perch on a Positano terrace across from Capri, the island that enchanted me more than a decade ago. A Mermaid in Marrakesh, I felt I’d find my muse staying between the Path of the Gods and the ocean below. Nothing moves me like the sea, and I couldn’t wait to live like a local and go no farther than a boat ride to a restaurant I’d read about. I’d write in the sun. I’d breathe.
I booked the perfect villa last August beside the iconic Le Sirenuse, the set for Only You, a 1994 film my sister and I love . The plan was to join friends from the US in Tuscany the first week of the break, then travel alone by train to the coast. Sadly, an unforeseen circumstance that caused much stress forced me to cancel that second week, but a colleague offered a Plan B. She suggested I stay with her in Rome and catch the Ryan Air flight on Tuesday for $26. My flight and stay at a hotel inspired by my favorite painter, Modigliani, cost less than changing my original ticket. (To understand the bohemian artist scene from the late 16th century to the early 20th century in Paris and Rome and to learn more about Italy’s native son, see the 2004 film, Modigliani.)
Lately, I’ve been faced with huge decisions and it seemed all roads were, indeed, leading to Rome. I’m passionate about several paths — family, travel, writing, education — and have been praying for a way they can all convene. Birthdays are when I pull over to reevaluate the map of my life journey. While in Tuscany I celebrated the one that was my father’s last. He died at work. So young. So missed.
Roaming, resting, relaxing in Rome in my favorite neighborhoods (near Piazzas of Spagna and Barberini) proved to be poignant. I loved seeing friends in Tuscany, but I’d spent the week fighting the flu. Being in Rome on Easter and finally visiting The Keats-Shelley House—where Keats, too, came to Rome seeking a kinder climate for his health—moved me. I’d always loved Keats’ “When I Have Fears I Will Cease to Be” where he confesses concern that he’ll die before writing all he felt placed on earth to write or before marrying his beloved Fanny Brawne. I thought, too, about Lord Byron who said “If I don’t write to empty my mind I go mad” and Henry David Thoreau, an American Romantic, who said, “The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” I’ve never wanted to be one of that mass. Keats died after just three months in Rome beside the Spanish Steps at twenty-five; Shelley was living in Tuscany when he drowned off the coast of Italy at twenty-nine. Byron died from exhaustion in Greece at thirty-six. All so young. So much more to write. To live. I returned to Marrakesh with a renewed gratitude for my health and the warm climate I enjoy daily. And I continue to seek the best way to live what’s left of my life.
‘I sometimes fancy,’ said Hilda, on whose susceptibility the scene always made a strong impression, ‘that Rome—mere Rome—will crowd everything else out of my heart.’
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance
What Is the Keats-Shelley House?
The Keats-Shelley House is a museum dedicated to the English Romantic poets which contains 8,000 volumes and other related objects. Throughout 2024, the museum is hosting “Byron 200” events online and onsite in remembrance of the death of Lord Byron in 1824. Virtual tours and other related media are here.
Who Were the English Romantics?
Fathers of the Romantic Era —William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge — published Lyrical Ballads in 1798. Like William Blake before them, these writers rejected values from the previous period. The Enlightenment prioritized institutions, tradition, conformity, science, and reason. First and second-generation Romantics — Percy and Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Keats — were (and Romantics still are) the Carpe Diem Crowd — idealists who value individualism, authenticity, democracy, experimentation, emotion, imagination, social reform, change, and nature. Other European Romantic artists were Pushkin, Hugo, Turner, Beethoven, Schubert, and Berlioz. Romantics were influenced by the philosophies of Goethe (who lived in Rome for a time) and John Locke who said a human is born innocent by nature — a tabula rasa (blank slate) — but his story for good or ill is written by society (nurture). Thus, they championed “the noble savage” who remains in a natural state uncorrupted by society, such as Native Americans in the New World. They blamed society/”the system” for the actions of Mary Shelley’s creature in Frankenstein who became a monster because the doctor recklessly created and abandoned him and villagers feared and abused him. They favored the underdog, like Emily Bronte’s Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. They championed the common man over aristocracy. Jean-Jacques Rosseau’s “social contract” (fair play between the governing and governed) dismissed the Divine Right of Kings which fueled the French and American Revolutions.
In 2016 when I wasn’t really ready to give up the expat life, I thought about how the tension between the two temperaments (classicism vs romanticism) Reason vs Emotion, Duty vs Passion, and Fact vs Feeling vs Faith affects decisions. Just as I lived the questions while wandering Venice, I roamed Rome believing I’d live into the answers. I prayed and let go, resolving to wait in passionate patience for an answer.
Other Expat Writers Who Were Inspired by Rome
I brought back writing inspiration from the vibrant literary landscape that is Rome. I walked the streets off Via Condotti where writers gathered around wine at restaurants and coffee at Antico Caffè Greco. In the area around The Spanish Steps known in the 19th century as the “English Quarter” lived not only the Shelleys, Byron, and Keats but also Sir Walter Scott, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, William Thackeray, Henry James, Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne, the subject of my Master’s Thesis, wrote The Marble Faun based on the Faun of Praxiteles displayed in the Capitoline Museum. I returned and read Edith Wharton’s “Roman Fever” and plan to read Charles Dickens’ Pictures from Italy and Henry James’ Italian Hours.
To learn more about expat life in Rome past and present whether planning a visit or move, check out this monthly publication.
I loved studying filmmaker Federico Fellini in grad school who said:
Rome does not need to make culture. It is culture. Prehistoric, classical, Etruscan, Renaissance, Baroque, modern. Every corner of the city is a chapter in an imaginary universal history of culture. Culture in Rome is not an academic concept. It’s not even a museum culture, even though the city is one enormous museum. It is a human culture free from cultural faddishness, or neurotic trendiness.
Maybe…
One thing is for sure. From the bizarre to the sublime, Rome is human history.
How To Experience Rome Like a Romantic
I’d enjoyed seeing the Forum, Pantheon, Colosseum, Catacombs, and Vatican City on two previous trips with my high school students. Unlike the original Grand Tours of Europe where travelers spent months in multiple countries or university Study Abroad programs where students spend a semester on a campus abroad, the goal of ten-day tours to several cities is to expose students to various cultures/countries so they can choose to do further studies/specializations in a particular place. In 2016 it was nice to do what Romantics (and Enneagram 4s) do best. FEEL. I wandered without an itinerary. I took in regal and retro sights. I heard fountains trickling and the universal language: laughter. I tasted. Everything. Truly Rome is an Ode to Joy, a Sonnet called La Bella Vita.
In Rome one had simply to sit still and feel. – E. M. Forster
Hotel Modigliani is located just up the hill on Via della Purificazione, a street built in the 18th century running from Barberini Square to Via degli Artisti. I loved my stay for its old-world charm, top-floor balcony, and PERFECT location. It’s a five-minute walk to Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, Via Veneto, and Villa Borghese and within 3 km of all main sites. Barberini Metro and Square are a two-minute walk away. I walked everywhere during my stay and the hotel called a cab for my departure flight.
Upon arrival, I was thrilled that I’d been moved to the top floor at no charge where I had a terrace view. Just around the corner, I found pizza with prosciutto and a nice glass of wine. By serendipity, I later strolled past Harry’s Bar. In the 1960s Fellini filmed La Dolce Vita here. I would have loved wandering in when Frank Sinatra played the piano here or Sophia Loren, Audrey Hepburn, or Marlon Brando were regulars. I hope to return one day with a reservation (or at least dressed appropriately to stop in for a drink).
Easter Sunday I attended a church, revisited the Pantheon, and had lunch at Piazza della Rotonda.
My favorite shop in Rome is Antica Sartoria. Stores are located throughout Italy.
If It’s Your First Time in Rome
See my Mom’s Guide to Rome even if you’re not traveling with children for more ideas and details.
Give yourself 72 hours so you have a little time to wander and unwind. Stay near Piazzas of Spagna and Barberini so you are within walking distance to the following Must-Sees.
Day One
•Trevi Fountain
•Pantheon
•Piazza Navona
•Spanish Steps (The Shelley Keats House is beside them. It’s not for everyone, but I love teaching the Romantic writers, so I geeked out here.)
•Borghese Park
•Have a drink at the legendary Harry’s Bar made famous by Fellini’s 1960s movie, La Dolce Vita, Frank Sinatra playing here, and celebrity regulars past (Sophia Loren, Audrey Hepburn, Marlon Braond) and present.
Day 2: June 15
•Roman Forum
•Colosseum
•Vatican City — Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica
Day 3: June 16
If Traveling With Children
Below is Borghese Park, a favorite spot for local and tourist families. Plan your visit with this map. Do a child-friendly cooking class here. And if you’re still not convinced you can do Rome with wee ones, check out this family. Romantics loved the innocence of children, and Rome is a place where we all can experience the world with childlike wonder.
Note: If you need inspiration for cooking Italian food or living your best life before or after your tip to Rome, check out recipes, classes, and the amazing story of Renaissance Woman/Italian-American Chef Paulette.
My Takeaway from Roaming Rome
*Written April 2016:
I’m grateful for roaming Rome which confirmed two things. I’ve been missing my children since December and want to travel and do life with them again more than anything. In Positano a gorgeous villa awaits, but I hope to go when they or my sis can join me one day. And, like it or not, the only constant is change. The Romantics knew this and thus seized the day knowing too soon the day ceases. I’ve experienced adventure, beauty, and new relationships aplenty. So much in my life has changed in the last two years. Places. People. Paths. My comfort is knowing the One who holds this gorgeous globe, my family, and me. He has already picked our next path. It’s good to be at peace with peace.
The post Roaming Rome in the Footsteps of Romantic Expat Writers appeared first on Southern Girl Gone Global.