This first section is a brief explanation of my Italy blog posts, which were inspired by my 2-week trip to Italy in May, 2025. Feel free to skip this section if you’ve read it before.
Dear Reader, If you read my Italy posts in the order in which they’ve come out, it may seem as though we hopped back and forth all over the country, but I have decided not to write these posts sequentially. I want to write about the things that interest me most, as the spirit moves me. For some topics, I may even combine cities. I hope that by doing so, you’ll find it a lot more interesting than if I just give you a tedious day by day description of our itinerary, as if I were your Aunt Mabel forcing you to sit down and watch all her Super 8 films of the family road trip to Niagara Falls from 1966.
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions about how I’m approaching this travelogue-within-a-blog, please let me know in the comments below!
Of all the places we were to visit in Italy, Rome was the one I was most nervous about. First, there’d be the hustle and bustle caused by 4 million, densely-packed people, with an additional layer of clueless tourists to make things even more of a challenge. And all the things I was longing to see. The history and the modernity and just the freakin’ Rome-yness of it. That, and we were headed there from the Sorrento area via rental car, and I’d read somewhere that you’re 40 times more likely to get into a serious accident in Rome than you are in Los Angeles. (Having now been to both places, I can say that that seems extremely likely.)
I couldn’t speak for Dear Husband, but I was afraid I’d be overwhelmed. So I decided that the best thing to do was to ease our way in. Gently. Slowly. A little at a time. Piano, piano, as the Italians say.
First of all, I was thrilled that DH was on the same page about the car. We (and by “we” I mean he) wouldn’t be driving it into Rome proper. No way, no how. We’d skirt the outer edges of the city, seeing a few sites that are best reached by car, then swing by our AirBnB, which we’d deliberately chosen based on its location at the far end of a Metro line. Then we’d drop off our luggage there and head straight to the airport and get rid of the car, then take the train back to town.
I have to give enormous amounts of credit to DH for not putting a scratch on the thing after so many days, despite the fact that we went down a lot of very narrow alleys, and Italians are crazy drivers. (I had to close my eyes a lot.) Still, Rome would be best explored on foot.
But let me back up a bit. We’re still in the car. My eyes are still closed. That is, until we pull over for gas. On Italian freeways, instead of rest areas, they have Auto Grills, which are much busier places. They have food courts, groceries, bathrooms, gas pumps, all sorts of things to draw you in. While there, we spotted this interesting building on the horizon.
We didn’t get to pay it a visit, but doing a Google image search after the fact kind of makes me wish we had. This unique structure is called Calatrava’s Sail. Construction began on this arena in 2007, in hopes that Rome would win its bid for the 2020 Olympics. This was to be the primary sports and events center.
At least a hundred million Euros was invested in the project, but as is often the case in Italy, it was bogged down by bureaucracy and political infighting. The cost rose to more than €250 million. And then the news came out that, despite the overwhelming support for the Olympic bid by the Italian citizens, in 2012, just one day before the deadline for cities to submit their bid, Mario Monti, the Italian Prime Minister at the time, put an end to the bid, saying the cost vs. benefits were unknown. (The 2020 Olympics eventually went to Tokyo.)
Calatrava’s Sail was never completed. The steel skeleton sat neglected, surrounded by a fence, slowly decaying, while the weeds took over. (For some heartbreaking images of that time, see this article.)
But then something amazing happened. With the Youth Jubilee on the horizon, 80 million Euros was pumped into the Sail’s renovation. And it actually got done. As you’ll see from the images in this article, it is now absolutely gorgeous (especially when lit up at night!) and will be a valuable venue for Rome for years to come. Its open air arena seats 8,000 people, and 15,000 more can be seated in the indoor area.
The property is comprised of more than 118 acres, and the renovation was planned with environmental sustainability in mind. It features rainwater recovery and energy generation. There are also plans for a botanical park. In addition, it will be an administrative hub, so it won’t sit empty between events. I think this arena will become a Roman icon, and that’s hard to achieve when you have to compete with well-established icons such as the Pantheon and the Colosseum. Good for Rome.
Onward.
In keeping with my plan to have a slow introduction to Rome, we drove past Cinecittà, which is a 99 acre movie studio that Mussolini built to be a propaganda machine for his fascist dictatorship in 1937. At the time, its slogan was “Cinema is the most powerful weapon.”
During WWII, it became a German army barracks, and was later bombed by the Allies. After the war it became a displaced person camp for about 3,000 people for 2 years.
Cinecittà continues to be the largest film studio in Europe. It has produced 47 Academy Award winning films. Directors such as Federico Fellini, Sergio Leone, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and Mel Gibson have worked there. It had a hand in producing such movies as Quo Vadis, Roman Holiday, Ben-Hur, La Dolce Vita, Cleopatra, The English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Conclave. An episode of Dr. Who, from 2008, which was set in Pompeii, was filmed there as well.
We didn’t see very much in our drive-by, but the area did have a sort of film studio feel to it. It was really kind of a since-we’ll-be-in-the-neighborhood addition to the itinerary. We didn’t take the time to stop in for their tour, because I had another destination in mind for our first true taste of Rome.
A few short blocks from the studio takes you 2000 years back in time. (That can happen quite a bit in Italy. It takes some getting used to.) We got out of the car and entered a bucolic landscape called Parco degli Acquedotti, or Aqueduct Park. It is so named because 6 ancient Roman aqueducts crisscross the park, and seeing their remnants in the distance is a truly breathtaking experience. It’s hard to describe how strange it is to see such impressive construction that you know was erected at a time when there was no sophisticated machinery.
And it’s still standing after 2000 years. Granted, the aqueducts had to be repaired multiple times when they were still operating, and many of those repairs are visible. Some of the archways had to be reinforced because when you’re moving as much as 2,200 liters per second of water, with its accompanying turbulence, in an area prone to earthquakes, structural stability can get compromised.
These aqueducts helped lead to the fall of Rome, because their enemies could destroy them miles away from the city and cut off their water supply, and if Romans attempted to go out and make repairs, they’d be attacked. In the middle ages, impoverished people would make their homes beneath the arches of these aqueducts, and much of the land around them became makeshift gardens. The arches continued to be inhabited by homeless people until 1988, when the area was made into the regional park that it is today.
As we walked along its well-established paths, we heard someone playing what sounded like a recorder. They were playing songs that sounded ancient. We couldn’t see them. They were deep in the undergrowth with other people who sounded like they were using scythes to chop out the underbrush that had taken over that patch of the field. I’m glad DH got a recording of all of that, because it definitely added to the ambience of the place for us. When a modern train wasn’t rushing past, taking any illusion of being in ancient Rome with it, that is. This video below brings me right back to that day every time I watch it.
We had a picnic lunch of fresh Italian bread with sun-dried tomatoes, cheese, salami and olive oil, and it seemed like the best sandwich I ever ate in my life. I don’t know how much the locale played a part in that, but it was very satisfying. While we ate, I thought about how places such as this make you realize what a tiny little piece of the human timeline you actually get to experience firsthand. To realize that is both bittersweet and oddly comforting at the same time.
We didn’t have time to see the entire park, but we did see parts of the Acqua Claudia, the Acqua Julia, and the Acqua Marcia. I was kind of sad not to be able to spend the day there, and even more sad to realize we’d probably never come this way again. But I comforted myself with the thought that Rome’s many emperors would be proud to know that these aqueducts are still standing. (Yes, most of the emperors were despicable, but they did leave a lasting legacy that still impacts us today, and that is impressive.)
We had to tear ourselves away because we had an appointment to keep later that day. But while we were in the neighborhood, I decided we needed to make a quick stop at the Tor Fiscale. It was just another few blocks away, and you can’t go inside this tower, so it would only be a quick look.
The tower stands in a strategic location. It’s right where one could block the flow of supplies along two major Roman roads: The Via Latina and the Appian Way. And since so many aqueducts passed through there, it was a great place to cut off the water supply. On this spot, in the 6th century, the Ostrogoths closed in the spaces between the arches and created a fortified area from which they could launch their sieges of Rome. Robert Guiscard also used it as his base for conquering Southern Italy and Sicily in the 11th century.
We know from ancient records that the 30-meter-high Tor Fiscale has been standing at this particular intersection of Acqua Claudia and Acqua Marcia (there are several such intersections) since at least the year 1277. It served as a watch tower. It got its name because the estate once belonged to a Papal Treasurer with the delightful name Filippo Foppi. Originally surrounded by ramparts (the tower, not Foppi), that distinctive feature on the tower was still visible as late as 1950.
After WWII, the entire Tor Fiscale neighborhood was inhabited by refugees in illegal shelters. After that it sort of became a tradition for squatters to live there, building their own illegal houses, schools and shops. In the 1970’s, 200 squatters were relocated to a social housing complex created for them, and the illegal neighborhood was torn down to make way for a residential neighborhood.
Even though that residential neighborhood does exist, people still tend to erect illegal houses among the legal ones to this day. And in 2016, unfortunately, it was discovered that people had been dumping household appliances, garbage and industrial waste in the Tor Fiscale catacombs. This illegal dump included a 28,250 cubic foot lake of motor oil. People had been drilling shafts down to the catacombs from above, and were essentially using those shafts as free garbage chutes.
If I were a superstitious person, I’d truly believe that Tor Fiscal and the neighborhood around it was cursed. Perhaps all that negative, war-like energy seeped into its desperate, impoverished, modern-day residents, and it manifests itself as a total disregard for their country’s historical heritage. But I’m not superstitious. I just think that people are lazy, greedy, selfish and short-sighted. And the tower gets to look down, unmoving, as it all unfolds. Heartbreaking.
So, that was our mixed bag of easy introductions to Rome. Now it was time to skirt the city and find our lodging. I have to say that DH managed to do that with his usual aplomb. Our gracious host Ricardo was there to greet us and show us around.
Once our luggage was safe and sound, we told Ricardo that we were heading to the airport to drop off the car, and would take the bullet train back into town so we could arrive just in time for our Colosseum tour. He said that might not be a good idea, because there were going to be a lot of people in town for events related to welcoming the newly announced Pope Leo, the very first American pope. He suggested we take a shuttle, and then switch to something else and then something else and…well, not being familiar with the city, and knowing his plan had way too many opportunities to go sideways, we went with our plan instead.
We dropped off the pristine, scratch-free car (even the rental agent seemed impressed), and headed right to the trains, which go into the city about every 15 minutes. It was a little nerve-wracking, because there was a really long line for the ticket kiosks, and we were cutting it close to get to our reserved Colosseum tour. But it all worked out in the end, and when we arrived at Termini Station downtown, we got a 72 hour Roma Pass for the metro, which we’d make good use of during our stay, then hopped on the blue line metro, and went two stops down to the Colosseo station, and walked up the stairs and… Oh my God…
And that, Dear Reader, is a subject for the next Italy post. 😊
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