The Internet Personified: Thirteen things about Rome

And what my mother and I did there

1. The first thing you must know about Rome is that you can’t visit again till 2026. Starting December 24 of this year, the city enters its Jubilee year and basically, as one tour guide told me, if you’re not Catholic, there’s no reason for you to visit. The city is expecting a total of 35—that’s THIRTY FIVE—million people over the course of the year. Let’s put this in perspective: all of Berlin has 3.5 million people, all of Delhi (not NCR, just the metro area) is 33 million, all of Bombay is 21 million. Now imagine all those people in one little section of a small city, roads already clogged with traffic, sidewalks already (in autumn! low season!) so full of tour guides leading dull groups of tourists limping along listening on headphones as the guide explains this ancient thing and that one, that you have to step into the road to avoid them. Try Spain, instead. Spain is nice! (But wait, they don’t want you. I don’t know what to tell you, man. Northern Europe for your summer vacation next year?)

2. The second thing you must know about Rome is that it looks exactly how you imagined it. Now, I’ve been to cities around the world where you’re like, “Wait a second, this is nothing like the films/art/books I’ve consumed about this place. Was it all nothing but artistic license?” Rome on the other hand with its flat, earth-toned buildings, window shutters open, tall windows beckoning, the cobblestoned roads, the two people casually shouting “Ciao, mi amore!” to each other, the moon hitting your eye like, yes, exactly like a big old pizza pie, that’s a-Rom-e! It was made out of your fantasies, which is sad for people who live in it, who wants to be a Disney theme park creature all the time, but goodness, look at all those piazzas, and wouldn’t this be a nice place to have an Aperol Spritz, even though it’s November and not super warm outside. and aren’t all these restaurant owners conspiring to make you feel like you are basically starring in a movie about your life set in Rome? (The best kind of film.)

   [DIGRESSION: Emily in Paris is moving to Rome and we saw one street it was being shot on, and the President of France and the Mayor of Rome are having WORDS about it. Seriously.]

   

   Isn’t that just the most Roman view you’ve ever seen?

3. I love listening to Italian. Prego. Mangiare. Pronto. Bella. And my favourite: allora. It sings more than German, although I have a friend who thinks German is sexy. Zexy, they would say here. I guess it depends on how much you understand. To my uncomprehending ear, Italian sounds like a song. Maybe they’re just talking about how crowded the bus was today, but if you listen without understanding, they could be reciting great reams of poetry. Now German is a language I struggle with, understanding just enough to know what’s happening, not enough to write an epic play. My struggles colour my perception of this language, but Italian has no hold on me at all, so I’m free to enjoy it.

4. We stayed in Trastevere, which we couldn’t pronounce properly, so no one understood us on the first question, ie: which way to Trastevere? At first, we were doing the long aahhh in the beginning so Traaa-stay-vere. It was only on our last day that I realised it was Trastev-ere, all the first half of the word bunched together, the second added as an afterthought. Trastevere is cool, full of bars, full of restaurants, and widely recognised as the nicest part of town. Hip enough for the Romans to enjoy it, close enough to the centre for the tourists. Loud though. We slept with the windows closed and could still hear partymakers shouting and singing as they made their ways back to Airbnbs, so I wonder what it would be like in the stifling summer.

5. We had our own tiny Airbnb. It was no more than a room, one corner of it had a sink, the other had a table on which the owner had put a bottle of sparkling wine and a packet of sugar biscuits. The bathroom had a bidet but no door, and so I couldn’t poop for six days and on the seventh, I sent my mum to sit on the staircase outside and went with cautious abandon. I was surprised to see no one had mentioned this doorlessness on the other reviews, but when it came to my turn (to review, that is) I was so overwhelmed by Rome and everything I had seen that I could only say wonderful things about the room and slipped in to the middle of a long sentence: “the bathroom has no door.” I wonder if anyone will read it the next time they’re booking.

6. My friend who lives in Rome (and in the Trastevere area, I felt like a local!) said, “It might be too late for the Vatican museum” when I messaged her in October to say we were coming. Panicking, I quickly went online and quickly booked the last two slots for November 7, at 4 pm. I was glad we did, queues were enormous and there was no chance of getting in without a prebooking, and even then we had to shuffle in line with the 4.15’ers until someone came and yanked all of us 4s out of the queue, exactly like when you’re catching a flight. I was really only interested in the Sistine Chapel like everyone else, but the Vatican museum folk are SMART, they put a whole museum before the chapel and there are no shortcuts. You go through the museum, vast rooms filled with art and sculpture and about three hours later, having climbed up and down and maybe around (?) many flights of stairs you finally exit into the Sistine chapel where the guards will chivvy you away from the entrance so you have to stop gawping, and everyone is so tired they just want to sit on the benches lining the walls, so you hover like a hawk and pounce on the first two empty seats and then you just sit there and admire whatever parts of the Michelangelo you can see because you’re definitely not moving your ass from your hard won spots. But the museum too was fantastic and worth a whole day (if you can get tickets in 2026, remember). I didn’t get an audio guide so I used this link which was super.

7. I have quickly learned how to avoid tourist trap restaurants in Rome. (Google Maps doesn’t really work because sometimes the restaurant owners flood the system with thousands of five star recommendations and bring their own places up the system such as two places I was tempted by in Trastevere, we ate at one and it was profoundly okay, which is not something you want to think about food in Italy. Here’s where not to eat:

   1. Restaurants with plastic red checked tablecloths.

   2. “Hello my friend” restaurants with barkers outside urging you to come in.

   3. Places where the sun umbrellas outside have the name of the restaurant on them.

   4. Menus that repeat the same three “Roman” pastas you’ve seen everywhere else with nothing else offered as a variation. (Bacon and tomato sauce, chilli and tomato sauce and cheese and pepper sauce. One lasagne thrown in for “colour.”)

   5. Places that serve food in stainless steel skillets to make it look more “rustic.”

   6. Restaurants directly on piazzas, good for a drink but terrible for food.

8. My Roman friend told me about her cherished places which I sadly cannot share with you (see: thirty five million people all googling “where to eat in rome” through 2025) but here are some places I found on my own steam (Reddit etc) which I enjoyed very much. Bar del Cappuccino di Santoro for transcendent pastrami sandwiches, Dar Poeta and Trattoria Luzzi for pizza (the second is close to the Colosseum and cheap for the area and very local), San Calisto for cheap croissants and coffee and people watching in the morning (at night it turns into a heaving bar full of drunken Gen Z children so go at your own risk), Il Duca for your more intimate fine dining experience. (Reserve here in advance.) Stop by at places marked “suppli” or “bar” for quick take away pizza slices sold by weight, and drink at anything marked an enoteca or wine bar, the regular house wine is more expensive than the rest of Italy (or Germany and Austria for that matter) but very good.

   

   Eating pizza from a suppli at the piazza which is the only good way to eat at the piazza. Also wearing my new blue sweater which I mention further down.

9. Maybe you’ll go to Rome and just see the major hits, your Forum, your Colosseum, your whathaveyou, but I’m advocating very strongly for a minor attraction I loved, the Keats and Shelley museum by the Spanish steps. It has not much to do with Shelley except that he visited once, he died in Italy as well, and is the house where Keats lived and died briefly. He had tuberculosis, it’s so sad, he was so young. The museum is very comprehensive and currently also has a special exhibition on everyone’s favourite Romantic fuckboi Byron. Plus a gorgeous gift shop (I bought some pins with Keats quotes on them) and a sit out terrace where you can read your book and admire the Spanish steps in front of you while other tourists go up and down (they’re not allowed to sit on the stairs any more) and give you resentful looks for being so rested and so nearby. Keats was looked after by the artist Joseph Severn who took on the job because he couldn’t afford to go to Rome and Keats was going and needed a nurse. In the end, he was a devoted companion and most tender nurse and I wonder if something… more was going on there but the woman at the ticket counter was like, “Noo, Keats was going to be married!” and I didn’t want to say, “Well, a lot of gay men are!” but I can’t find anything to support my theory so it’s just going to be slash fiction for me.

   

   I like the blue one best. Maybe wishing will make it so! I’m planning to wear them (one at a time) on the lapels of my woolen winter coats. A little zuzh if you will.

10. I went into the Humana (a chain of second hand shops across Europe, the Berlin one is pretty bad and I usually never have good luck) looking for a belt and I found a lovely one but also a pair of red polyester pants and a woolen skirt. Not to mention the indigo blue sweater I bought from a street vendor for ten euros. Good shopping.

    

    Here is my nice belt (and the doorless bathroom.)

11. One night we bought a 125 ml bottle of red wine and sat by the Largo di Torre Argentine, which is a bunch of ruins now turned over to a cat sanctuary so the cats came in and out and we watched them and drank our thimblefuls of red. The man who sold it to us was a Bangladeshi immigrant who said he came to Rome on a tourist visa and never left. “Then you can never go home?” I asked, and he said, “Oh no, I’m a citizen now.”

12. I liked the walking tour we did with a company affiliated with Sandeman, which is the tour guides we used for Berlin when my mother visited last summer. In Rome, our guide was an old man called Gastone who said, “Call me Gas” and who had a wonderful way of telling stories. He seemed to really enjoy what he was doing which made it very enjoyable for us as well. (You can find him here, but he also does walks on New Rome Free Tours, which is a pay what you want model.)

    The second tour was not so nice, the guide seemed rushed, though friendly, and our subject: the Jewish history of Rome and Trastevere was interesting but I felt there wasn’t that much to say so she kept using filler subjects (we only picked it because we thought we’d learn more about Trastevere). This was with Rome Free Walks, which is a completely different company.

13. Have you read The Agony and the Ecstasy? You should before you go to Rome. It’s so Michelangelo’s city, and that made me happy because I’ve read the book many times and always felt so sad for him, poor lonely genius. When he died, he was buried in Rome, but Florence wanted him back because he was born there so they had to take out his bones and ship them off.

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And that’s all I’ve got for you in this edition. Look out for next week which is when my Vienna diary goes out, lots of surprises there! Meanwhile it is snowing and raining at the same time in Berlin so send me good wishes but also cheer me up by buying me a coffee? :D Your support means so much.

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xx

m

Who are you? Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, writer of internet words (and other things) author of eight books (support me by buying a book!) and general city-potter-er.

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