The best pizza place in Rome, Cafe Florida, is across from the cat sanctuary at Largo di Torre Argentina, so you eat the pizza sitting on the curb surrounded by cats who would like some. They are friendly and pettable. The sanctuary is the excavated ruins of a not terribly important something-or-other, so the curb is a barrier against a large drop, and you peer down counting the cats as they sprawl on arches and brickwork below you. The cats are citizens of the City of Rome and so may not be adopted outside its borders, and that means the square mile or so of the City, not the outskirts or even the Vatican.
There are at least two churches per block, and of course not all of them are open all the time, and so you pass a lot of priests on the street as they make rounds between the various churches in their charge to do different time-of-day services at different places. The last time I was at Largo Argentina (with A.), a scrawny black cat with a perfectly rectangular splotch of white under his chin hurried past us from a side street and down the steps into the no-humans-allowed areas. He was obviously the local priest returning to his base church from Mass elsewhere, could have been nothing else.
Largo Argentina is not quite the geographical center of Rome As She Matters To Us Tourists, but close enough, because the existence of the Vatican quarter across the river to the west has pulled the string of most traveled areas away from the Forum, and the counterpull of the train station away to the east near the Colosseum does not balance it. The section of road between about Largo Argentina and Trajan's column is the part one walks through over and over and over again, although I usually loop north to walk by the Pantheon when I can because there's less traffic.
If you need a public restroom near the Forum and you try inside the Vittorio Emanuele wedding-cake monument, they won't charge admission and you'll see a lot of terrifying Art Deco-style Fascist mural work but you'll have to climb so many flights to get the the bathroom that you will actually be on the level of the outside viewing platform and the doors of Santa Maria Ara Coeli, the church commonly known to my household as Santa Maria Up All Those Damn Stairs. I had been meaning to go to that church for years and letting the stairs put me off, and the view of the Forum is spectacular, so it was worthwhile, but what I had actually wanted was the bathroom, and there must be easier ways.
The thing is I can go on like this indefinitely. Do you have specific questions? It will be much easier if you have specific questions.
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Date: 2013-11-15 06:46 am (UTC)There are at least two churches per block, and of course not all of them are open all the time, and so you pass a lot of priests on the street as they make rounds between the various churches in their charge to do different time-of-day services at different places. The last time I was at Largo Argentina (with A.), a scrawny black cat with a perfectly rectangular splotch of white under his chin hurried past us from a side street and down the steps into the no-humans-allowed areas. He was obviously the local priest returning to his base church from Mass elsewhere, could have been nothing else.
Largo Argentina is not quite the geographical center of Rome As She Matters To Us Tourists, but close enough, because the existence of the Vatican quarter across the river to the west has pulled the string of most traveled areas away from the Forum, and the counterpull of the train station away to the east near the Colosseum does not balance it. The section of road between about Largo Argentina and Trajan's column is the part one walks through over and over and over again, although I usually loop north to walk by the Pantheon when I can because there's less traffic.
If you need a public restroom near the Forum and you try inside the Vittorio Emanuele wedding-cake monument, they won't charge admission and you'll see a lot of terrifying Art Deco-style Fascist mural work but you'll have to climb so many flights to get the the bathroom that you will actually be on the level of the outside viewing platform and the doors of Santa Maria Ara Coeli, the church commonly known to my household as Santa Maria Up All Those Damn Stairs. I had been meaning to go to that church for years and letting the stairs put me off, and the view of the Forum is spectacular, so it was worthwhile, but what I had actually wanted was the bathroom, and there must be easier ways.
The thing is I can go on like this indefinitely. Do you have specific questions? It will be much easier if you have specific questions.