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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 twenty-first-century European metro-
polis. 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, exuding an air like: Hey—do
whatever you want, but I’m still Rome. I am inspired by the regal self-assurance of this town,
so grounded and rounded, so amused and monumental, knowing that she is held securely in
the palm of history. I would like to be like Rome when I am an old lady.
I take myself on a six-hour walk through town today. This is easy to do, especially if you
stop frequently to fuel up on espresso and pastries. I start at my apartment door, then wander
through the cosmopolitan shopping center that is my neighborhood. (Though I wouldn’t ex-
actly call this a neighborhood, not in the traditional sense. I mean, if it is a neighborhood, then
my neighbors are those just-plain-regular-folk with names like the Valentinos, the Guccis and
the Armanis.) This has always been an upscale district. Rubens, Tennyson, Stendhal, Balzac,
Liszt, Wagner, Thackeray, Byron, Keats—they all stayed here. I live in what they used to call
“The English Ghetto,” where all the posh aristocrats rested on their European grand tours.
One London touring club was actually called “The Society of Dilettanti”—imagine advertising
that you’re a dilettante! Oh, the glorious shamelessness of it...
I walk over to the Piazza del Popolo, with its grand arch, carved by Bernini in honor of the
historic visit of Queen Christina of Sweden (who was really one of history’s neutron bombs.
Here’s how my Swedish friend Sofie describes the great queen: “She could ride, she could
hunt, she was a scholar, she became a Catholic and it was a huge scandal. Some say she
was a man, but at least she was probably a lesbian. She dressed in pants, she went on ar-
chaeological excavations, she collected art and she refused to leave an heir”). Next to the
arch is a church where you can walk in for free and see two paintings by Caravaggio depict-
ing the martyrdom of Saint Peter and the conversion of Saint Paul (so overcome by grace that
he has fallen to the ground in holy rapture; not even his horse can believe it). Those Caravag-