Books |
Quiet Corners of Rome
David Downie
By
Published: May 05, 2011
Category:
Travel
The book doesn’t exist, but on the basis of the title I cooked up, it’s the shortest book ever written.
“Feminism in Sicily.”
“Quiet Corners of Rome” might be a runner-up. Rome…quiet? The city’s one giant Vespa with a hole in the muffler. Traffic’s anarchy. Packs of tourists — 39 million a year — clog every public square with a barista nearby. And does anyone go to an office in the morning? Judging from the partying that goes deep into the night, it surely doesn’t seem like it
And it’s been this way forever. Horace (65 BC – 8 BC) complained of “ “the smoke, the wealth, the noise!”
Yet here is another of the “Quiet Corners” series. It should be solid. And… it is. [To buy “Quiet Corners of Rome” from Amazon, click here.]
To his credit, David Downie does not cheat. There are 900 churches in Rome, and a lazy guide could have pointed you to a great many of them. But Downie is a realist — he’s often talking about a literal quiet corner that’s tucked away behind some major tourist destination. Like Via del Colle Oppio, an isolated bench just a hundred yards from the Coliseum. Or the Courtyard of Museo Pietro Canonica at the highly trafficked Villa Borghese — this gem, he says, is “atmospheric” and “little visited.&rdquo
The best neighborhood in any city is generally cool and calm. In the Aventine area, he commends “a sloping alley…car-free, mossy and picturesquely weed-grown.” Of equal interest is Garbatella, a 1930s “garden suburb for the working class” that’s now considerably yuppified.
Shopping is such an attraction in Rome you may never go to the outskirts of the city, but if you do, there are 400-year-old trees in the Villa Doria Pamphili. And did you know that l0 miles of the Apian Way have been preserved?
Churches, cloisters, fountains and courtyards rich in plundered sculpture fill out the book. Closing it, you can almost feel the hush. Still, if you’re going to Rome….bring ear plugs.
