Rome, the Eternal City, has a history that spans twenty-five hundred years. Whether as the capital city of the Roman Kingdom, the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire, the Papal States, the Kingdom of Italy or the Italian Republic, it has been a dominant power in Western Europe and the lands bordering the Mediterranean and is commonly regarded as one of the birthplaces of western civilization.
Imagine New York City or Los Angeles as cities that are thousands of years old, rather than hundreds of years old. Keep the current traffic and population but add in ruins from previous civilizations. Keep the current visitor load and add in skillful yet erratic drivers, all in cars half the size of the typical American vehicle. Keep the public transportation and add in more scooters than you will find motorcycles in Sturgis in August. Keep the modern skyscrapers and add in both ancient and modern monuments towering far above the ground.
We spent the better part of three days touring Rome, by foot and by subway, by bus and by guided tour. We could have spent three weeks and would still have barely scratched the surface. As the English scholar Richard Le Gallienne put it, all roads indeed lead to Rome, but theirs also is a more mystical destination, some bourne of which no traveller knows the name, some city, they all seem to hint, even more eternal.
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