Rome [antikvár]

Introducing Rome Rome is the real thing. So many of its legendary sights are the originai article that to see them is often to fulfil a lifelong dream. And it's this that raises the goose pimples: the feeling that the city really is as old as its seven hills, that in Rome time and beauty are measured on an altogether grander scale. But to label this bewitching, chaotic, exhausting and romantic city an open-air muséum is to deny it much of its character. Take the Colosseum, for example. To look up in awe, ignoring the hive of activity that's taking place ali around you - the hustlers hawking their overpriced tat, the gladiators with their crocodile grins and plastic swords - is to overlook the minutiae of everyday Roman life. Romans don't deny their heritage, nor do they seek to set it on a pedestal, they simply accept it and get on with the onerous task of earning their daily crust. For Rome, more than for most cities, this has always been the centrai dilemma of city life: how to maintain its priceless heritage while improving the lot of its cheerfully cynical inhabitants. Certainly the Jubilee-inspired efforts of recent years have made a différence. Transport has been boosted, new muséums have been opened and old ones renovated, and the long-awaited music auditorium has opened to universal praise - improvements which even the most begrudging of Romans would acknowledge. To say, however, that Rome has never had it so good would be to overstate the case. It hasn't re-found the heady days of la dolce vita, but it is looking good and it is feeling better than it has for a long time. In a country of unparalleled beauty, both naturai and architectural, Rome remains the jewel in the crown. In no other city can you see so much in such a short space of time and yet merely Scratch the surface. Strip away one layer of history and another appears in its place - often quite literally. The city you see on the surface tells quite a tale, but not the whole story. About 4m below ground level there exists another world, with traces of other Settlements deeper stili. St Peter's Basilica stands on the site of an earlier basilica, built by Emperor Constantine in the 4th Century AD over the necropolis where St Peter is believed to have been buried. Castel Sant'Angelo was the tomb of Emperor Hadrian before it was converted into a fortress. The form of Piazza Navona suggests a hippodrome and, in fact, it was built on the ruins of the Emperor Domitian's Stadium. In Rome every period has left a mark. In fact, from the time when it was caput mundi (centre of the world), through the development of Christianity to the present day - a period of more than 2500 years - Rome has become an unsurpassed anthropological and archaeo-logical archive of Western culture. And it's enough to wander the streets to see this. The art of Michelangelo, the sculptures of Bernini, the ivy-clad palazzi lining cobbled streets, the perfectly formed piazzas - Rome is all this. Nothing is hidden, it's ali there waiting for you, much as it has been for hundreds of years.