Italy

Dear Reader: We visited Italy twice in two weeks in November 2021. This blog has been sitting in my drafts folder since then. I am publishing it now because my family will shortly be arriving in Rome and I have little confidence that they will manage this trip successfully without my guidance. Without further ado: 

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Our first trip was a weekend jaunt to Milan and our second trip was a weeklong sojourn to Rome during the week of Thanksgiving.

Over the course of our several travels, we've developed a sociological theory: the triangle of rules. We believe that rules can roughly be arrayed in a triangle, with the points being actual rules, aspirational rules, and inscrutable rules. Societies can be positioned in the triangle based on the extent to which certain types of rules dominate the social contract. Actual rules are written rules with prescribed penalties that are respected and enforced. In Switzerland, there are many of these: trash may only be disposed of in specially marked bags, lawn mowing on Sunday is prohibited in many places, etc. Inscrutable rules are unwritten norms enforced by ostracism. In the USA and UK, queuing is the common way of gaining access to things in an orderly manner. What makes this inscrutable is that people queue when there is no obvious reason to queue - no signs, no lanes marked on the floor, no security guards hustling people into order - you just do it. This is less true in other places, where it's more common to jostle for position. Aspirational rules have the veneer of actual rules, in that they are written and have theoretical penalties, but enforcement of the rules is subjective. Italy's traffic rules largely fall into this category. Speed limits, lane markers, parking spots - these things are suggestions.

Speaking of traffic, having recently spent time in two large Italian urban centers, we were able to make numerous observations of Italian driving. 

• Pedestrian space and vehicular space are fluid. In the center of Rome, cars mingle in close proximity with people on narrow cobblestone streets. This means cars crawl along at an agonizing pace while walkers duck into alcoves to get out of their way (sometimes). 
• Parking spaces remain a mystery to us. There are marked spaces that you theoretically should park in, but these are almost never available. The general criteria for parking in Italy seem to be: (1) is it paved?, and (2) is it unoccupied by another vehicle? This obviously opens up a lot of possibilities. For example, places I would call "intersections" are often parking spaces in Italy. 
• Lanes are meaningless. Have ridden in several taxis, we've come to understand that lane markers are guidelines (literally and figuratively), drifting into a lane of oncoming traffic to fly by a bus is a thing you can do, even if another bus is coming the other way.

Milan

Milan is a fashion capital of the world. Indeed, we walked through a high end neighborhood where store fronts were populated by hoity toity brands. To give you a sense of the vibes: Here we observed a line of well-heeled people queued outside a Chanel store while a Rolls Royce drifted slowly down the street, purring quietly. 

I may have left more confused about fashion than when I arrived. I stopped Hannah in front of several store fronts to help me understand if the high-priced articles I was looking at were fashionable or terrible. It's so hard to tell. Examples follow.

Here are the few things I think I learned about today's fashion scene that I didn't previously appreciate: (1) platform shoes are back, (2) men's pants cannot be too short, (3) fanny packs are also back.

But there is more to Milan than fashion, fortunately. It is a big (Italy's second largest) and ancient city (it's origins date back to Roman times, when it was known as Mediolanum). For example, Leonardo's Last Supper is here. I learned this on my train ride down to Milan, when I googled "What do you do Milan?" Unfortunately I couldn't see the Last Supper because all the tickets were sold out that weekend to people who planned their trip prior to boarding their train/plane. Also, there is lovely museum complex and park built in an around an old citadel called the Castello Sforzesco. The citadel is named for the Sforza family, who ruled Milan as its star was descending in the late 15th century and early 16th century. The Sforza dynasty's reign was interrupted multiple times by the meddlesome French. They seized Milan in 1499 from the Sforzas. The Sforzas were returned to power in 1512 by the Germans, until the French returned a few years later. The Sforzas were again returned to power in 1521, this time by Spain. Anyway, it seems the citadel named after them didn't do a ton of good. 

I went to Castello Sforzesco shortly after I arrived to wait for Hannah. I didn't go in the museums but spent my time wandering around the castle and park instead because I was under the assumption that Hannah would be arriving shortly by train. However, Hannah and I were under the misguided impression that all train systems operate with the same punctuality that Swiss trains do. I did not account for the possibility of a one hour delay, which is in fact what happened. 

We ate well in Milan! Rovello 18 was our favorite spot. We had a lovely thinly sliced veal with tuna sauce and capers, octopus with pumpkin, pappardelle with ragu, puntarella, chocolate cake, and panettone with mascarpone. 

Rome

Rome is a very old city. It traces its origins to about 750 BC, when - according to myth - it was founded by Romulus (hence, the name). You may not have heard the founding myth of Rome before, but you sort of have since its shares a number of plot devices with Greek and biblical stories. Romulus and Remus were demigod twins whose mother was a virgin and whose father was a god. King Amulius, a usurper king whose grasp on power was already tenuous, catches wind of these demigod infants and - feeling threatened - ordered them killed. The twins were abandoned by a river and miraculously saved. A colorful twist to this story is that the twins were nursed by a she-wolf, and the Romans seem particularly enamored with this image - it appears on countless emblems for the city. Anyway, the evil king Amulius' plans are foiled and he is brought to ruin. Eventually the twins kill him, and then go off to found their own kingdom nearby. But this doesn't workout so well: Romulus and Remus come to heads over where exactly to found Rome. Weirdly, they decide to resolve the dispute via augury, in which one interprets signs through the behavior or appearance of birds. Unsurprisingly, each brother observed that the birds favored their position and so the dispute was ultimately resolved through violence, when Romulus killed Remus and gave the city his name.

So, now you know that Rome is old. In fact you can roughly bucket the city into two areas: one containing the old stuff from roughly Renaissance era when the Papacy ruled the roost, and another containing the really old stuff from the Roman era. 

Let's start with the old stuff. The wealth and power of the church is clear from many magnificent churches around Rome, including obviously St. Peters but also many others. Speaking of, let me mention that St. Peter's is huge and amazing. This was my second time there and it was still something to behold. The trip to the top of the dome is not for the faint of heart, since it's many, many steps. If you can manage it though, the view is fantastic. 

Of course the popes and their families didn't just splurge on churches, but also made sure that they and their families lived comfortably in opulent palaces and villas. These have since been turned into lovely museums for the public, several of which Hannah and I visited: the Villas Borghese and Farnesina, as well as the Palazzos Barberini and Doria Pamphili. The baroque and rococo styles (whose design mantra seems to be "can't stop, won't stop") were common among the many churches and palaces we visited and Hannah and I were all in. One common design feature that we particularly enjoyed were the magnificent painted (frescoed?) ceilings. Apparently in the renaissance, the thing to do when you had money to burn and no qualms whatsoever about conspicuous consumption was to hire world-renowned artists to paint every inch of your house, even the parts that would require your guests not to see without straining their necks (seriously, staring up at ceilings all day is a pain!).

Lastly, while you're in this part of town, you'll want to visit the Vatican museum. It's most famous works here are from the Renaissance, notably the papal apartments (Raphael) and the Sistine Chapel (Michelangelo). It's a large museum and so you might want to take a moment to think about how you want to spend your time there when you first arrive. Hannah, for her part, grew somewhat frustrated with my insistence on listening to the entire audio guide, which was admittedly longer than I anticipated (but then, it's not like we'll be back in Rome soon).  

Now: the really old stuff. Firstly, it's remarkable that this much of old Rome has survived as well as it has and wasn't simply paved over. Apparently this part of Rome was partly or mostly abandoned for many centuries after the fall of the empire. The population collapsed and the city contracted to the river. While this area of the city wasn't exactly forgotten, it also wasn't an area of active development. The Colosseum was converted into workshops with a small chapel in the amphitheater and a cemetery in the arena during the middle ages. Later it was a fort and after that a religious order occupied part of it. For its part, the low-lying Roman forum was partly buried under run-off from surrounding hills and it became a cow pasture in the middle ages. Later, Catholic popes (particularly Paul III) effectively mined the forum for its building materials: St. Peter's Basilica is among the many buildings in Rome built from stone and other materials pillaged from the forum. It wasn't until the late 19th century that the area was excavated and restored. 

The Pantheon sits in the messy middle between old and really old. It is largely in its original form and is one of the best preserved ancient buildings. It's huge and it remains the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome, two thousand years after it was constructed. The temple's function has always been religious: it was originally a Roman temple though it was later culturally appropriated by the Catholic church, who scrubbed it of its various pagan iconography. 

We ate well in Rome on account of Hannah, who dragged me to the drab parts of the city where all the best restaurants are. The restaurants surrounding the major tourist sites are dens of mediocrity or worse. They prey on mindless visor- and fannypack-clad tourists, presenting them with laminated, picture-laden menus in English which make dubious claims of being "authentic" and "traditional" before serving them bland overpriced fare. Here are some alternatives:   

• Marigold Roma is a hipster-ish cafe. Less Italian and more new-wave British or Californian: fresh, seasonal, and ingredient driven with nods to global flavors.  
• Santo Palato. More contemporary approach to Roman food. 
• La Tavernacia Da Bruno, which is more of a classic rustic Roman spot which was hit or miss: some dishes great, some meh. As we were sitting down to eat here, a food writer that Hannah knew walked in and sat near us. She joined our table and we had a lovely meal together. Good memories!  
• Marzapane, is more upscale and contemporary Italian. More elevated/refined than Santo Palato, which was - by contrast - more playful. 
• Note: All adjectives above are Hannah's