Routes: Rome

An unplanned, but (actually somewhat) operable itinerary for Rome's Trastevere neighborhood. Featuring historian and conservator Ali Librizzi.

Trastevere

I should be in India by now. But I have fucked up. So I am in Rome, for no other reason than it’s a little closer to Delhi than Marseille.

You all recommended I hang around in the Trastevere neighborhood so that’s where I am. It has all the old-world charm, winding streets, and renaissance Piazzas required to give it a “happening, bohemian vibe” and an eternal raucous orgy of Airbnb experiences food tours. It is also achingly beautiful, and historic, and, this week in February, drenched in soft rain.

I dreamed of a hotel, an extremely plain, modest, old hotel, with a little wooden writing desk, where I could get some thoughts down. I found it at Hotel Trastevere, a small family run operation on Via Luciano Marana. The room is clean and basic, the service is kindly, and a big painting of Piazza di Santa Maria in Trastevere, disengenuously empty, hangs behind the desk.

Aperitivo

I call an old friend.

The last time I saw Ali, we were likely smoking a post-shift something on the cobblestones of Fore street in Portland Maine, outside a since-shuttered Italian restaurant called Paciarino. At the time, she would have been dreaming out loud of an impending move to Italy- she had just been accepted to the American University in Rome for the fall. 7 years later, she’s still here, making her way as a historian, guide, and conservator in the grand home of old stones.

We meet up at her local. In Vino Veritas is set back from the deeply gouged cobblestones of Via Della Scala, across the street from a 3rd-century arch dating back to the city’s imperial walls. John Cabot University is not far.

Foreigners seem perfectly welcome and the circadian rhythms are hazy and diverse. A group of Dutch students are downing pints. An elegantly rumpled friend of the bartender wafts in with a yawn as if he’s just woken up. Some French tourists blow in for a takeaway Campari, and are quickly shooed back out because they have forgotten to put out their cigarettes. I order a Suze and the bartender teases me relentlessly for it.

Museums

Then, pizza, at a place she knows I’ll like.

We flit through a cold downpour, drawn like moths to the blinding fluorescent light inside Pizzeria Ai Marmi. What a relic. The place has been serving traditional roman-style pizza since the 60s. By the looks of the waitstaff, probably some of these very same guys.

I wouldn’t say it’s good. The pizza is fine, certainly, the ingredients are Italian after all. It’s drinking food. Crisp and tangy and perfect for servicing the guzzling of light beers on a hot summer night. But it is not a hot summer night and we do not have cold beers. We have wet socks. And goblets of shit red wine.

But as a culinary artifact, it is perfect. The waitstaff ushers in waves of sodden diners, weaves through the labyrinth of heavy wooden furniture filling them with pizza. The place hums along with an agility and curt hospitality practiced over decades, even though the shift workers that pace and agility was designed to serve have long since gone.

I love that Ali took me here. This is the kind of place to be enjoyed with someone you used to work Friday and Saturday dinner shifts with, someone who appreciates a classic symphony, faithfully executed, obstinate in the face of change.

Breakfast

In my opinion there is absolutely no reason to go looking for the “best” maritozzo in Rome, or anywhere. Which is not to say it is not an object of culinary heritage worthy of a lifetime of study and critical approach. But as a tourist, the best maritozzo is probably gonna be the one that comes to you when you need it most. Maybe from the place that has a patio table free, right now, beckoning from dappled sunlight. Maybe from the place that’s right there when you can’t walk another step without bathing the hangover in sugar and caffeine.

For Allie, that Maritozzo often comes from “Volpicelli,” an old school pastry shop down the street from her house in the serene Monteverdi neighborhood, just at the foot of the park.

A Walk

Availed of sugar and espresso and cradling an enormous joint, we walk the misty grounds of the Villa Doria Paphili, a 17th century private estate that now serves as Rome’s largest city park. Mist settles on impossibly green fields. Baroque fountains gurgle. Crows hop. An elderly woman scrambles down the bank of a pond to feed escarole to an enormous swan. The historic Via Aurelia snakes past her, leaving from the Porta San Pancrazio north and west toward Liguria, across the mountains, through Provence, past Arles, towards Spain, snaking through an old Mediterranean world with which I’m becoming acquainted. The joint disappears. You’d forgive us for forgetting which millennium we’re in.

More Aperitivo

You’ve heard of Bar San Calisto. There was even one of those fairly embarassing Punch Drink lifestyle pieces about it this year. But I have to admit, it’s perfect. It is an ur-bar. It has cheap drinks and curt service, fading football posters and perfect macchiatos.

I just wanted to take a moment to appreciate its geography. Bar San Calisto faces due west along a wide square with low-slung buildings opposite, drowning its terrace in sunlight all the live-long Roman aperitivo hours. I imagine the bricks staying warm just that minute longer as the twilight descends. No real surprise that humans should stick to them like lichen for the last sixty years. Here’s to sixty years more.

Ali gets bathed in kisses from two separate tables as we stop for a beer. The only people who seem to dislodge the vibe? Airbnb foodie tours, awkwardly mashing tables together to service a group of 10.

A Final Note

The carbonara is as good at Osteria da Zi Umberto. Perhaps you’ll find my scarf there, lost in the corner by the coat rack. It is grey with a fine red stripe, made of yak’s wool from Himachal. A tragic loss but a decent time for it.