ETERNAL CITY---or Infernal Garage?
MAURICE ROWDON.
October, they say, is the best time to see Rome.
Sunny but cool. And it's true. You should have a good
time if you survive the petrol-fumes, get across the many
narrow roads safely, and don't have a nervous breakdown
from lack of sleep.
Buses and lorries are allowed to trundle through the
city in hundreds every day belching enormous black clouds
of diesel smoke : The trees look tired and half burned-up.
On a cloudy day one can see the dull, dirty haze of fumes
hanging in the streets.
It can't be good for the lungs.
Yet Rome is supposed to have the finest climate in the
world.
Traffic has improved over the last two years. Cars
used to make a target of you if you tried to cross the road,
and swerved round you just in time. But now there is a
speed-limit (cars are slower than in London, on the whole), -
and drivers seem tired now. of using the ir cars for self-
expression.
Zebra crossings were painted on the roads two or three
years ago to make it possible for people to cross the street
sometimes, but either because there weren't enough police
to impose thousands of fines every day, or because it delay-
ed the city's one-way traffic system, they were more or less
dropped from use, though they---and the law regarding them---


acy
are still there. Also, you got people strolling ovér
% Aav
then---and/fines nere needed for the pedestrians as well.
The crossings remain now as a kind of legal defence: if
a car hits you he's to blame.
But it'fs more than your life is Worth tà plant your
foot on one of these zebra crossings and just walk as you
might in London.
You, would probably get across---Romens
are quick and intelligent drivers---but there are more amusing
jettne
ways of giming-yourself a scare.
One thing has changed:
the old sense of car-drivers belonging to the privileged
and pedestrians to the under-privileged has gone. As
combatants you are now on an equal footing, at least.
Cars have totally ruined Rome - The little square
outside the Palazzo Borghese, where you could once stand
and see why the building was always called 'the herpsichord',
because of its subtle curve, is so packed with cars that you
can hardly walk in or 'out.' Two S treams of traffic roar
round the little stone boat in the middle of Piazza di
Spagna, where people used to sit and admire the steps lead-
ing up to the Trinita dei Monti.
The narrow streets in
the old-Spanish-quarter--- - perha ps the most attractive part
of the centre, with tiny hotels and delicatessen shops---
are fume-traps, and being a shopkeeper in one of them must
be slow torture. A year or so ago there was a much-public-
ised scheme for eliminating traffic from these narrow streets
at the centre altogether, but it raised too many problems.
There vould have had to be a priority-system---proority for
doctors, delivery vans, taxis---and in a short time the


prior ity would have spread in a Roman way: priority-
tickets might have been on sale (privately), and in the end
one of the left-wing newspapers might have un earthed a
public scandal.
An old story.
At the recent opening of the Ecumenical Council, when
thousands of priests from all over the world came to Romef
the whole of St. Peter's square was lit-up in the evening,
and the castle of Sant' Angelo close by (the ancient refuge
of the popes, built squarely on top of Hadrian's tomb) was
ringed with flaming oil-lamps like a vast wedding-cake.
So many cars poured into Rome for the 'homage to the pope'
that for four or five hours the W hole city echoed with one
persistent blaring of car-horns in protest, and all the ma in
streets within a kilometre of the Vatican were choked full.
It gave one a preview of what will one day happen throughout
the city if car-ownership increases at its present rate.
Two or three years ago there were no fly-over roads
or underground passages.
There: was a great fear of unearth-
ing ancient Roman treasures which would then hold up construct-
ion indefinitely while archaeologists arrived from all over
the world.. But somebody must have got the order to: disreg-
ard anything ancient that was:found: the new roads had to
be ready for the Olympics in 1960, and they weré built with
miraculous swiftness.
Immense holes appeared all over
Rome, and work went on underfloodlighss at nigh t: Ancient
things must have been found, S ince modern Rome is built
straight on top of the ancient city.
This reduced the noise, too.
Or rather, it reduced


the fragmentary noise---the bangs, whistles, skids, roars,
petulant taps on the hooter, which you used to hear. There
is more of an homogeneous city-roar now. Also the police
tightened up on the law about silencers. At one times--
Valy
since an engine that roars gets more appreciation thân one
thatvdoesn't---it was quite the thing to have your silencer
off and make a noise like an aeroplane. People said it
was 'gaytf". Besides which, it was supposed to save petrol.
By midday the city is a madhouse. In the heat nerves
get frayed easily: people hardly even look round now if a
driver leaps out of his car and stands yelling curses at the
oN uudday
man behind him.
The buses are crammed so full that the
doors don't close. As a ticket-man on one of them said the
other day, sitting in his little seat near the rear-door,
'I've been sitting here for twenty-five years, and do you
wonder I'm looking forward to my old age?'
Two-decker buses
were planned once, but y ou only see them at the sea-resorts.
Probably they wouldn't be able to manoeuvre the ancient
bridges and arches which you could once admire in more or less
peace; the massive gates leading into the city at Piazza del
Popolo and Piazza Fiume, for instance, are now dark arched
shadows hanging over a stream of traffic, hardly getting a
glance from anybody.
And cars are still allowed in St. Peter's square, right
up to the steps of the church.
This can be particulariy
nerfe-wracking at night when the square is dimly-lit, becarse
there are no traffic-lanes: you can be caught out in the
open.


* Can can Hiil ciue
You can also drive---quite unnecessarily---in the
tiny square of the Capitol, which is one of the most consol-
ing and intimate places in Rome, high above the Piazza
Venezia. Recentiy the bishops and cardinals of the Ecumer n-
afarwesl s
ical Council were invited there for a reception in-the late.
he Mnere ue Sle 1e +o C
afternoon,-and foronee the traffic was barred. The diff-
erence was astonishing. You.could really stand and look
at the square.
Apart from which the walls, roofs, windows,
were lined with flaming oil-lamps as Sant' Angelo had been
the first evening, so that the whole square, with its bronze
statue of Marcue Aurelius in the middle, looked mellow and
warm as it mus t have done a century or two ago.
It gave
one a glimpse of the old Rome, 9 which was still more or less
intact even ten or fifteen years ago, before the garage-epoch
set in.
It must have smelt like that in the days before
electricity, too---a faint oil-smell from the flaming torches.
Our electricity is naked and glaring by comparison, and it
makes stonework look naked.
You could really see the flaking
stone walls for the first time, and the sky was visible over
the roofs.
You could just see Michelangelo's courtyard
through the arched and cobbled entrance of the museum,
where the cardinals were going to and fro.
But it isn't like Rome to protect herself against the
ravages and discomforts of time. . She always seems to get
the worst of every epoch---whether it's an invasion of Goths
or an invasion of cars. This, people say, is the city's
power of survival.
It never gets like a museum.
Still, you don't have to be in a museum not to get


asphyxiated or run over.
On the other hand, Rome has
never been a real city and never will.
This is its power
over foreigners, perhaps. It has always had the flurry
and discomfort of a badly-run small town. Even Catullus
complained about the deafening noise.
So it provides the traveller with an element of risk.
Perhaps it means to. ' After all, it may change your life---
if you survive the visit. A worthwhile bargain, perhaps -