From the introduction to The Smiles of Rome - A Literary Companion for Readers and Travelers (Susan Cahill, ed.):
...Rome has the power to blow your mind and heart, delivering man, woman, and child from small mindedness, bestowing a much larger capacity for the beauty of the world than you started out with....it's the accumulation of pasts in Rome and one's consciousness of those layers - in the city and in one's self - that can make Rome a life-changing experience. Once Rome enters your consciousness, your perspective on human time may change, deepen, mellow....the whole city seems to pulsate with hidden presences, a register of the human psyche and of 28 centuries of history striated by horror, by thrilling legends, and anonymous kindness...Getting to know Rome, we come home to ourselves...

Well, as a person who has a deep love and affection for Rome, I think that is quite a fitting passage and description for this beautiful and wonderful city. How I long to be sitting in Piazza Navona with a glass of wine watching the world go by....

Tracy

a great quote!

I agree Rome is indeed that special.

thanks for sharing...

dina

tcreath, mind if i join you in that glass of wine in the piazza? lol

A great quote - thanks for posting.

Rome can indeed be a life-changing experience. I can vouch for that

Steve

Thanks for the quote, dikensdad!

Hmm, guess I'll be enjoying a glass byt he fireplace tonight....and dreaming of Roma.

Randola: absolutely! When do we leave?

Tracy

Oh Rome!!! City of garbage and walls of graffitti. How I yearn for your pickpockets and purveyors of knock-off designer products. I hear you call me with your high-pitched scream of motorscooters as they whiz at me. And I long to smell the waft of diesel fumes as your buses also try to crush me beneath them. May I spend many a sleepless night sweating inside your run-down hotels with broken air conditioning afraid to open the windows for fear of the maniacal assault of your many winged rats.

Give me the Italian countryside any day!!! For me "Rome" is only the name of an airport I fly to when I'm ready to head off on a fantastic vacation.

awww Zeus - I'm trying to keep a straight face. I think you and I have just been to Rome too many times. We ran out of things to notice.

Hmmm....those are the same exact complaints I had about Florence!!