With the Vatican having cancelled on us, figuring out the last day of 2025 became a bit of a scramble. Over dinner last night, the kids and I determined upscale, quiet Prati sounded worth exploring and they were open to my suggestion of exploring the shopping streets of Flaminio, which we had seen briefly after exiting the Piazza del Poppolo a few days ago, but were too cold and tired to go further.
Still, it didn’t feel like there was enough meat on the bones of that itinerary, so I simply looked at Google Maps and wondered what would happen if when we crossed the river – as we usually do – we turned left? We would shoot up to the Palazzo Farnese, Piazza Farnese and the Piazza de’ Fiori – all of which seemed worth seeing. The small road connecting the river to the Farnese Palace is called Via Giulia in honor of Pope Alexander VI’s mistress who – as I mentioned the other day – was able to use her influence to have her brother made a Cardinal who eventually became Pope. That in turn cemented the family’s fortunes which is why the Palazzo Farnese was architected in part by Michelangelo with art including famed ceiling frescoes by Annibale Carracci.
That said, the Farnese’s had the good taste to keep their palace unimposing. It may be huge, but it’s not a Baroque monster clamoring for attention and thus, the Piazza in front is quiet and pleasant. It may help that while limited parts of the palazzo can be toured, it is also the French Embassy and most of it is a working facility.
The kids enjoyed walking the cute Via Giulia and appreciating the piazza. We walked through the narrow, shop and restaurant-lined side streets, connecting over to the Piazza de’ Fiori where there was a large outdoor market. The neighborhood was EXACTLY what the kids wanted – fun to explore without big crowds.
After a while, we made our way up Corso Vittorio Emmanuel II towards the Castel Sant Angelo, taking time to linger along the Tiber and look out at the Vatican we almost saw today. By the time we crossed the river and made our way around the Castel to Prati, stores and even restaurants and cafes were beginning to shutter. Prati was pretty, pleasant and extremely quiet. In fact, we had to walk quite a bit to explore our lunch options and find something we liked.
But for all the walking, it was easily the most relaxed day we’ve had in Rome aside from Christmas. The kids have become champion walkers – not complaining at all anymore even when we’re on foot for hours at a time. It helped that at least in the parts of town we covered, the mood felt mellow. The holiday was descending upon us and people were happy and seemingly without hurry.
It has been a great last day of the year.
The only real disruption has been the increasing amount of fireworks being heard around the city. Loud bangs and booms abound and it’s hard not to wonder if the increase in ambulance sirens we’ve noticed these past three days corresponds to the firecrackers. I read we should settle into it because Romans enjoy playing with fireworks.
“It seems like manners just don’t matter to them!” Sennen said at one point – referring both to the fireworks and the foot traffic. Ailyn complains about people blowing smoke in her face – or today right into her water bottle. Sennen feels like there’s always loudness and chatter. Of course it doesn’t help that the kids don’t have truly urban experiences that often – especially living their lives on an axis between Westlake Village and Patmos. That said, they have been to New York, Athens, Bangkok, Paris, Tel Aviv, Singapore – and of course Los Angeles proper. I’ve never heard these particular complaints even with all the smokers in Greece.
“They don’t blow their smoke right in my face in Greece!” Ailyn explained.
“It’s the energy here. It’s a very anxious energy. They’re always loud and talking, in my ears, all the time!”
I take it to be a mixture of Italian culture and urban life. After all, there were far fewer complaints in Venice. I have to imagine were we in Genoa or Bari, I might not be hearing these same observations.
As much as I’m enjoying – really savoring – this time with the kids, having this wonderful experience, I can’t say Italy is my place. We all have the places that call to us – the ones whose frequencies resonate. Not that I dislike them in any way, but Italy and Italian culture have never really been mine. On their face, Paris and Rome aren’t THAT different (sure, Rome has a lot more history just sitting around as people pass), but one I can get with much better than the other. It makes no sense why Singapore can feel more like home than Rome or that Istanbul delights me. Some places we feel, and others we don’t.
At the same time, we’ve visited only Venice and Rome. I haven’t seen much of Italy. I love Patmos so much I bought a house there and feel more at home than in Westlake and yet I have no love for Athens. Culture is not consistent throughout a country. It would be interesting to see how I do in other places – like Genoa and Bari.
American education does a funny thing with Italy. Our K-12 education spends significant time on Ancient Rome and the Italian Renaissance. We brush against Italy a bit in the 18th Century Baroque period. And then Italy disappears until about 1943 as the Allies are getting ready to crush Mussolini. Then pop culture takes over and we know things like Vespas, cappuccinos, triple lattes, Mr Ripley and Emily in Paris moves to Rome – and back! We don’t even get into how we got such a large Italian-American immigrant population.
Italy as a modern state not only was one of the last in Europe to form – having spent hundreds of years as a series of city-states that eventually merged into a smaller collection of kingdoms largely ruled by foreign noble families – but unlike Germany which was unifying in the same time-band, unification didn’t necessarily make things better. Northern and Southern Italy were two entirely different worlds – not just in the accent, skin/hair/eye color and pesto vs pomodoro ways, but had two entirely different economic systems.
Northern Italy – particularly in Milan and formerly Austrian possessions like Piedmont – was industrializing and gaining wealth through capitalism. Southern Italy was not only agrarian, but largely using the same feudal system that had existed since the Roman Empire. Southern Italian farmers were essentially sharecroppers – at best. Many just worked someone else’s land in exchange for housing and food. The land itself was largely in the hands of a fortunate few.
Unification caused largely Northern government officials to impose tax-laws that made a lot of sense for the industrializing North, but not the impoverished South. When in the late 19th and early 20th centuries this taxation was combined with a series of crop failures, Italian emigration with countries like the United States and Argentina benefitting both from the influx of hardworking people and cultural classics like The Godfather, Goodfellas, Casino, The Sopranos and Arthur Fonzarelli.
In America, we don’t usually learn that Mussolini and Fascism were really a reaction to an Italian state that wasn’t going so well. With economic decay in large parts of the country, an exodus of people, massive inflation following the First World War (in which Italy was cut out of the spoils despite being on the right side of the fight), there was a sense that a democratic system with a constitutional monarchy lacked sufficient stability and was failing people. When the Fascists came to power in the 1920’s, Italy had been around as a nation-state for 53 years, but it still hadn’t taken its place among the Great Powers of Europe as Germany – three years its junior – had rapidly done.
Italy fumbled its way to finding a democratic republic that began to serve the needs of all. For a Western European country, it was late to the family of developed nations and has really hit its stride within most of our lifetimes.
All of this to say, Italy appears to be a homogenous country in one sense – Italian speaking people who are principally caucasian and at some point revolved around Rome and the Pope – but really is a collection of very different people and places, some of whom have some vastly different cultural influences. Venetians and Sicilians didn’t see each other as having a common identity prior to Unification and many still don’t. Rome and Venice are two important, but small pieces of a much larger puzzle. Perhaps there’s a place where people aren’t too loud and they don’t blow smoke in little girls’ faces? Could the Piedmontese have manners so impeccable Buckingham Palace calls them for guidance?
Maybe one day we’ll give Italy another shot and find out.
For now, our little trio will focus on saying goodbye to 2025, embracing 2026 and starting the first day of the year enjoying coffee and pastry with our friends at Giselda like real Trasteverians do.
