Dear Rome,
My favorite street in your maze of cobblestone roads is not flat, but rather wavy and fluctuating. Looking down it, the stones actually glimmer in the sunlight like old marble. While other, younger metropolises have potholes and iron plates covering their imperfections, your streets are made with rectangular stones that rise and fall like swells.
This particular street I like looks no different than your thousands more, and yet it draws me in because of its anonymity. On either side are tall, flat-faced buildings with chipped, graffiti-ed walls and huge, arching doors made for gods or giants. Columns flank the archway and make humans look less than they really are, despite having erected these very structures. Atop, endlessly repeating windows are hidden behind closed shutters. Everything is flawlessly proportioned.
But the thing that really draws me to the street is the café tucked away inside the the wall. It serves perfect cappuccinos and is loved by the man walking by in his precisely tailored suit, speaking rapid Italian into a cheap cell phone, and the gorgeous Italian woman that is parking her Vespa despite her heels.
Rome, you probably think nothing of these moments, but for an American lost in your streets, they are what I look forward to every time I visit.
Sincerely,
Zeph
Zeph Colombatto is a writer and photographer living in NYC. See more of his personal work here and follow him on Twitter here.
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