In the heart of Rome

Because I love my darling Rome, I like to walk around its lovely hereabouts and, whenever I can, I love to give my foreign friends (next time it will be Nick from Australia...) a glance through history, which is what happens if one roams about Rome with open eyes and soul and heart. I usually start my Roman tour under the beautiful Trajan column, explaining how the markets of that spanish general, who became emperor, used to bear, at the back, a large library which bore a flight of stairs in the inside that made the bas relief look like a playful and colored (because the marble was painted!) comic strip... Next I ask my dear guests to look up at the blue skies, up above. "Who is the man up there? - I ask - is it Trajan?". But of course not! It's Saint Peter! Trajan has been thrown down to stick up there the new power in the form of an old bearded man holding the key of Paradise. And there, as if in makebelief, all history becomes true. It was once the Roman empire, now the Roman catholic church... There, the same international aim! So now, the walk continues and as I come, with my tourist friends, under the house that hosted Napoleon's mother (more history), I recall my little brazilian nephew, who lives in a modern city where everything is brand new and has very little history. I said to him, pointing at the most gorgeous medieval house that survives in the Monti area: "Look how lovely!". And he answered: "Casa da bruxa". Meaning house of the whitch..