At this languorous hour of the afternoon the broad, sunny piazzas with their many fountains afford incomparably lovely loitering-places on the way to the Pincio. The one of the Quirinal is a near neighbor to the Colonna Gardens, and there you may shelter under eucalyptus trees and dream over the brown old obelisk and the vigorous fountain sculptures of the “horse-tamers” that once graced the Baths of Constantine, and philosophize over the irony of fate that converted a papal summer residence into a royal palace. Or you can thread your way through narrow streets of the Middle Ages that are lined by ochre-colored houses with sun-shades, where artists have their studios and transients their hôtels garnis, and down which a belated wine-cart may jangle or a gayly painted Campagna wagon creak, with its oxen festive in bells and crimson tassels and its rugged driver clad in blue. Were you to follow these typical byways of mediæval Rome until you came to the embankment of the Sant’ Angelo Bridge, you would pass by where Benvenuto Cellini lived among his goldsmiths, and could identify the Gothic window of the old Inn of the Bear where Montaigne stopped, centuries ago.
At this hour the Trevi Fountain is doubly appealing and refreshing, rejoicing the whole side of its roomy square with sparkling waters that dash merrily about Neptune and his allies in the wall niches. Devoted as one may be to the venerable tomb of Cecilia Metella, on the Appian Way, he will fervently commend Pope Clement for having pillaged some of its stone to supply this cheery fountain with its dramatic setting. Were this our last day in the city we should certainly toss a copper coin over our left shoulder into these boiling waters, to insure a return to Rome. Of course, one is pretty sure to come again anyhow; but that makes it a certainty. Besides, it is much less trouble than going away out to Tivoli to ask the same thing of the Sibyl in the Grotto.
Were you to yield to the fountain habit, you would go bird-hopping all over town, for no city has so many or such beautiful ones as Rome, thanks to its huge aqueducts. It is a never-failing delight to turn a corner and come across one of these sun-deluged pleasaunces with its crowds of picturesque loungers; its tritons, “rivers,” and sea gods disporting themselves in attitudes of aqueous grace and gayety; its flower-girls banked behind fragrant barriers of roses and violets; and the slender columns of water streaming sideways like tattered flags in a breeze.
ROME, THE PIAZZA DI SPAGNA
Mid-afternoon is an admirable time to drop in at the most popular of all the piazzas, the Spanish Square. One wonders how the jewelers of the Via Condotti manage to make both ends meet, with such a superior attraction at hand. It is certainly one of the most charming nooks in Rome. A heavy golden sunshine glorifies, at this hour, the broad reach of the Spanish Steps, themselves quite as wide as the square, that sweep between picturesque parapets like a yellow cascade from the terraces of the church at S. Trinità de’ Monte to the boat-shaped fountain in the piazza below. About them, drowsy, dusty, Old-World houses supply a pleasant background of soft color, and the crystal-clear Italian sky spreads above like a cathedral dome. The flower market is the crowning touch, with a flood of fragrant blooms welling over the lower steps and rimming the fountain edge in brilliant hues of purple Roman anemones, orange wallflowers, white narcissus, golden daffodils, snowy gardenias, violets, camelias, hyacinths, mignonettes, and every fair and odorous blossom. A lovely, sunny, fragrant spot—this Piazza di Spagna; a place to dream whole days away in; a well-beloved corner of fascinating Rome, where one may realize to its fullness the beautiful, consoling reflection of Don Quixote, “But still there’s sunshine on the wall.”
Literature has had its chosen seat in the Piazza di Spagna. Half the traveled world of letters has lived or visited there. It invests the spot with a fresh and human interest to know that it has been the musing-place of such rare spirits as Byron, Smollett, Madame de Staël, Cooper, Andersen, Thorwaldsen, Hawthorne, Goethe, Chateaubriand, Dickens, Scott, Macaulay, George Eliot, Lowell, and Longfellow. One thinks of the Brownings entertaining Thackeray, Lockhart, and Fanny Kemble. But, of course, the closest memories are of Keats and Shelley, who lived in either corner house—those radiant friends whose ashes repose under myrtles and violets in the cypress-shaded cemetery beyond the Aurelian Wall. The works of all these authors, as also of the others who may or may not have seen the Piazza di Spagna,—along with the idealism of Fogazzaro, the sensuality of D’Annunzio, the realism of Verga, and the grace of De Amicis,—are to be had at the celebrated shops of Piale or Spithöver, in the square; where, also, you may at little expense become a momentary part of Rome’s bohemia over toast and muffins in the adjoining tea-rooms.
Chacun à son goût. If you are cold to tea there may be something else to interest in the numerous cafés of the neighborhood that begin to hum with activity as the hour approaches four. And, indeed, they may be angels in disguise for such as have tried pension life and grown sadly familiar with puddings as mysterious as Scotch haggis, meat that suggested travertine, and pies constructed of something like silex and tufa. Besides, in the cafés you can regale yourself with vermouth, syrups, or ices, and at the same time observe the Roman at his afternoon ease—thus realizing in yourself the acuteness of the Italian proverb, “One blow at the hoop and one at the cask.” It is quite worth the cost to see how quickly the chairs and little marble-topped tables, out on the sidewalk, are taken by leisurely habitués bent on gossip; by precise old gentlemen in lavender gloves who drop in for a tumbler of black coffee and a hand at dominoes; or by foppish young men in duck trousers, who clatter on the tables for the cameriere to bring copies of the “Tribuna” so they may sup on frivolities and horrors along with coffee and tobacco.
A ruder jocundity also, at this time, is making its start for high tide in poorer sections, where in arbored osteries, Tuscan wine-shops, and spacci da vino straw-covered fiascos of chianti are passing, along with glasses of local wines whose prices will be found conspicuously chalked up on the outsides of the taverns at so many soldi per half-litre.
As we follow the Corso toward the Pincian Gardens we find the congestion increasing, with a decided addition of carriages all bound in our direction. It is now the hour of the afternoon passeggiata; and one marvels that the ancient campus Martius should still be the heart of Rome, and wonders how this narrow street could have held its crowds when the mad, brilliant scenes of Carnival riot and revelry were enacted before these old Renaissance palaces. Every restaurant of the tumultuous Piazza Colonna is working to capacity, and groups of gay army officers swagger about the corners and over by the marble basin beside the Column of Marcus Aurelius where the taxi-cabs have their chief stand. No red-and-white street car dares venture in this favorite square, but busses and cabs supplant them to distraction. And who, indeed, does not prefer an omnibus to a street car! It may want the latter’s business-like directness, but what a holiday air it has of cozy, informal deliberateness! It is coaching in town. You may not arrive so soon, but what a lark you had! And if you mock at the faithful bus, there are the impertinent Roman cabs. Here is speed, seclusion, and economy. You cannot fail to be suited both financially and æsthetically, for you may pick between the latest varnished output of the factory and venerable, decrepit ramshackles that look to have been contemporary with the Colosseum. The Roman cabmen are an inconsequent lot; they wear green felt hats and greasy coats, and dash at one with a reckless scorn of human life that strengthens a suspicion that they are really banditti of the Campagna, transparently disguised. The famous Column of the philosophic Emperor never lacks its groupings of adaptable “rubber-necks,” who are twisting themselves into suicide graves trying to read the spiral band of reliefs that winds away up to the statue of St. Paul.