Christmas in Rome. Instructions for getting lost
Rome in December doesn’t ask for approval. It doesn’t pose. It lights up because it’s December, not because it has something to prove. The lights on Via del Corso come on with the same inevitability as the moment Romans find themselves, at some point on Christmas Eve, sitting down at the table. It isn’t excitement, it’s familiarity, it’s home calling.
Anyone looking for Nordic perfection, the kind of cities that at Christmas seem to have stepped out of a tin of Danish biscuits, everything neat, everything scheduled, everything photo ready, has chosen the wrong latitude. Here it’s as it always is, beautiful and impossible, generous and chaotic. Capable of handing you a sunset that takes your breath away, and then leaving you at a bus stop waiting for a bus that never turns up.
Reflections from the Tiber
There exists a parallel Rome, one that isn’t measured in monuments, but in suspended moments.
It’s not made of marathons from one landmark to another, but of patient pauses and sidelong glances.
It’s the city of dawn reflections on the river, of alleyways that guard their silence, of cloisters drawn in quiet geometry.
Roman stories
Not every journey begins in the same way. Some are measured in miles, others in museum tickets or snapshots collected along the way. But there are journeys that begin between the pages of a book.