Without anticipation, Morris and I wondered into La Notte Bianca, during which the vast majority of Rome was shut down and the city set upon itself the task of carrying out a sort of Roman Mardi Gras. It was a remarkable experience: especially for the on-and-off rainstorms through the night, of which the arrival elicited screaming and shouting from all over as literally the entire population of Rome took shelter in doorways and under archways. And then there were the plastic horns being sold in the streets, which seemingly everyone was able to acquire and play incompetently — making up for their inability to play more than one note by playing that one note twice as loud. Walking along the Imperial Forum towards the Collisseum in the rain, surrounded by tens of thousands of people and the bellowing of those horns was the closest I have come to what I imagine the storming of Bastille was like. I repeatedly had the desire to shout “to the Collisseum, the city is ours!”
A perfect last night in Rome.