Once Upon A Time In Rome

A Short Story

My first visit to Rome was in 1965 when I was still a teenager. While I was on a planned schedule, I spent a lot of time on my own. Arriving into Rome from Florence late in the evening I immediately headed out exploring. The hotel was a block off the Via National near the termini and I walked out to the Via National and immediately headed down hill. It was getting dark and in less than a dozen blocks I came to park on my left with stairs going down to a lighted area with a huge obelisk. Once at the bottom of the stairs it looked as if all of ancient Rome surrounded me with the center of attention in the distance being the Coliseum.

As I approached the area of the Coliseum I realized the structure was dead center in the middle of a huge traffic circle with four lanes and no traffic lights. It seemed like high speed chaos. After standing there for some time I realized that there were Italians regularly just walking over to the Coliseum that seemed to be just ignoring the cars. Walking over to a small group I joined them as they braved the traffic.

Once across the circle the massive size of the Coliseum loomed above me with its exterior bathed by flood lights. There were no fences or gates and virtually nothing to prevent me from just walking inside. I walked through the nearest stone arch and headed down a long corridor but within a dozen yards I was standing in almost total darkness as further ahead I heard load voices and saw the glow of cigarettes. The talk didn’t seem friendly and as two figures started walking towards me I decided to postpone my visit to Rome’s Coliseum till daylight and turned and retreated.

I next noticed a croud of people heading toward the Roman Forum and joined the = but that’s a story for another time…

The net day I inquired about the Coliseum at night and was told to stay away as it was a very dangerous place after dark.