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Tor Bella Monaca: The Black Hole of Rome is city’s dark underbelly of drugs and violence

Only nine miles east of the Colosseum but a million miles socially, Tor Bella Monaca is arguably Rome's most dangerous neighborhood.

What we’re doing is touring Tor Bella Monaca at night. Travel guides list a few things you don’t do in Rome: Don’t take photos inside art galleries. Don’t order a cappuccino in the afternoon. Don’t drink in excess. It says nothing about touring arguably Rome’s most dangerous neighborhood after sunset, an area simply known as the Black Hole of Rome. When I told my Roman friends my plan, they all said I needed counseling. I knew exactly what I was doing. And it wasn’t thrill seeking. I wanted to write about crime in one of the world’s most glamorous, most beautiful tourist cities in the world. I wanted to dive head first into the dark underbelly of Rome, a part of the Eternal City that outsiders never see nor know about. I also wanted to show how crime in Rome doesn’t compare to crime in American cities.
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FC Trastevere shows grass is often greener in Italian soccer’s bush leagues

Campo Vittorio Bachelet, home to Serie D FC Trastevere, sits high above Rome next to Doria Pamphilj park.

This lower level of Italian soccer is where I’m finding new joy. I’ve peeled away the sterile veneer of Serie A, Italy’s top classification, and uncovered an all new level of culture. It’s kind of like cooking in Italy. The longer you’re here, the more different pastas you discover and cheeses you can try. Some are better than others but they’re all good. It’s at this level, these Italian bush leagues, where I found myself enjoying a very different Sunday afternoon in Rome.

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Puglia wine tasting brings back memories of long coastlines and purple-red wines

At the Wine Tastings of Rome Meetup at the Hotel Imperiale (from left): Alessandro Castellani, Vanessa Rispin, Robert Della Vedova, me.

Wine Tastings of Rome, a terrific Meetup group that could only have a more attractive name if Beyonce held its sign, brought in wine makers from around Puglia to one room at the Hotel Imperiale. Built in 1895, the Hotel Imperiale is as elegant as it sounds. It’s a gold palace with small balconies overlooking tree-lined Via Veneto, perhaps Rome’s most glamorous street where its rich and famous once preened for panting fans and fought with prying paparazzi. Walking into the snow-white interior, I felt thankful I wore a sportcoat as “retired journalist” and “elegant” aren’t usually found in the same sentence. The Hotel Imperiale makes you at least try to look the part.
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Two-year anniversary inspires all new list of why I love living in Rome

Two years ago today I landed in Rome. Ever since, it has been one "Saluti!" after another.

Two years ago today I landed in Rome with three bags, fewer friends and more risk than a mob informant. But today, I am approaching my 60th birthday in two months at the apex of my life. My happiness is growing like the lemon tree on my penthouse terrace overlooking the Tiber River. Retirement in Rome was the biggest chance I’ve ever taken but has made me happier than I’ve ever been. Looking forward to retirement, folks?
Retire to paradise, wherever you consider that is.
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Roman waiters’ service puts their American counterparts to shame

Me with Marco Uras, a waiter for 30 years, at Mamma Venerina near the Vatican.

Let me tell you how to wait a table. It is courtesy of one Marco Uras, a terrific veteran waiter at Mamma Venerina, one of my favorite restaurants in my old neighborhood, Prati, near the Vatican. Uras has been a waiter for 30 years dating back to his childhood home in Sardinia. Uras represents what restaurant wait service in Rome is all about. Respect. Professionalism. Efficiency. Kindness. Patience.

This is what restaurant wait service in the U.S. is all about: tips, overbearingness, tips, questions, impatience and more tips.
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Jubilee year off to slow start in Rome, allegedly near top of Isis’ hit list

St. Peter's Square after Pope Francis gave the opening speech at the Jubilee. Hotel occupancy is down 20 percent at the start of an event expected to attract 33 million pilgrims.

I wanted to see how Rome handled security. Ever since the Paris attacks, I’d seen camouflaged soldiers carrying machine guns in subway stations. Police cars clogged busy street corners. Every government building had extra security.
So I took a bus across the Tiber River to Prati, my old neighborhood near the Vatican. I walked down Via Porta Angelica, one of the main tourist thoroughfares into St. Peter’s Square. An army truck with armed soldiers manned one corner. Dozens of men and women wearing green neon and navy coats with “Protezione Civile Volontariato” stood on the street. A Red Cross truck and a bevy of medics in red and white outfits stood outside the Vatican wall, as if ready to move at the first sound of a bomb or the first view of a flying body part.
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Baker’s Tomb one of Rome’s many ancient historical secrets

Between 50-20 B.C., the former Greek slave Eurysaces built his own tomb to represent his bread baking profession.

His name was Marcus Vergilius Eurysaces. He was a Greek slave who, when freed, could continue his profession as a baker but could not earn Roman citizenship until …

… he baked 100 bushels of bread a day — single handedly. Furthermore, he had to sell the bread to the state, at a larcenously low price, for at least three years. Yes, in many ways, Ancient Romans were complete unadulterated swine.
Eurysaces kneaded and baked, baked and kneaded. Soon, he found himself with Roman citizenship and a thriving bakery. Bread was a valuable foodstuff in Ancient Rome and by 30 B.C., Eurysaces had become one of the top bakers in town. He became rich. So, matching some of the egos in the Roman Senate, he purchased a plot of land near one of the main gates of Rome. Why?

So he could build himself his own tomb.
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Tombs of Via Latina a once beaten path now lined with the dead of Ancient Rome

Via Latina is 5,000 years old and once stretched 115 miles from Rome to where near Naples is today.

I walked down a 5,000-year-old street Sunday. Some roads in Rome look that old, but Via Latina really is 5,000 years old. Roman armies once marched down Via Latina toward Southern Italy. How old is Via Latina? You know Via Appia Antica, the famed street where Spartacus’ ill-fated slave revolt ended with his slaves hanging from crosses along the side of the road? Via Latina is older.
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As world continues to crumble, tiny Sermoneta serves as a quiet respite

Sermoneta, 55 miles south of Rome, was founded as a 13th century castle to ward off foreign invasion.

Saturday I went to Sermoneta. Sermoneta is a medieval village atop a cliff more than 1,000 feet above an agricultural area, one of Benito Mussolini’s more successful projects from the 1930s. About 55 miles south of Rome and reachable by bus from the EUR Fermi Metro stop, Sermoneta has about 600 people, none of whom apparently has a car. I didn’t dodge any along the one narrow, cobblestone road. The rest of the village consists of windy, twisting alleys lined with pots blooming with red, yellow, purple and orange flowers. Even on an overcast day, the town burst with colors.
The village is as quiet as an outdoor abbey.
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Rome’s SuperCat Show shows a city’s love for their furry citizens

Halloween night was the kickoff for a cat show that featured 800 cats and hosted about 30,000 visitors.

On Halloween night, the city of Rome put on its 16th annual SuperCat Show for all its cat aficionados. I could tell the popularity of cats here just by the venue. It was held at Nuova Fiera di Roma near Fiumicino, the coastal town that has Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci Airport. Looking at the size of Fiera di Roma’s exhibition hall, I’m assuming when it doesn’t host cat shows it doubles as an airplane hangar. It was 50 meters long and nearly 108,000 square feet. In it were 800 cats, of which which were expected to be perused, petted and photographed over two days by about 30,000 people.
If you heard a giant “AHHHHHH!” coming from the direction of Italy about 10 days ago, that was us.
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Friends With No Benefits Tour to Umbria goes to the heart of rural and religious Italy

The Gang of Seven at Terre dei Nappi winery in Bevagna. From left, going around the table, me, Pam Carpentier, Sabrina Crawford, Lisa Chambers, Errol Zahnow, Robert Della Vedova, Alessandro Castellani.

No region in Italy is less influenced by outside sources. This is what I love about Umbria. In a country that gets nearly 50 million tourists a year, Umbria may be the most authentic region of them all. Walled hill towns void of tourist buses. Remnants of the most beloved saint in Italian history. Ancient local delicacies ranging from piccione (pigeon) to cinghiale, the wild boar that has so overrun Umbria one might check you into your hotel room.

I recently made my second annual fall trip to Umbria, thanks to my partner in crime, sportswriter Alessandro Castellani, whose good friend, Umbrian innkeeper Leonardo De Mai, seemingly knows everyone in the region. Seven of us piled into cars and trains and headed north from Rome about two hours.
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L’avanzamento della squadra Nazionale Italiana di calcio in una nazione con guerre regionali

Norway-Italy pass

La squadra Nazionale Italiana ha sempre risvegliato un grande interesse in Italia. Gli Italiani la seguono ma l’Italia è diversa da qualsiasi altro Paese del mondo. Nonostante abbia radici che risalgano a circa 3.000 anni fa e, indipendentemente dall’impronta indelebile che l’Impero Romano abbia lasciato nel mondo, l’Italia solo nel 1861 è diventata una Repubblica. Circa 100 anni più tardi degli Stati Uniti d’America.
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