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Rome in August is when Romans flee and Rome is your own personal trattoria

This was Via Marmorata, the main drag in my Testaccio neighborhood, last week at 5 p.m.

But in Rome, one month is hugely underrated: August. I recently ripped Rome in July. It’s hot, crowded, touristy. Everyone is sweating. An empty bus seat is a rumor. However, when I turned my calendar page from Il Vittoriano to Piazza Navona, Rome changed. Half of it emptied. I’m actually sitting on buses. I’m sitting on the subway. I’m no longer twisting my body in yoga positions to avoid roller bags and gypsies’ lightning-fast hands. I’m walking down the middle of streets downtown not worried about runaway Fiats passing idling cars stuck in traffic.
Rome, in August, is fabulous.
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My transition from sportswriter to sports fan becomes a half-empty glass as I dread start of soccer season

This painting of A.S. Roma's wolf can be seen from much of my Testaccio neighborhood where it was born in 1927.

After 40 years of objectivity choking me of all subjectiveness, I now comprehend the fans’ anxiety, their depression, their anger. It hasn’t been easy being an A.S. Roma fan since I’ve arrived. Roma is a perennial second-tier club in Serie A, Italy’s top league. I take little solace knowing that only one club is first tier. Juventus’ six straight league titles, known as scudettos, kill my optimism by Halloween when Juve starts pulling away from the pack.
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Mussolini — yes, Mussolini — to thank for Lazio’s beautiful beaches

About 80 years ago this area was a swamp. Today, Papardo' is one of the best beaches in Italy.

I’m pretty sure no one has ever written thank you to Mussolini, at least not in the last 70 years or so. Yes, he is a big reason Marina and I don’t have to board a plane or boat to relax on some of the best beaches in Europe. Papardo’ Beach is 85 miles south of Rome in an underrated part of the Lazio region that is sprinkled with cute towns and beaches that get more gorgeous with every kilometer you drive. Foreigners don’t come here much. Italians do. They know the convenience and pleasure of this area known as Agro Pontino, particularly now during Rome’s driest summer in the last 60 years. Where else in Europe can you get a tan and swim in a crystal-blue sea then eat a seafood feast for two with a bottle of local white wine for under 70 euros? Italians also appreciate this area for another reason.
They know in the 1930s this whole area was a swamp.
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Rome’s historic water shortage plugging the noses of some of city’s famed cisterns

Me at one of the "nasone" in steaming Rome. The city has 2,500 of them but the water shortage has closed 400 of them.

As Rome melts into its cobblestones and my water intake skyrockets, everyone in Rome is facing a crisis: water shortage. More than 400 of our beloved nasoni have been turned off. The city has about 2,500 nasoni, meaning 16 percent of these cute, ingenious, thirst-quenching little piles or iron are now dry. We barely avoided water rationing which would’ve turned off water for eight hours a day all over the city. The Vatican turned off 100 of its fountains, including the famous Bernini fountain in the middle of St. Peter’s Square. Excuse all 1.5 million of us Rome residents if we’re sweating this summer for more reasons than one.
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Dumb tourist tricks: Things never to do in Rome

Tourists stand in line for ever to put their arm in the Bocca della Verita'.

As a public service to anyone planning a Rome vacation, I am providing a valuable guide to what not to do as a tourist here. Don’t feel bad if you’ve visited Rome and read yourself below. You have plenty of company. So clip it, save it, slip it in your money belt you must wear inside the waistline of your pants and I promise you’ll look less like a complete geek.
You can thank me later.
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Rome Mysteries tour reveals city’s strangest secrets

The English, giving its people a place to buy English goods, helped Italy build the Sciarra Palace after Italian unification in 1861. It was Rome's first shopping center.

I’m starting to get more heavily into guided tours. Many aren’t very good. A good guidebook is a cheaper substitute and you don’t feel like a geek following someone holding up a flag. But one guide I always follow is Massimiliano Francia (guideromax@virgilio.it). Rome Explorers, an excellent Meetup group that does everything from urban tours to mountain hikes, hires “Max” out for English-speaking tours. He’s a Rome native with a library of history books that could fill one side of the Pantheon. What sets apart Francia is his voluminous knowledge of historical tidbits, oddities you won’t find in any guidebook or mainstream tour.
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Growing old and blind in Rome: My venture into Italy’s No. 2-ranked public health care system

My new look. For the first time in my life, at 61 years of age, I'm wearing glasses. Photo by Marina Pascucci

As the United States free falls into Donald Trump’s Let-Them-Eat-Cake healthcare plan, I am learning first hand the benefits of the healthcare American progressives dream about. It’s not by choice. It’s not by journalistic research. Instead, for the past two months I have had an inside look at Italy’s public healthcare through my own misfortune.
I am now half blind.
My right eye has gone from near 20-20 to non functioning. If I close my left eye, it’s like a steel door covers my right eye with slits to let in some light. I’m a prisoner in my own skull. My depth perception is shot. Most everything is blurry as if scuba diving without a mask. This didn’t happen gradually. It happened nearly overnight. And it’s frightening.
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Paris vs. Rome: Which is better? Here’s some pizza and escargot for thought — then weigh in

Photo by Marina Pascucci

Rome and Paris are the two loveliest ladies of all the world’s capitals. Rome has my heart. I’ve lived there twice for nearly five years. But Paris is my mistress. Every so often, I must steal away to the banks of the Seine and have a weekend fling. I’ve been to Paris more than any other world capital. I always return to Rome, but my days in Paris always leave a lusty smile on my face.
Many ask which city I prefer. It’s like asking which Caravaggio I prefer. It’s a valid question. I just can’t decide. So when I went to Paris on assignment last weekend with my true love of my life, photographer Marina Pascucci, I did a comparison.
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Rome’s birthday brings back fond — and not so fond — memories of my days in gladiator school

Rome turned 2,770 Friday. On Sunday, Rome's Scuola dei Gladiator marched to the Colosseum. In 2002, I was one of them.

I stand in a sandy pit surrounded by torches in front of three dozen tourists hoping a stiff breeze doesn’t fly under my tunic. It’s way too short, and I weigh the embarrassment of revealing my brand of underwear to strangers against taking a Latin oath from a chunky tie salesman wearing animal skins.

It’s graduation day at Rome’s La Scuola dei Gladiatori (The Gladiator School), and I have just demonstrated how to take a sword and skewer, fillet and behead an opponent in six simple strokes. Two months of training had culminated in this ritual, surfacing in Rome after a 2,000-year absence. Somehow I don’t think when Spartacus took this oath, he was worried about bending over.
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Favignana: “No. 13 Clearest Water in the World” tantalizes sun worshippers off Sicily’s west coast

Favignana's Cala Rossa, once the site of a great Roman victory in the 3rd century BC, now sport's some of clearest water in the world. Photo by Marina Pascucci

Yes, there it was, No. 13 on The Weather Channel’s 2016 list: Favignana, more specifically, Cala Azzurra beach. I’d never heard of Favignana, either. It’s a small island off the west coast of Sicily sporting a name it took me a month to remember. My girlfriend, Marina Pascucci, is an ace photographer whose whole profession is based on clarity. She’d been to Favignana (pronounced fa-vin-YAH-nah) before and wanted to take me to another special place for my birthday.
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Q&A: Through Eternity tour guide Luca De Angelis

Luca De Angelis, center, has a master's in archaeology.

I will do regular Q&As with tour guides at Through Eternity, Rome’s outstanding tour company for which I started blogging in December. I’ll talk to them about insights into their jobs, their lives and Rome. This month it’s Luca De Angelis, 38, a Rome native.
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Ten wild things I didn’t know about Michelangelo

It took Michelangelo 4 1/2 years to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

The advancements Michelangelo took art during the Renaissance stood out like the Sistine Chapel when compared with what came before and after him. It’s one of the many things I learned about Michelangelo during Luca’s five-hour Vatican tour. It was part of my new part-time gig: blogging for Through Eternity, one of the top tour companies in Rome. He told me so many things about history’s greatest sculptor that you won’t find in guidebooks or even “The Agony and the Ecstasy,” Michelangelo’s biography I devoured in my youth. Here are 10 things I learned that I will never forget:

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