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Four years in Rome: An anniversary ode to my favorite city in the whole world

Four years ago today I arrived in this city and never plan on leaving.

Today marks my fourth anniversary of moving to Rome. Much has changed since I arrived with a duffel bag, two backpacks and a roller bag. I’ve met the woman I hope to spend my life with, my Italian has improved to where I naturally speak it before English and I’m bitching about Rome’s lousy public services.
But no, the honeymoon hasn’t worn off. I still wake up and take my cappuccino to my terrace and get weepy thinking how lucky I am to live in this paradise.
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Matera: World’s third oldest city rocks Basilicata in more ways than one

The Sassi (The Stones) was once abandoned less than 40 years ago but now is Matera's nerve center. Photo by Marina Pascucci

Matera is the world’s third oldest city, according to Traveller magazine. Only Aleppo, Syria, and Jericho, Palestine, are older. So unless you like your pizza in a war zone, Matera is the place to explore. Matera was first inhabited in the Paleolithic Era which ended about 10,000 B.C. Back then, Matera’s inhabitants were discovering stone tools and how to hunt and gather. It has been continuously inhabited for the last 9,000 years. However, the neighborhood where I’m standing and where my Marina and I are staying, wasn’t around less than 40 years ago. It was abandoned, an empty shell of a novelty.
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AS Roma bringing joy to this once doomsday fan as it shocks Champions League

New coach Eusebio Di Francesco has made AS Roma one of the surprise teams in Europe.

Today, as the season finishes its first trimester, I am experiencing something new. It’s something all fans seek and few sportswriters can fully comprehend until they experience it themselves.
Pride.
I now understand what drives fans to paint their faces in school colors, wear team jerseys when they’re 50 years old and write angry emails to sportswriters. My AS Roma is, as the cliche goes, surprising everyone but itself. It has turned everyone’s doomsday prediction, including mine, into so much shredded newsprint.
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In the art capital of the world, a small shop in Rome keeps a dying art alive

Paolo Pugelli, in the Bottega Mortet shop, has been an artisan for 48 of his 62 years.

Carpenters, cobblers and tailors can still be found all over Rome. Gold and silver artisans? They’ve gone the way of the horse and buggy. But like the one or two horse and buggies that clop through my Testaccio neighborhood to cart tourists around nearby Centro Storico, some gold and silver artisans remain. They’re just not for tourists. They have a market ranging from learned art collectors to the Vatican.
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Apocalypse now: Why Italy flamed out of World Cup qualifying for first time since 1958

Alessandro Florenzi mirrors the feeling of his nation after the game. Photo NBC News

I’m 61 years old. I was a sportswriter for 40 years and have followed sports since the early 1960s. I don’t recall one nation embarrassing itself on a field of play as Italy did this year in World Cup qualifying. Its 0-0 draw with Sweden in Milan Monday, after losing 1-0 Friday on the road, sealed a fate unthinkable just last year. Italy, a four-time World Cup champion, has gone from taking Germany to a shootout in the quarterfinals of the European Championships to not qualifying for the World Cup for the first time since 1958.

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The Baths of Caracalla: But really, how clean were the Ancient Romans?

Terme di Caracalla were completed around 235 AD and hosted 6,000-8,000 Romans a day.

I recently toured Rome’s most famous baths, the second largest in Ancient Rome. Terme di Caracalla (Baths of Caracalla), less than a mile southeast of Circo Massimo, are only a mile from my apartment. I pass them all the time. On a warm fall day, I took the bus up the street and got off next to the complex.
The Terme di Caracalla look like a sandstone Legoland after your kid went at it with a 9-iron. Tall yellowish towers are interspersed with jagged walls enclosing massive halls with tiled floors.
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Naples: Italy’s most chaotic city is a walk through a violent past via two tough neighborhoods

The Spanish Quarters has been Naples

Naples is Italy’s slut. Its best days are in the past but she still has a lusty air about her. She looks sweaty and tired and is scruffy around the edges. A cigarette hangs from the corner of her mouth. Yet in a moment’s notice she can turn on the charm and be the funnest day you’ll ever have. And after a few glasses of Aglianico wine, she starts looking pretty good again.
As Naples digressed, Italy’s famous proverb for its third-largest city still holds true:
“See Naples and die.”
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La Molisana pasta bash puts Italy’s favorite food in Rome train station

La Molisana opened a shop in Termini train station and will close Nov. 12. Photo by Marina Pascucci

La Molisana is a 105-year-old pasta company in Molise, the small, nature-loving region on the Adriatic Sea 150 miles east of Rome. Last week La Molisana opened a shop in, of all places, Rome’s Termini train station. In the middle of the main floor with people running around to tracks in the country’s largest train station is a little shop packed with pasta of every conceivable shape. It’s an ingenious marketing strategy and they hired Marina Pascucci, my girlfriend and uber photographer, to take photos of the opening. I tagged along to … well, eat.
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In Sicily: In search of the world’s best cannoli

The cannoli at Avenue Cafe Di Pollina Pietro must be held to be believed.

It was Columbus Day Monday, that day when Americans argue over whether Italy’s finest explorer, Christopher Columbus, discovered America or was it the indigenous people who were already there. Controversy aside, setting sail across the Atlantic in the 15th century took some major palle and set up some pretty fair exploration from Italians. Fueled by their quest for knowledge, if not matching their courage, I set out on my own exploration Saturday night. It was a quest that would inspire mankind and feed a hunger in me. Call it in search of the best cannoli in Sicily.
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Driving in Rome: After a year driving in “the most dangerous city in Europe,” I have a surprise

In 2013, Rome reported 14,6222 auto accidents. I'm joining the fray with Car2Go.

I retired to Rome 3 ½ years ago knowing it — and Italy — has the same reputation for driving as Saudi Arabia does for crime. It’s unforgiving. Rome is Daytona on cobblestones. When you get into a car in Rome, you bring your insurance, your blood type and your will. Statistics backed up its reputation. As recently as 2008, the United Kingdom-based Road Safety Insurance Foundation called Rome the most dangerous city in Europe. In 2006, Rome had 21,000 collisions resulting in 28,000 injuries and 230 deaths. According to the World Health Organization, that was double per capita of the United Kingdom and four times that of Netherlands.
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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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