When in Rome

I'm in Rome, and I feel like I'm in a giant playground: it's exciting, it's unruly, it's full of strangers, and it makes me feel very small. The first three I expected. But the sheer size I really didn't. Rome's geographically no bigger or smaller than other European capitals, I guess -- but the hills are huge and steep, and the buildings are enormous to compete. So, I'm starting to realise things like

• the Trevi Fountain is big enough for serious bathers
• the Pope's proclaimed from a balcony because the watchers underneath are far away
• the decorative Spanish Steps are in fact meant as a useful means of scaling a big hill
• the Colosseum is aptly named

Excitement and unruliness come mainly from minor hazards. So many cars, so many motorcycles -- after well-planned bicycle-friendly Germany, the traffic's quite a shock. At red lights the motorcycles (when they deign to obey them) rank up like horses at a race start. So much litter, so much peeling paint, so much broken pavement and dodgy asphalt, so many neon tourist shops. I guess a city that survives on its joie de vivre alone makes a few practical sacrifices.

And strangers? I can't remember a city in which the locals are less in evidence. Tourists are everywhere, even in winter. We (that is, I, and Emily and my Australian friend Alyssa) are staying in the sort of dirt-cheap garish cheerful crowded under-25s backpacker hole that I haven't even been able to find in Germany or the Benelux -- a pity, really, because, well, it's so cheap. But there are certainly no Italians staying there, and I'm not counting the people that sell me museum tickets or stop me on the street to invite me in for some Genuine Italian Cuisine as locals either. I've seen a few packs of Italian teenagers wandering the streets, jeansed and booted; a couple of pairs of Italian men arguing loudly in front of gorgeous palazzi; a row of street vendors outside the Vatican pack up their wares and run off in ten seconds flat at the rumour of an arriving police car. But it's probably partly my own fault. I want to see classical Rome and Renaissance Rome and baroque Rome; the rest is passing under my nose.

Weekday winter mornings are definitely the time to see the Vatican. We got there before ten today, when the lines were minimal and the priests and nuns were visible. Security in was low. Security where it mattered -- that is, when a Swiss guard in yellow and blue leggings politely stopped me from going in a forbidden door -- was somewhat better. (And the Swiss guard was actually Swiss -- as I realised only some minutes later, when it occurred to me that he'd asked in German if I spoke Italian and then in English if I spoke French.) St Peter's Basilica was lovely, and, of course, big. The gardens were lovely, but closed to the public. Then we went into the Vatican Museums.

These had a fantastic collection of ancient Roman sculpture, organized by subject: three cherubs shouldering urns, four boys with swords, two men saluting. I admired them for a while, then went inside. And inside they turned out to contain all sorts of marvellous things that I'd known about without ever really realising they were in the Vatican. Like, er, the Sistine Chapel. And also an entire apartment painted by Raphael, full of half-familiar stories: a saint freed from prison; a pious youth growing old; Constantine converting to Christianity; Euclid doing geometry . . . .

That, and coffee and gelato, kept me going for the day.