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+{"text":"\n\nImages of Rome\n\nRome Maps\n\nExperience Rome\n\nGood Walks: Baroque Rome, Trastevere, The Forum\n\nRome Neighborhoods\n\nWhere to Eat in Rome\n\nWhere to Stay In Rome\n\nNightlife and the Arts\n\nShopping\n\nSide Trips from Rome\n\nItalian Vocabulary\n\nTravel Smart Rome\n\nAbout Our Writers\n\nCopyright and Credits\n\n_Main Table of Contents _\n\n### Good Walks: Baroque Rome, Trastevere, The Forum\n\nBaroque Quarter\n\nTrastevere\n\nThe Roman Forum\n\n### Rome Neighborhoods\n\nAncient Rome\n\nVatican City\n\nVatican City: West\n\nVatican City: East\n\nVatican City: North\n\nNavona and Campo\n\nCorso\n\nSpagna\n\nRepubblica and Quirnale\n\nVilla Borghese\n\nTrastevere\n\nGhetto\n\nAventino\n\nTestaccio\n\nEsquilino\n\nCelio\n\nThe Catacombs\n\n### Side Trips from Rome\n\nSide Trips From Rome\n\nOstia\n\n_Main Table of Contents _\n\nRome Today\n\nWhat's Where\n\nRome Planner\n\nTop Rome Attractions\n\nTop Rome Museums\n\nTop Rome Churches\n\nRome Like a Local\n\nRome with Kids\n\nGreat Itineraries In Rome\n\nFree and Almost Free\n\nBeating the Euro\n\nRomantic Rome\n\nNext Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nComing off the Autostrada at Roma Nord or Roma Sud, you know by the convergence of heavily trafficked routes that you are entering a grand nexus: All roads lead to Rome. And then the interminable suburbs, the railroad crossings, the intersections\u2014no wonder they call it the Eternal City.\n\nAs you enter the city proper, flashbacks of images you saw in fabled films such as Three Coins in the Fountain and Roman Holiday soon become reality: a bridge with heroic statues along its parapets; a towering cake of frothy marble decorated with allegorical figures in extravagant poses; a piazza and an obelisk under an umbrella of pine trees. Then you spot what looks like a multistory parking lot; with a gasp, you realize it's the Colosseum. That's when you say to yourself, that's right, Dorothy, we're not in Kansas anymore. There's no place like Rome.\n\nYou have arrived. You're in the heart of the Citt\u00e0 Eterna. As you step down from your excursion bus, you're instantly mesmerized by the sounds of Vespas zipping in and out of traffic. You step onto the broad girdle of tarmac that encircles the great stone arena of the Roman emperors, and scurry out of the way of the passing Fiats\u2014the motorists behind the wheels seem to display the panache of so many Ben-Hurs.\n\nMore than Florence, more than Venice, Mamma Roma is Italy's true showstopper. And though the city has one foot forward in the future, its timelessness and pristine preservation of its landmarks continue to captivate millions of visitors each year. Why? Here, the ancient Romans made us heirs-in-law to what we call Western Civilization; where centuries later Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling; where Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Baroque nymphs and naiads still dance in their marble fountains; and where, at Cinecitt\u00e0 Studios, Fellini filmed La Dolce Vita and 8\u00bd. Today, the city remains a veritable Grand Canyon of culture: Ancient Rome rubs shoulders with the medieval, the modern runs into the Renaissance, and the result is like nothing less than one big open-air museum for the world to marvel at.\n\nYesterday's Grand Tourists thronged the city for the same reason today's Expedians do. Majestic, complicated, enthralling, romantic, chaotic, monumental Rome is one of the world's great cities\u2014past, present, and, probably, future. While one wouldn't really reckon Rome as \"futuristic,\" the city is taking heartfelt leaps and bounds into the 21st century while flirting with the Facebook generation. In 2013, the Eternal City is outdazzling many of its Italian rivals with a newly unleashed vitality. Move over Milano: Rome is bringing its game up a notch, working its way up to be the next posh metropolitan \"It\" girl.\n\nRomans are ready to show the world that its old-world ways\u2014slow pace, antique-flair, and everything mini\u2014are ancient history. They're changing gears and starting to live life in the fast lane. For those who had any doubts, Romans can have their dolce vita-cake lifestyle and eat it, too.\n\nMega-shopping malls, tech-savvy sumptuousness, fusion food, and even gas-guzzling SUVs have made their way to the ancient home of the popes. Romans are more \"connected\" than ever before: even Pope Benedict XVI can't do without his Facebook and Twitter. Though resistance is bound to come with change, Romans seem to be embracing these tumultuous changes with open arms.\n\n## Today's Rome...\n\n###... is not the Roma your mother knew.\n\nHome to nearly 3 million residents and a gazillion tourists, Rome is virtually busting at the seams. For decades, the heart and soul of the city was concentrated in its centro storico, where a chunk of Rome's legendary museums, monuments, and ancient relics have stood for centuries. Replete with postcard landmarks, Baroque palaces, and hyper-luxury hotels, the \"Disneyfication\" of the historic center is well underway.\n\nAs there was no room to grow upward, Rome has had to stretch outward. To relieve pressure in the city center, officials have focused on building a \"new\" Rome beyond the historic quarter. In the process, old, economically weaker, satellite districts have been revitalized with the creation of cutting-edge palazzos and museums. Former working-class neighborhoods\u2014San Lorenzo and Pigneto to the north, Ostiense and Testaccio to the south\u2014are also on the fast track of unprecedented change and becoming trendy. This \"other\" Rome is shabby-chic, alternative, and full of flair.\n\n###... is going multi-culti.\n\nSpend a day in Rome's Esquilino neighborhood and you'll see just how multicultural the Eternal City is becoming. Once famous for its spice market at Piazza Vittorio, the area neighborhood has fast become a multiethnic stomping ground.\n\nIn fact, finding a true Roman restaurant or a local shopkeeper is hard to come by in this area, now that Chinese, Indian, African, and Middle Eastern restaurants have moved in (a typical example: The Syrian restaurant, Zenobia, perched on Piazza Dante, even includes a weekend belly-dancing show).\n\nHomegrown and locally produced, the Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio is a perfect picture of the neighborhood's growing ethnic population. Made up of 16 musicians from Brazil, Senegal, Tunisia, Cuba, Argentina, Hungary, Ecuador, and Italy, the troupe was founded in 2002 and got its start in the ramshackle district just steps away from Rome's Termini train station and, by 2006, had a documentary made about them; today, they play at festivals around the world.\n\n###... is breaking new ground.\n\nWith a big push to modernize parts of Rome particularly lacking in the luster department, visitors will notice some new and novel aspects to the city skyline. First, that former eyesore, the Tiburtina train station, was completely overhauled, to the tune of some \u20ac330 million, to become the new avant-garde Tiburtina stazione, the first rail hub in Italy to handle super-high-speed (Alstom AGVs) trains.\n\nEven more buzz has been generated by Rome's first-ever skyscraper, the EuroSky Tower. Located in the distant EUR suburb, the 28-floor building (to be completed in 2013) will be the first to launch Romans into orbit for high-rise luxury apartment living (it's eco-sustainable, replete with solar panels, bio-fuel power, and channels to deliver rainwater to plants and flowers). Feathers were ruffled when Vatican officials worried that the skyscraper would clash with St. Peter's Basilica, Rome's tallest building.\n\nLocated by the Tiber River, the grandiose new \"Ponte della Musica\" bridge has now \"bridged the gap\" between the worlds of sports and music and arts: it connects the Foro Italico area (home to Rome's stunning Stadio Olimpico and Stadio dei Marmi) with the Flaminio district (Parco della Musica and the MAXXI museum). Designed by British star-engineer Buro Happold, the eco-friendly ponte can be used by pedestrians, cyclists, and electric buses.\n\nLast but not least, the new convention center of Rome\u2014EUR Congressi Roma\u2014is expected to dazzle when completed in 2013.\n\nItalian starchitect Massimiliano Fuksas whipped up a vast design centered around the \"Cloud,\" an airy futuristic structure that floats in a showcase of steel and glass. City officials have high hopes.\n\n###... is in political limbo.\n\nAfter playing a prominent role in politics for nearly two decades, controversial tycoon Silvio Berlusconi stepped down as prime minister at the end of 2011, only after an unprecedented revolt within Parliament, after scandals and continuous market pressures had left Italy in bad shape.\n\nTo put a new government into place and turn the country's severe economic crisis around, Mario Monti\u2014a multitasker whose background runs the gamut from professor to economist to president of the prestigious Bocconi University to European commissioner\u2014was appointed not only as the new prime minister but also, due to his formidable expertise, as minister of economy and finance.\n\nHe wasted no time and raised taxes, cracked down on tax evaders, and whipped Italy's debt crisis back into shape. He will stay on until major new elections can be held.\n\n###... is more commuter-connected.\n\nWhen it comes to train travel in Italy, the competition is growing fierce. Thanks to the introduction of \"Italo,\" Italy's first private railway (owned by NTV and operated by the president of Fiat), rail travelers now have a new alternative to the state-run TrenItalia.\n\nNTV is the first operator in the world to use the new Alstom AGV train, which currently holds the highest speed record for trains.\n\nThe new trains are said to be equipped with all sorts of modern amenities and will service various big cities around Italy including Rome, Florence, Venice, Bologna, Naples, and Salerno. In Rome, the high-speed trains will use Rome's new Tiburtina station rather than Termini.\n\nBeginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nAncient Rome. Today, no other archaeological park has so compact a nucleus of fabled history-laden sights. A walk through the Roman Forum\u2014one-time playground for emperors Caesar and Augustus\u2014leads you north to the Campidoglio, the Capitoline Hill, rebuilt by Michelangelo; to the west lies the Palatine Hill; to the east stand the Imperial Forums; and to the south looms the wonder that is the Colosseum.\n\nThe Vatican. A world in itself, residence of Pope Benedict XVI, and home base for the Catholic Church, the Vatican draws hundreds of thousands of pilgrims and art lovers to St. Peter's Basilica, the Vatican Museums, and the Sistine Chapel.\n\nNavona. The cuore\u2014heart\u2014of the centro storico (historic quarter), this is Baroque Rome at its bravura best, thanks to Piazza Navona, graced with Bernini's most flamboyant fountain, and Caravaggio's paintings at San Luigi dei Francesi. Another showstopper: the ancient Pantheon.\n\nCampo. A pop-up Renaissance painting, this nook of Rome is centered around the vibrant piazza of Campo de' Fiori, the 16th-century Via Giulia\u2014\"the most beautiful street in Rome\"\u2014and the spectacular Farnese and Spada palaces.\n\nCorso. Stretching from Piazza Venezia north to Piazza del Popolo, the Corso is Rome's \"Broadway\" and flaunts monuments of artistic opulence, ranging from Emperor Augustus's Ara Pacis Augustae to the 17th-century Palazzo Doria-Pamphilj and gilded church of Sant'Ignazio.\n\nSpagna. Travel back to the days of the Grand Tour in this glamorous area enticingly wrapped around the Piazza de Spagna. After admiring the grandeur of the Spanish Steps, shop like a true VIP along Via dei Condotti, then be sure to throw a coin into the Trevi Fountain.\n\nRepubblica. The Piazza del Repubblica is an example of how Rome's history is revealed in layers: The vast Baths of Diocletian here were transformed into a Renaissance church. Westward lie art treasures\u2014like Bernini's St. Theresa in Ecstasy at Santa Maria della Vittoria\u2014and Via Veneto, still basking in the afterglow of La Dolce Vita.\n\nQuirinale. The Quirinale hill has long been crowned by the over-the-top Palazzo del Quirinale, home to Italy's president. Nearby, go for Baroque at two great churches: Bernini's Sant'Andrea and Borromini's San Carlo alla Quattro Fontane. The two architects called a truce at their grand Palazzo Barberini.\n\nVilla Borghese. Rome's \"Central Park,\" the Villa Borghese is home to an array of dazzling museums: Cardinal Scipione Borghese's 17th-century Galleria Borghese is loaded with great Bernini statues; Etruscan treasures fill the eye at Villa Giulia; while the gardens of the Villa Medici remain Edenic as ever.\n\nPiazza del Popolo. After touring the Villa Borghese museums, give your less-than-bionic feet a rest at a caff\u00e8 on the Piazza del Popolo, a prime watch-the-world-go-by spot. Here, Santa Maria del Popolo beckons with Raphaels and Caravaggios.\n\nTrastevere. Rome's \"Greenwich Village\" has kept much of its authentic roots thanks to mom-and-pop trattorias, winding cobblestone alleyways, and the resplendent church of Santa Maria in Trastevere, stunningly lit at night (when hip new discopubs take center stage).\n\nThe Ghetto. Despite galloping gentrification, the Ghetto\u2014once the home to Rome's Jews during the Middle Ages\u2014still preserves the flavor of Old Rome and is centered on the ancient Portico d'Ottavia.\n\nAventino. A green and posh residential district, the Aventine Hill is aloof from the bustle of central Rome. At its foot lies Piazza Bocca della Verit\u00e0 and Santa Maria in Cosmedin, a Romanesque masterpiece. To the south, working-class Testaccio becomes party central for hip club-goers.\n\nEsquilino. While the multi-culti crowds of the Termini train station set the tone here, the Esqueline Hill has many \"islands\" of peace and calm: great basilicas (Santa Maria Maggiore), Early Christian wonders (Santa Pudenziana), and noted churches (San Pietro in Vincoli, home to Michelangelo's Moses).\n\nCelio. Almost entirely given over to parks, churches, and ruins, the peaceful Celian Hill is home to time-travel marvels, including the Early Christian splendors of San Clemente, mystic Santo Stefano Rotondo al Celio, and medieval, magnificent Santi Quattro Coronati.\n\nCatacombs and Appian Way. The Via Appia Antica leads past the landmark church of Domine Quo Vadis and walled gardens to the spirit-warm catacombs.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\n###  Don't Miss the Metro\n\nFortunately for tourists, many of Rome's main attractions are concentrated in the centro storico (historic center) and can be covered on foot. But not to worry, wherever your feet won't take you, the Metro most probably will. Some sights nearer the border of this quarter can be reached via the Metro Line A, nicknamed the linea turistica (tourist line), and include: the Spanish Steps (Spagna stop), the Trevi Fountain (Barberini stop), St. Peter's Square (Ottaviano\u2013San Pietro Musei Vaticani stop), and the Vatican Museums (Cipro stop), to name a few.\n\nTickets for the bus and Metro cost \u20ac1 at any tabacchi (tobacco shop) and at most newsstands (the price may go up to \u20ac1.50 by 2013). These tickets are good for 75 minutes on buses and trams, or a single Metro ride. Day passes can be purchased for \u20ac4, and weekly passes, which allow unlimited use of buses, trams, and the Metro, for \u20ac16. For a better explanation of the Metro routes, pick up a free map from information booths around the city: Tech-savvy tourists can navigate Rome on the website of ATAC (Rome's public transport system): www.atac.roma.it.\n\n###  Making the Most of Your Time (and Money)\n\nRoma, non basta una vita (\"Rome, a lifetime is not enough\"): this famous saying should be stamped on the passport of every first-time visitor to the Eternal City. Indeed, the ancient city certainly wasn't built in a day, so you shouldn't expect to see it in one either. Rome is so packed with sights that it is impossible to take them all in; it's easy to run yourself ragged trying to check off the items on your \"To Do\" list.\n\nAt the same time, the saying is a celebration of the city's abundance. There's so much here, you're bound to make discoveries you hadn't anticipated. To conquer Rome, strike a balance between visits to major sights and leisurely neighborhood strolls (and a pit stop for some gelato, of course).\n\nIn the first category, the Vatican and the remains of ancient Rome loom the largest. Both require at least half a day; a good strategy is to devote your first morning to one and your second to the other. Leave the afternoons for exploring the neighborhoods that comprise Baroque Rome and the shopping district around the Spanish Steps and Via Condotti. Among the sights, Galleria Borghese and the church of San Clemente are particularly worthwhile, and Trastevere and the Ghetto make for great roaming.\n\nSince there's a lot of ground to cover in Rome, it's wise to plan your sightseeing schedule with possible savings in mind, and purchasing the Roma Pass (www.romapass.it) allows you to do just that.\n\nThe three-day pass costs \u20ac30 and is good for unlimited use of buses, trams, and the Metro. It includes free admission to two of more than 40 participating museums or archaeological sites, including the Colosseum (and bumps you to the head of the long line there, to boot), the Musei Capitolini, and Galleria Borghese, plus discounted tickets to many other museums. The Roma Pass can be purchased at tourist booths across the city, at Termini Station, or between Terminals B and C of the International Arrivals section of Fiumicino Airport.\n\n###  Hop-On, Hop-Off\n\nRome has its own \"hop-on, hop-off\" sightseeing buses. The Trambus Open Roma 110 bus leaves with 10-minute frequencies from Piazza dei Cinquecento (at the main Termini station), with a two-hour loop including the Colosseum, Piazza Navona, St. Peter's, and the Trevi Fountain. Tickets are \u20ac18, depending on whether you want to hop on and off or just stay on the whole time. There is also a Tram Open Bus by Night, only on Friday and Saturday and it leaves from Piazza Venezia at 10 pm and 10:30 pm (\u20ac12). A variant is the Archeobus (\u20ac12), which departs every 20 minutes from the Piazza dei Cinquecento and heads out to the Via Appia Antica, the Colosseum, and the Catacombs. Tickets can also be purchased ahead of time online (www.trambusopen.com).\n\n###  Roman Hours\n\nOn Sunday, Rome virtually shuts down on its official day of rest. Meanwhile, museums, pastry shops, and most restaurants are closed Monday. Daily shop hours generally run from 10 am to 1 pm, then 4 until 7:30 or 8 pm (but on Monday shops usually don't open until around 4 pm). Pharmacies tend to have the same hours as stores unless they advertise orario notturno (night hours). As for churches, most open at 8 or 9 in the morning, close from noon to 3 or 4, then reopen until 6:30 or 7. St. Peter's, however, has continuous hours from 7 am to 7 pm (until 6 in the fall and winter) and the Vatican Museums are open on Monday but closed Sunday (except for the last one of the month).\n\n###  How's the Weather?\n\nSpring and fall are the best times to visit, with mild temperatures and many sunny days. Summers are often sweltering. In July and August, come if you like, but learn to do as the Romans do\u2014get up and out early, seek refuge from the afternoon heat, resume activities in early evening, and stay up late to enjoy the nighttime breeze.\n\nCome August, many shops and restaurants close as locals head out for vacation. Remember that air-conditioning is still a relatively rare phenomenon in this city. Roman winters are relatively mild, with persistent rainy spells.\n\n###  Information Please\n\nThe Department of Tourism in Rome, called Roma Capitale, launched a new single phone number that tourists can call for cultural happenings and events, ticket sales, and other visitor information (06\/0608 | www.turismoroma.it). To provide information about cultural events, museums, opening hours, and city transportation, Roma Capitale also staffs green information kiosks (with multilingual personnel) near important sights as well as at Termini Station and Leonardo da Vinci Airport. These kiosks, called Tourist Information Sites (Punti Informativi Turistici, or PIT) can be found at:\n\nCastel S. Angelo, Lungotevere Vaticano; 9:30\u20137 pm.\n\nCinque Lune, Piazza delle Cinque Lune (Piazza Navona); 9:30\u20137 pm.\n\nFiumicino, Aeroporto Leonardo Da Vinci\u2013Arrivi Internazionali Terminal C; 9\u20137:30 pm.\n\nMinghetti, Via Marco Minghetti (corner of Via del Corso); 9:30\u20137 pm.\n\nNazionale, Via Nazionale (Palazzo delle Esposizioni); 9:30\u20137 pm.\n\nSanta Maria Maggiore, at Via dell'Olmata; 9:30\u20137 pm.\n\nTermini, Stazione Termini, at Via Giovanni Giolitti 34; 8 am\u20138 pm\n\nTrastevere, on Piazza Sidney Sonnino; 9:30\u20137 pm.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\n### The Pantheon\n\nConstructed to honor all pagan gods, this best preserved temple of ancient Rome was rebuilt in the 2nd century AD by Emperor Hadrian, and to him much of the credit is due for the perfect dimensions: 141 feet high by 141 feet wide, with a vast dome that was the largest ever designed until the 20th century.\n\n### The Vatican\n\nThough its population numbers only in the few hundreds, the Vatican\u2014home base for the Catholic Church and the pope\u2014makes up for them with the millions who visit each year. Embraced by the arms of the colonnades of St. Peter's Square, they attend Papal Mass, marvel at St. Peter's Basilica, and savor Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling.\n\n### The Colosseum\n\nLegend has it that as long as the Colosseum stands, Rome will stand; and when Rome falls, so will the world. One of the Seven Wonders of the World, the mammoth amphitheater was begun by Emperor Vespasian and inaugurated by Titus in the year 80. For \"the grandeur that was Rome,\" this obstinate oval can't be topped.\n\n### Piazza Navona\n\nYou couldn't concoct a more Roman street scene: caff\u00e8 and crowded tables at street level, coral- and rust-color houses above, most lined with wrought-iron balconies, street performers and artists and, at the center of this urban \"living room,\" Bernini's spectacular Fountain of the Four Rivers and Borromini's super-theatrical Sant'Agnese.\n\n### Roman Forum\n\nThis fabled labyrinth of ruins variously served as a political playground, a commerce mart, and a place where justice was dispensed during the days of the emperors (500 BC to AD 400). Today, the Forum is a silent ruin\u2014sic transit gloria mundi (so passes away the glory of the world).\n\n### The Campidoglio\n\nCatch a bird's-eye view of the Roman Forum from Michelangelo's piazza, atop one of the highest spots in Rome, the Capitoline Hill. Here you'll find the Capitoline Museums and beloved Santa Maria in Aracoeli.\n\n### Trevi Fountain\n\nOne of the few fountains in Rome that's actually more absorbing than the people crowding around it, the Fontana di Trevi was designed by Nicola Salvi in 1732. Immortalized in Three Coins in the Fountain and La Dolce Vita, this granddaddy of all fountains may be your ticket back to Rome\u2014that is, if you throw a coin into it.\n\n### The Spanish Steps\n\nByron, Shelley, and Keats all drew inspiration from this magnificent \"Scalinata,\" constructed in 1723. Connecting the ritzy shops at the bottom with the ritzy hotels at the top, this is the place for prime people-watching. The steps face west, so sunsets offer great photo ops.\n\n### Castel Sant'Angelo\n\nOriginally constructed as a mausoleum for Roman emperor Hadrian, this cylindrical fortress, which towers over the city's skyline, has great views and opulent Renaissance-era salons.\n\n### Trastevere\n\nLocated just across the Tiber River, this time-stained, charming villagelike neighborhood is a maze of jumbled alleyways, traditional Roman trattorias, cobblestone streets, and medieval houses. Some call it the third smallest country in the world (after the Vatican and Monaco), others dub it Rome's \"Greenwich Village.\" Whatever, it has staunchly resisted the tides of change for centuries. The area also boasts the oldest church of Rome\u2014Santa Maria in Trastevere.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\n### Musei Capitolini\n\nNone other than the great Michelangelo would suffice to design the master plan for Rome's own collection of art and archaeological museums, which enticingly crown the Capitoline Hill. The museum is divided into two wings: Palazzo Nuovo, devoted to ancient sculpture; and the Palazzo dei Conservatori, with great Old Masters.\n\n### Palazzo Doria-Pamphilj\n\nWaltzing through this 17th-century palace may be the closest you ever get to the aristocratic nobles. Fabled Old Master paintings line the walls, with pride of place going to Vel\u00e0zquez's Innocent X (the family pope), perhaps the greatest portrait ever painted.\n\n### Palazzo Altemps\n\nCatch a glimpse of exquisite taste in this 15th-century palace, once owned by Cardinal Altemps and today part of the Museo Nazionale Romano\u2014on view are many legendary examples of classic Greek and Roman sculpture, including the Ludovisi Throne.\n\n### Galleria Borghese\n\nOnly the best could satisfy the aesthetic taste of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, whose holdings evoke the essence of Baroque Rome. Spectacularly frescoed ceilings and multihue marble walls frame great Bernini sculptures and paintings by Titian and Raphael.\n\n### Keats-Shelley House\n\nDuring the 18th century, the Spanish Steps became a gathering place for Grand Tour artists and writers, so here in 1821 the English Romantic poet John Keats came to write\u2014and ultimately die (of tuberculosis)\u2014in the Casina Rossa, a dusty pink house at the base of the steps.\n\n### Museo Nazionale Romano\n\nThe city's own great collections of ancient Roman sculpture, paintings, and precious relics\u2014salvaged from excavations completed over several centuries\u2014is so vast that four separate museums at different locations are needed: Palazzo Altemps, Aula Ottagona, Terme di Diocleziano, and Palazzo Massimo alle Terme.\n\n### Villa Farnesina\n\nLifestyles of the Rich and Famous, Renaissance-era version, are on display at this extravagant villa, built around 1511 by banker Agostino Chigi, with loggias decorated by Raphael. After lavish dinners, Chigi would toss his gold plates into the Tiber and slyly retrieve them with a net in the water.\n\n### Vatican Museums\n\nThe seemingly endless line waiting for entry here can be intimidating, but the reward\u2014a vast collection of masterpieces, including the Raphael Rooms\u2014make it worth it. The rooms here are packed with legendary works, including the Apollo Belvedere and the Laoco\u00f6n (from ancient Rome), the Good Shepherd (from early Christian Rome), and great paintings such as Leonardo's St. Jerome, Raphael's Transfiguration, and Caravaggio's Deposition. The agony, not the ecstasy, of it all is summed up in Michelangelo's sublime Last Judgment and Sistine ceiling.\n\n### Palazzo Barberini\n\nThe three fathers of the Baroque\u2014Bernini, Borromini, and Pietro da Cortona\u2014whipped up this imposing 17th-century palace for the Croesus-rich Barberini family. Built around 1625, with the Gran Salone, Rome's largest ballroom, the palazzo is now home to the city's collection of Old Master paintings.\n\n### Palazzo Spada\n\nA glorious 17th-century assemblage of stuccowork and statuary, together with the impressive trompe l'oeil \"trick\" of its courtyard colonnade, inspired by master designer Borromini, is what draws the crowds.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\n### St. Peter's Basilica\n\nEvery year, millions of pilgrims flock to the world's most important Catholic church, as art lovers marvel at Michelangelo's cupola, Bernini's papal altar, and the vast nave. The burial site of its namesake, St. Peter's took such Italian masterminds as Raphael and Bramante more than a century to complete.\n\n### Santa Maria in Trastevere\n\nEven locals can't help being mesmerized by the splendors of this church's piazza, chief among them being the incandescent Byzantine mosaics on the basilica's facade and the elegant octagonal fountain. Inside, the vast nave stupefies with its gigantic Roman columns and glittering golden mosaics.\n\n### Sant'Ignazio\n\nStudying the dome up high in this fantastically bejeweled 1626 Jesuit church, you may think your eyes are playing tricks on you. But it's not your eyes! That extraordinarily accurate replica of a Baroque dome was painted in its place after plans for the cupola fell through.\n\n### Sant'Agnese in Agone\n\nProminently positioned in Piazza Navona, this church has some of Rome's most quintessential Baroque architecture. Designed by Borromini (1652), a fervent rival of Bernini's, the church's facade is a stunning symphony of voluminous concave spaces and bell towers.\n\n### Santa Maria in Cosmedin\n\nMoody, medieval, and magnificent, this 12th-century Romanesque church draws throngs to its portico where the stone Bocca della Verit\u00e0 (Mouth of Truth) sits in judgment\u2014dare you test the legend that its stone jaws clamp shut on the hands of the untruthful?\n\n### San Clemente\n\nUncover the layers of Medieval Rome here at this half-basilica, half archaeological site. Famed for its mosaics, this 12th-century church actually sits on top of another church that dates back to the 4th century and a 2nd-century BC temple to the pagan god, Mithras.\n\n### Santa Maria del Popolo\n\nFew other churches in Rome reflect the richness of Renaissance art as does Santa Maria del Popolo, thanks to its nave enlarged by Bramante and the Chigi Chapel, a Raphael masterwork. But equally striking are Baroque treasures like Caravaggio's Cerasi Chapel and Bernini's mosaic-covered dome.\n\n### Santa Maria sopra Minerva\n\nSet on a piazza graced by Bernini's famed elephant obelisk, this Gothic-style church\u2014best known for Michelangelo's Risen Christ and famed frescoes by Filippino Lippi\u2014gives off a heavenly aura, thanks to arched blue ceilings ashimmer with gold stars.\n\n### Santa Maria in Aracoeli\n\nOn the Capitoline Hill and atop a towering, 137-step stairway (designed in 1348 to celebrate the passing of the Black Death and the very spot where Gibbon was inspired to write his Fall and Decline of the Roman Empire), this Romanesque-Gothic landmark was begun in the 6th century and is home to the famed Santo Bambino, a carved-wood Baby Jesus figure.\n\n### San Giovanni in Laterano\n\nIt's hard to miss the 15 gargantuan marble statues (including Christ and the 12 Apostles) that tower over the facade of Rome's official cathedral and first church of the popes. The Baroque interior was accomplished by Borromini, but many pilgrims head first to the legendary Scala Santa (Holy Steps).\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\n\"When in Rome, do as the Romans do.\" Undoubtedly, the catch phrase may sound a bit clich\u00e9d, but locals themselves will even suggest this advice is not to be taken lightly. Romans certainly know how to live life to the fullest, indulging in the simplest pleasures and doing so with style. So put yourself in their shoes (Fendi preferably); try being Roman for a day and you'll learn how la vita \u00e8 bella!\n\n### Il Mercato\n\nIf you're looking to rub shoulders with real Romans, there's no better place to do it than at your local mercato all'aperot\u2014or open-air food market. Ah yes. Exploring the local markets of Rome is indeed the perfect way to experience a true slice of Roman life. Watch vendors take centerstage and turn the practice of selling some of the region's freshest produce into a grand theatrical performance. The most popular mercato is the Campo de' Fiori (Piazza Campo de' Fiori), Rome's oldest food market, situated just south of Rome's Renaissance\/Baroque quarter and the Piazza Farnese. Too wide to be called picturesque, the market is nevertheless a favorite photo op, due to the ombrelloni (canvas umbrella) food stands. You have to look hard to find the interesting regional foodstuffs, such as Colle Romani strawberries, chestnuts, or the colorful peperoncini piccanti (spicy hot peppers). Other top food markets are the recently renovated Mercato Trionfale (Via Tunisi in Prati, north of the Vatican) and Nuovo Mercato Esquilino (Via Filippo Turati), which is strongly influenced by the multi-culti makeup of the district. Open-air markets typically run Monday through Saturday from 7 am until 2 pm, with Saturday being the busiest shopping day.\n\n### La Piazza\n\nFor Italians young and old, la piazza serves as a punto d'incontro\u2014a meeting place\u2014for dinner plans, drinks, people-watching, catching up with friends, and, as Romans would say, exchanging due chiacchere (two words). Some of the most popular piazzas in Rome: Piazza di Spagna is not just a postcard-perfect moment for tourists, but is also a favored spot among adolescent Italian boys looking to meet American girls. By day, Piazza Campo de' Fiori is famous for its fresh food and flower market; by night, the piazza turns into a popular hangout for Romans and foreigners lured by its pubs, street caff\u00e8, and occasional street performers and magicians. Over the last few years, Campo de' Fiori has even been dubbed \"the American college campus of Rome,\" as pubs in the area now cater to American students by advertising two-for-one drink specials and such. The main attractions of the Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere are the grand bell tower and marvelous mosaics of its namesake church\u2014a picture-perfect background for some pretty trattorias.\n\n### L'Aperitivo\n\nYou can thank the Milanesi for inventing it, but it was the Romani who perfected it: l'aperitivo. Though l'aperitivo was a custom invented in the north, we have the Romans down south to thank for making the trend molto, molto moda. Similar to the concept of \"happy hour\" (sans the two-for-one drinks), l'aperitivo is a time to meet up with friends and colleagues after work or on weekends\u2014definitely an event at which to see and be seen. Aperitivo hours are usually 7\u20139 pm, with Sunday being the most popular day. Depending on where you go, the price of a drink often includes an all-you-can-eat appetizer buffet of finger foods, sandwiches, and pasta salads. Some aperitivo hot spots on the trendissimo list are Fluid (Via del Governo Vecchio); Societ\u00e8 Lutece (Piazza Monte Vecchio); Gusto (Piazza Augusto Imperatore), and Salotto 42 (Piazza di Pietra) in the centro storico; and Friends Caf\u00e9 (Piazza Trilussa) and Freni and Frizioni (Via del Politeama) in the Trastevere area.\n\n### Il Caff\u00e8\n\nIf there's something Romans certainly can't live without, it's their cup of java. Caffeine, or il caff\u00e8 (espresso), may be the most important part of their day, and there is no shortage of bars in the Eternal City to help satisfy that coffee craving. A caff\u00e8 or cappuccino in the morning is typically enjoyed at the counter while debating last night's soccer game or some aspect of local politics. Another espresso or caff\u00e8 macchiato (coffee with a dash of milk) can also be enjoyed after lunch, and again after dinner, especially when dining out. Thinking about ordering that cappuccino? Aspetta, hold on a minute. Check the time, for Italians consider it taboo to order one after 11 am. During the summer months, Romans drink a caff\u00e8 shakerato (freshly made espresso shaken briskly with sugar and ice, to form a froth when poured) or a caff\u00e8 freddo (iced espresso). Rome's best coffee? Some say the Tazza D'Oro (Via degli Orfani), not far from the Pantheon; others, Il Caff\u00e8 Sant'Eustachio (Piazza di Sant'Eustachio). If you like a dollop of chic along with your caffeine, head to Bar della Pace (Via della Pace 3), set on one of the most fashionable piazzas in Rome (but don't forget that outdoor tables sometimes hike up the price).\n\n### Il Gelato\n\nYou haven't died and gone to food heaven until you've tried some authentic Italian gelato. A national obsession, the Italian version of ice cream is tastier, less creamy, and traditionally made with only the freshest ingredients. Though many bars and stands purvey it, the best gelatos are found only at gelaterie. Small cones cost anywhere from \u20ac1.20 to \u20ac2.50. Most places allow you up to three flavors (even on a small cone) and portions are usually quite generous. So generous at times, a cone or a cup can almost replace a meal. Typical flavors are nocciola (hazelnut), pistachio, chocolate, and anything fruity. Or hunt down the latest and greatest flavors, such as the sweet-with-a-kick cioccolato con peperoncino (chocolate with hot pepper) at Millenium (Piazza Santa Maria delle Grazie 2\/a, near the Vatican Museums). Quality varies: A good sign is a long line at the counter, and two of the longest are at Old Bridge (Via Bastioni di Michelangelo 5, near St. Peter's Square), and Giolitti (Via degli Uffici del Vicario 40, by the Pantheon).\n\n### La Passeggiata\n\nA favorite Roman pastime is the passeggiata (literally, the promenade). In the late afternoon and early evening, especially on weekends, couples, families, and packs of teenagers stroll up and down Rome's main streets and piazzas. It's a ritual of exchanged news and gossip, window-shopping, flirting, and gelato eating that adds up to a uniquely Italian experience. You may feel more like an observer than a participant, until you realize that observing is what la passeggiata is all about. Rome's top promenade is Via del Corso, with a grande finale in the Piazza di Spagna shopping district.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nThere's an ancient myth going around that says Rome isn't family-friendly, especially those with small children. Don't be fooled into thinking that the city is one big playground for adults, thanks to its ancient ruins, Baroque churches, and abundance of museums. Rome has an array of child-oriented activities; you just have to know where to look.\n\n### Blast from the Past\n\nHurtle through 3,000 years of Roman history on the four-dimensional flight simulator ride at Time Elevator Roma (Via S.S. Apostoli 20, near Piazza Venezia | www.timeelevator.it). Through phenomenal special effects, the one-hour ride takes you on a tour of the city and its monuments as Caesar knew them.\n\nYou start with a Jeopardy!-style quiz on Rome, then head into a movie theater with roller-coaster seats. Once the safety bar drops, lights dim and you're off to the founding of Rome with Romulus and Remus. Chased by wolves, you dip into a time tunnel to the Ides of March to see Julius Caesar meet his untimely end before your eyes. Then you hurtle on to the gladiator combats in the Colosseum, watch Michelangelo work in the Sistine Chapel, dash on to Bernini's Baroque fountains, and continue right up through Italy's modern history. This ride is air-conditioned\u2014a real plus in the summer\u2014and the narration comes in English and other languages.\n\nAnother similar 3-D simulator ride near the Colosseum is the 3-D Rewind Rome Tour (Via Capo d'Africa 5 | www.3drewind.com), which takes tourists on a 3-D tour of Ancient Rome in AD 310 that lasts 15 minutes. Visitors can also check out the second-floor museum for all sorts of fun exhibits, including its \"Be an Ancient Roman\" exhibit, where children can try on togas, armor, and other ancient garb that the ancient Romans once wore.\n\n### Say \"Cheese,\" Spartacus\n\nTaking a photo with one of those kitschy gladiators (who aren't Italian by the way) in front of the Colosseum will win some smiles\u2014but maybe some frowns, too. Many of these costumed gladiators pounce on tourists who simply aim a camera at them and then proceed to shake them down for a \"photo fee\" (usually around \u20ac5 a photo). Others have a craftier approach: before you know it, one may envelop your eight-year-old in his red cape and say \"Formaggio.\"\n\nIndeed, this may turn out to be the greatest souvenir back home in fourth-grade class, so if interested, step right up, shake hands, and exchange some euros. But pick your Spartacus very carefully: some sloppy guys wear a helmet and cloak but have sweat suits or sneakers on. Others have helmets and swords for tourists to try on. The police try to crack down on these \"gladiators\" but so far it is _caveat emptor_.\n\n### Playing with the Planets\n\nAfter roamin' around Rome for a couple of days, your little ones may have had more history than they can handle. If that's the case, you can always switch it up a bit by giving them a bit of science. Taking a trip through outer space is always an easy winner for kids, so head to the Planetarium of Rome (Piazza G. Agnelli 10). From Martians to falling stars, the folks there always put on special programs for children on the weekends.\n\n### Talk to the Animals\n\nFor some fun on wheels, consider renting bikes (Viale dell'Orologio, on the Pincio hill, or Piazzale M. Cervantes) before heading over to Rome's zoo, Bioparco, both set in the massive Villa Borghese park. The zoo (Piazzale del Giardino Zoologico 1), which is one of the oldest in Europe, is home to more than 1,000 animals.\n\nFor those uniquely Roman critters\u2014i gatti (the street cats)\u2014kids can go on a free guided tour of the ancient Largo di Torre Argentina, for it has been made into a sanctuary and home for hundreds of once-homeless Roman cats\u2014Mom and Dad, meanwhile, can ooh-and-aah at the relics and remains of one of the oldest (300 BC) temples in Rome.\n\n### Truth or Dare\n\nLong before the advent of lie-detector machines, and even before there were Bibles to swear on, there was the Bocca della Verit\u00e0\u2014the Mouth of Truth, the famous gaping mouth that so successfully terrified Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday. Legend has it that people suspected of telling lies would be marched up to the Bocca and have their hand put inside the mouth of this massive stone relief (originally an ancient street drain cover).\n\nIf the suspect told the truth, nothing to fear. But if lies were told, the grim unsmiling stone mouth would take its revenge and clamp down on the person's hand. This is a great spot for kids to get the truth out of their brother or sister, so have your camera\u2014and your probing questions!\u2014ready.\n\n### Adventures in Learning\n\nKids love hands-on activities and Rome has one museum that encourages them to do just that. The Explora Children's Museum (Via Flaminia 82, near Piazza del Popolo | 06\/3613776 | www.mdbr.it) is a miniature realistic cityscape for children under 12 whose exhibits take them\u2014and their bodies\u2014through life in the big city. Though the exhibits are mainly in Italian, the visuals, effects, and touchy-feely stuff seem to hold the children's attention whatever their language. Elsewhere, kids learn about the workings of a post office, a bank, and the ABCs of recycling. Also fun for kids are the workshops and readings at the Casina di Raffaello (\"Raphael's House\") in Villa Borghese (Viale della Casina di Raffaello, Piazza di Siena). Tuesday through Sunday, they offer all sorts of activities from painting to games.\n\n### The World on Strings\n\nLooming over Trastevere is the Janiculum Hill (Gianicolo), famed for its panoramic vistas of the Roman skyline and for its colorful, open-air Teatro di Pulcinella puppet theater. Shows here run weekdays from 4 to 7 pm and from 10:30 am to 1 pm on weekends. A small donation is expected.\n\nOver on the Pincio hill in the Villa Borghese park (usually accessed via Piazza del Popolo) is the Teatro Stabile dei Burattini \"San Carlino,\" which puts on live puppet shows on weekends (Viale dei Bambini Villa Borghese).\n\nDon't forget to take a stroll through the pretty park over to the Cinema dei Piccoli, the smallest movie theater in the world\u2014with all of 63 seats (Viale della Pineta 15)\u2014and children's movies shown daily. Shows are in Italian, but most kids are amused by the images. After these puppet shows, the perfect souvenir awaits at Bartolucci (Via de' Pastini 99, near the Pantheon), where you'll meet not one Pinocchio but hundreds, still or animated, from life- to pocket-size, all crafted by artisans.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nAs Romans would say, these one-day itineraries basta e avanza (\"are more than enough\") to get you started. For other great walks, see the Good Walks chapter.\n\n### Rome 101\n\nRome wasn't built in a day, but if that's all you have to see it in, take a deep breath, strap on some stylish comfy sneakers, and grab a cup of cappuccino to help you get an early start. Think Rome 101, and get ready for a spectacular sunrise-to-sunset spree of the Ancient City.\n\nBegin at 9 by exploring Rome's most beautiful neighborhood\u2014\"Vecchia Roma\" (the area around Piazza Navona) by starting out on Via del Corso (the big avenue that runs into Piazza Venezia, the traffic hub of the historic center).\n\nA block away from each other are two opulently over-the-top monuments that show off Rome at its Baroque best: the church of Sant'Ignazio and the princely Palazzo Doria-Pamphilj, aglitter with great Old Master paintings. By 10:30, head west a few blocks to find the granddaddy of monuments, the fabled Pantheon, still looking like Emperor Hadrian might arrive. A few blocks north is San Luigi dei Francesi, home to the greatest Caravaggio paintings in the world.\n\nAt 11:30, saunter a block or so westward into beyond-beautiful Piazza Navona, studded with Bernini fountains. Then take Via Cucagna (at the piazza's south end) and continue several blocks toward Campo de' Fiori's open-air food market (for some lunch-on-the-run fixings). A great place to stop for a cheap and quick panino or a slice of pizza is the Antico Forno at Campo de' Fiori (Campo de' Fiori 22).\n\nTwo more blocks toward the Tiber brings you to one of the most romantic streets of Rome, Via Giulia, laid out by Pope Julius II in the early 16th century. Walk past 10 blocks of Renaissance palazzos and ivy-draped antiques shops to take a bus (from the stop near the Tiber) over to the Vatican.\n\nArrive around 1 to gape at St. Peter's Basilica, then hit the treasure-filled Vatican Museums (Sistine Chapel) around 1:45\u2014during lunch, the crowds empty out! After two hours, head for the Ottaviano stop near the museum and Metro your way to the Colosseo stop.\n\nAround 4, climb up into the Colosseum and picture it full of screaming toga-clad citizens enjoying the spectacle of gladiators in mortal combat. Striding past the massive Arch of Constantine, enter the back entrance of the Roman Forum around 4:45. Photograph yourself giving a \"Friends, Romans, Countrymen\" oration (complete with upraised hand) on one of the marble fragments. At sunset, the Forum closes but the floodlights come on.\n\nMarch down the forum's Via Sacra\u2014people walked here centuries before Christ\u2014and out into Via dei Fori Imperiali where you will head around \"the wedding cake\"\u2014the looming Vittorio Emanuele Monument (Il Vittoriano)\u2014to the Campidoglio. Here, on the Capitoline Hill, tour the great ancient Roman art treasures of the Musei Capitolini (which is open most nights until 8), and snap the view from the terrace over the spotlit Forum.\n\nAfter dinner, hail a cab\u2014or take a long passeggiata walk down La Dolce Vita memory lane\u2014to the Trevi Fountain, a gorgeously lit sight at night. Needless to say, toss that coin in to insure your return trip back to the Mother of Us All.\n\n### Temples Through Time: Religious Rome\n\nMaking a trip to Rome and not going to see the Vatican Museums or St. Peter's Basilica is almost like breaking one of the Ten Commandments. If you head out early enough (yes, 7 am), you might get a jump on the line for the Vatican Museums, where one of the world's grandest and most comprehensive collections of artwork is stored. Even better, book tickets online at | biglietteriamusei.vatican.va beforehand, and you get to skip the line, period (tickets cost slightly more, \u20ac19 instead of \u20ac15, but it saves you headaches). Once you've conquered both, take the Metro from Ottaviano to Piazza del Popolo (Metro stop: Flaminio) where Santa Maria del Popolo is not to be missed for its famous chapels decorated by Raphael and Caravaggio.\n\nHead south along the Corso for about 10 blocks toward Sant'Ignazio, an eye-popping example of Baroque Rome, with its amazing \"Oh, I can't believe my eyes\" optical illusion of a dome. Take Via Sant' Ignazio to Via Pi\u00e8 di Marmo, which will lead you to Piazza della Minerva, where Bernini's elephant obelisk monument lies in wait. Take in the adjacent Gothic-style Santa Maria sopra Minerva, best known for Michelangelo's Risen Christ.\n\nThen make your way south to Corso Vittorio Emanuele and the bus piazza at Largo Argentina where you'll take Tram No. 8 to picturesque Trastevere, one of Rome's quaintest quarters. Make your way through a series of winding cobblestoned alleyways and piazzas toward the famed Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere, where one of Rome's oldest churches\u2014Santa Maria in Trastevere\u2014stands. Dedicated to the Virgin Mary, the church has one of the finest displays of glimmering gilded mosaics, which cover the nave, perhaps Rome's most spectacular.\n\n### Retail Therapy: Shop-Till-You-Drop Rome\n\nFor serious shoppers, there's no better place to treat yourself to some retail therapy than the centro storico. If money is no question, Rome's Via dei Condotti (Metro stop: Spagna) is paradiso. VIPs can continue their shopping spree down streets Via del Babuino for fabled antique furniture and fine jewelry, and Via Frattina for exclusive boutiques. Even if you're on a pinch, window-shopping can be just as fun as you make your way down to the more affordable Via del Corso, where department-store-style shopping can be done at La Rinascente.\n\nIf vintage is your thing, head toward Piazza Navona and down Via del Governo Vecchio, where there is an assortment of vintage consignment shops featuring high-end clothing, handbags, and accessories.\n\nNow that you've blown your shopping budget, it's time for real bargain-shopping Roman style. For rock-bottom bargains try the city's open air and flea markets. Rome's largest and most famous are markets on Via Sannio in San Giovanni (Monday\u2013Saturday only) and the Porta Portese market (Sunday only) in Trastevere.\n\nThe market on Via Sannio specializes in new and used clothing, shoes, and accessories. The Porta Portese market sells everything but the kitchen sink: clothes, souvenirs, antiques, housewares, and knickknacks galore.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nRome may be on the fast track to becoming one of the most expensive cities in Europe, however, in compensation, there is a slew of free and inexpensive things to do in the Citt\u00e0 Eterna that won't break the bank. For a quick look at low-cost activities, check out the Comune di Roma's tourism website (www.turismoroma.it) for great ideas.\n\n### Budget Boosters: Art and Archaeological Sites\n\nOn Valentine's Day (February 14), the Italian Ministry for Culture hosts its annual Innamorati dell'Arte, or \"In Love with Art,\" campaign, where lovers or people in pairs can take advantage of two-for-one admission prices at all state-run museums and archaeological sites. Also sponsored by the Ministry for Culture, during Settimana della Cultura, or Cultural Week (typically held in April and May), many of the major archaeological sites and museums in and around Rome waive their entrance fees. Check out www.beniculturali.it for exact dates and listings. It usually costs \u20ac15 to visit the Vatican Museums, but on the last Sunday of nearly every month you can get in free. Make sure to bring comfy shoes, as the wait in line can be a bit overwhelming!\n\n### Wallet-Watchers: Movies\n\nIf you're up for seeing a flick, head over to the Casa del Cinema (Largo Marcello Mastroianni 1, near Villa Borghese). The movie theater, sponsored by the City of Rome, has free showings daily. See www.casadelcinema.it for listings.\n\nLooking for a cheap movie night? The Nuovo Olimpia Cinema (Via in Lucina 16) near Piazza di Spagna often shows movies in English and, on Wednesday nights, tickets are just \u20ac6. Also on Wednesday nights, the Cinema Alcazar in Trastevere (Via Merry del Val 14) screens movies at \u20ac6 a ticket. Monday nights at the Nuovo Sacher Cinema (Largo Ascianghi 1), operated by noted actor Nanni Moretti, movies in English are \u20ac7 a person.\n\n### Econo-Tips: Music and Performances\n\nEvery year on May 1, Italy's Labor Day, hundreds of thousands of people gather for the free concert held in Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano. Headliners are usually Italian rock bands, but occasionally folk troupes perform as well. During the summer (mid-June through August), one of Rome's loveliest parks, Villa Ada, hosts its annual Roma Incontro il Mondo\u2013\"Rome Meets the World\"\u2014concert series. Concerts are held nightly, with ticket prices ranging \u20ac5 to \u20ac13. Check www.villaada.org for details.\n\n### Euro-Stretchers: Eats\n\nThe aperitivo hour allows you to dine out, sort of, in some of Rome's trendiest and finest establishments without breaking the bank. It's like the Italian version of \"happy hour,\" except that the focus is on food and friends, not alcohol. Here's how it works: for the price of a drink (usually \u20ac6 to \u20ac10), you can feast on an all-you-can-eat buffet. Hipsters and artsy bohemians head to Freni e Frizioni in Trastevere (Via del Politeama 4) or to its sumptuous sister bar Societ\u00e8 Lutec\u00e8 in the centro storico (Vicolo di Montevecchio 17). A posh scene can be found at Salotto 42 (Piazza di Pietra 42) and Fluid (Via Governo Vecchio 46), where the spread includes veggies, pastas, and finger food. Momart Caf\u00e9 in the Piazza Bologna district attracts a young Italian college crowd (Viale XXI Aprile 19) thanks to its wonderful wood-oven pizza.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nIt's easy to avoid the scam artists and pickpockets, but finding good value is a little trickier.\n\nWe asked travelers on Fodor's Travel Talk Forums (www.fodors.com) to reveal some of their insider know-how.\n\nTheir response?\n\nWhen in Rome, spend like a Roman!\n\nFodorites know that if you live like a local, you'll save like a local as well, and perhaps have a richer traveling experience to boot.\n\n1. \"If you aren't hungry and don't want pasta, skip to secondo\u2014the second course. Rarely do Italians eat a primo e secondo when they go out.\" \u2014glittergirl\n\n2. \"Bars always have two different prices: If you have your coffee at the counter, it's cheaper than when a waiter serves it at a table (servizio al tavolo).\" \u2014quokka\n\n3. \"For the art lover on a budget: Most of the art I saw in Rome is free. Where else can you see countless Caravaggios, two Michelangelos, and even more Berninis for the cost of the wear and tear on the soles of your shoes?\" \u2014amyb\n\n4. \"Instead of taking the Leonardo Express from Fiumicino to Termini, take the FR1 to whichever station is most convenient for you. The FR1 departs every 15 minutes (instead of every 30 minutes for the Express), costs only \u20ac5 (instead of \u20ac9.50 for the Express), and avoids the hullabaloo of Termini.\" \u2014Therese\n\n5. \"The boat trip down the Tiber, from the bridge by Castel Sant'Angelo to Isola Tiberina, is only \u20ac1 (a great way to get from St. Peter's to Trastevere or the Forum).\" \u2014annhig\n\n6. \"One way to save on the expense of guided tours is to register online at Sound Guides (www.sound-guides.com) and download the various free self-guided tours to your iPod or MP3 player.\" \u2014monicapileggi\n\n7. \"I eat at working-folks places, like the Goose, near the Vatican. Dinner (three courses) runs \u20ac20 with wine; if you leave hungry, it's your own fault.\" \u2014JoanneH\n\n8. \"Visit wine fill-up shops in Italy; get table wine from the cask for \u20ac2\u2013\u20ac3 a liter. In Rome we would get them filled at the Testaccio market. I will usually ask at the local bar where I go for my coffee.\" \u2014susanna\n\n9. \"Go off-season\u2014March or November have better air prices and also accommodations, particularly if you stay in apartments, which you can rent for much less off-season (and plan some meals in-house\u2014make the noon meal your biggest of the day, then have a small dinner in the apartment).\" \u2014bobthenavigator\n\n10. \"Invest in the bus schedule\/map\u2014at any place they sell tickets. Cost is \u20ac4. It gives you all the routes, how long between buses, hours they run, where you hop on\/off to transfer, etc.\" \u2014JoanneH\n\n11. \"The smaller restaurants in Trastevere also offer better value for money than, say, the ones in the alleys near the Spanish Steps or any of the other tourist areas in central Rome.\"\u2014friendindelhi\n\n12. \"Order your coffee or drinks from the bar before you sit down. Take your coffee, whatever, with you to the table, then return the cup or glass afterwards. That way you'll be charged the much cheaper al banco price that the locals pay.\" \u2014WiseOwl\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nWhether you're looking for love or hoping to rekindle the romance, there's no better place to do so than the Eternal City. Ah yes, it certainly seems that love lurks behind every street corner, park bench, and monument. And if you don't find the abundance of public displays of affection off-putting, you'll be sure to find scores of places to steal both that first and ultimo bacio.\n\nThe hopeless romantics should start their rendezvous through Rome with a horse-drawn carriage ride that begins at the Spanish Steps (Piazza di Spagna) and continues through the streets of the centro storico. Make a stop for some aphrodisiacal treats, such as the decadent, mouthwatering chocolates made by Moriondo e Gariglio (Via Pi\u00e8 di Marmo 21), off the central Corso near Palazzo Doria Pamphilj.\n\nWhen you're through, ask the driver to drop you off at the famous Villa Borghese park. Whether it's a picnic in the park, a cruise on the lake, or just a hand-in-hand stroll up to the Pincio\u2014the park's terrace that boasts the city's most breathtaking views\u2014you will find amore everywhere.\n\nIf the hopelessly romantic can spare the time, a trip up to Tivoli's Villa D'Este (a half hour outside Rome via bus) is definitely worth it. Its seductive garden and endless array of fountains (about 500 of them) is the perfect setting to put you in the mood for love, and it won't be long before you hear Frank Sinatra warble \"Three Coins in the Fountain\" in your head. For extra brownie points, during the summer months, take her or him to the Villa D'Este at night for a spectacular candlelit setting.\n\nThat's your cue to return to Rome and make a beeline for the luminous Trevi Fountain, even more enchanting at night than in the daytime. Make sure you and that special someone throw a coin into the fountain, for good luck. For your wish to come true, you must toss the coin over your shoulder with your back to the fountain, left hand over right shoulder (or vice versa). Legend has it that those who do so are guaranteed a return trip back to Rome.\n\nA great way to lift the curtain on a night of romance is a serenaded dinner cruise along the Tiber, where dessert includes views of some of Rome's jewels by night: Castel Sant'Angelo, St. Peter's, and the Janiculum (Gianicolo) hill. See www.battellidiroma.it for more details.\n\nIf you prefer to stay on terra ferma, at sundown head to the Hotel Hassler and its rooftop-garden restaurant, Im\u00e0go, perched just over the Spanish Steps, for unforgettable views of the city's greatest landmarks, best viewed through a glass of Prosecco. Dinner here will set you back a pretty euro-cent, but you may get to rub shoulders with celebs and VIPs at this exclusive locale, whose past visitors included Princess Diana and Hollywood diva Audrey Hepburn.\n\nFor an after-dinner stroll, head to north Rome and wander over to the illuminated Ponte Milvio bridge, known as \"Lovers Lane\" in Roman circles. Inspired by a scene in a popular Italian movie, Ho Voglia Di Te (I Really Want You), prove your eternal love to your inammorata by padlocking him or her to one of the bridge's chains\u2014the city specifically erected 24 columns with chains here so that lovers can do just that. Remember that part of the charm is throwing the key into the river!\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\n_Main Table of Contents _\n\nWalking in Rome\n\nA Stroll Through the Baroque Quarter\n\nTrastevere: The Village Within the City\n\nRome of the Emperors: A Roman Forum Walk\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nBy Martin Wilmot Bennett\n\nWith more masterpieces per square foot than any other city in the world, Rome presents a particular challenge for visitors: just as they are beginning to feel hopelessly smitten by the spell of the city, they realize they don't have the time\u2014let alone the stamina\u2014to see more than a fraction of its treasures. Rome may not have been built in a day, but neither can it be seen in one day, or even two or three. As the Italian author Silvio Negro once put it: Roma, non basta una vita (\"Rome, a lifetime is not enough\").\n\nIt's wise to start out knowing this, and to have a focused itinerary. To provide just that, here are three strolls that introduce you to especially evocative stretches of the city: Vecchia Roma, where Rome's bravura Baroque style sets the city's tone; Trastevere\u2014Rome's Greenwich Village\u2014and the picturesque Tiber Island; and the Roman Forum, where the glory that was (and is) Rome is best captured.\n\nAlong the way, terra-cotta-hued palaces, Baroque squares, and time-stained ruins will present an unfolding panorama of color upon color\u2014an endlessly varied palette that makes Rome into one of Europe's most enjoyable cities for walking. Forget about deadly earnest treks through marble miles of museum corridors and get ready to immerse yourself in some of Italy's best \"street theater.\"\n\nIn addition, these three tours of clustered sightseeing capture quintessential Rome while allowing roamers to make minidiscoveries of their own. Use these itineraries as suggestions to keep you on track as you explore both the famous sights and those off the beaten path. Remember that people who stop for a caff\u00e8 get more out of these breaks than those who breathlessly try to make every second count. So be Nero-esque in your rambles and fiddle while you roam.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nThe most important clue to the Romans is their Baroque art\u2014not its artistic technicalities, but its spirit. When you understand that, you'll no longer be a stranger in Rome. Flagrantly emotional, heavily expressive, and sensuously visual, the 17th-century artistic movement known as the Baroque was born in Rome, the creation of four geniuses, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Francesco Borromini, Annibale Caracci, and Caravaggio. Ranging from the austere drama found in Caravaggio's painted altarpieces to the jewel-encrusted, gold-on-gold decoration of 17th-century Roman palace decoration, the Baroque sought to both shock and delight by upsetting the placid, \"correct\" rules of the Renaissance masters. By appealing to the emotions, it became a powerful weapon in the hands of the Counter-Reformation. Although this walk passes such sights as the Pantheon\u2014ancient Rome's most perfectly preserved building\u2014it's mainly an excursion into the 16th and 17th centuries, when Baroque art triumphed in Rome.\n\nNext Map | Rome Maps\n\nWe wend our way through one of Rome's most beautiful districts\u2014Vecchia Roma (Old Rome), a romantic nickname given to the areas around Piazza Navona and the Campo de' Fiori. Thick with narrow streets with curious names, airy Baroque piazzas, and picturesque courtyards, and occupying the horn of land that pushes the Tiber westward toward the Vatican, this has been an integral part of the city since ancient times. For centuries, artisans and shopkeepers toiled in the shadow of the huge palaces built to consolidate the power and prestige of the leading figures in the papal court who lived and worked here. The greatest artists flocked here to get commissions. Today, artisans still live hereabouts but their numbers are diminishing as the district has become one of Rome's ritziest.\n\n### From Earthly to Heavenly Glory\n\nWe begin just off the main thoroughfare of Rome, the Via del Corso, about four blocks northwest of Piazza Venezia's traffic hub. Heading up the Corso, make a left turn down tiny Via Montecatini to emerge into the delightful proportions of the ocher and stone Piazza di Sant'Ignazio. Any lack in size of this square is made up for in theatricality. Indeed, a Rococo theater set was exactly what its architect, Filippo Raguzzini, had in mind when he designed it in 1727. The exits and entrances these days, however, are by carabinieri, not actors, the main building \"backstage\" being a police station. With perfectly matching concave facades, two other buildings make up \"the wings.\" A rare example of the barochetto\u2014that is, the \"cute\" Baroque\u2014a term that demonstrates how Italian art critics have a name for everything.\n\nAt one time the chapel of the gigantic Collegio Romano, the church of Sant'Ignazio\u2014on your left\u2014was Rome's largest Jesuit church. Honoring the order's founding saint, it is famous for its over-the-top Baroque spectacle\u2014few churches are as gilt-encrusted, jewel-studded, or stupendously stuccoed. This is the 17th-century Counter-Reformation pulling out all the stops: religion as supreme theater.\n\nWalk down the vast nave and position yourself on the yellow marble disc on the floor and prepare to be transported heavenward. Soaring above you, courtesy of painter-priest Fra Andrea Pozzo, is a frescoed Allegory of the Missionary Work of the Jesuits (1691\u201394). While an angel holding the Jesuit battle motto HIS (In Hoc Signo)\u2014\"In this sign we conquer\"\u2014just below, upward, ever upward, soars Saint Ignatius in triumph, trailed by a cast of thousands. A masterly use of perspective opens giddying vistas where clouds and humans interact until the forces of gravity seem to flounder. Diavolerie\u2014\"fiendish tricks\"\u2014a commentator of the time called such wonders. To rephrase a hopefully not too sacrilegious modern essay: Not until Superman comics does anything get close.\n\nLooking back toward the entrance door, notice how the painted columns\u2014continuations more or less of their real marble equivalents below\u2014seem to rise straight into heaven. Now walk 20 yards back toward the door, and gaze again. And experience an optical earthquake: Those straight columns have tilted 60 degrees. Believe it or not, the whole towering edifice of classic arches, columns, and cornices from the windows upward is entirely flat.\n\nTime to walk down the nave and admire the massive dome\u2014although it is anything but. Dome, windows, the golden light, they're all illusion\u2014all that majestic space is in reality flat as the top of a drum, mere paint masterfully applied across a round canvas 17 meters in diameter in trompe l'oeil fashion. Funds for a real dome ran out, so Pozzo created the less costly but arguably no less marvelous \"flat\" version here. Another disc set in the marble floor marks the spot where his deception takes maximum effect.\n\n### God's Little Mascot\n\nHead out of the church, turning left to find Via S. Ignazio, then left again to Via Pie' di Marmo, which leads into Piazza Santa Caterina di Siena and the Piazza della Minerva, site of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, the only major church in Rome built in Gothic style, and famous as the home of Michelangelo's Risen Christ. But the object of our delight is right on the piazza: the Obelisk of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, an astounding conceit of an obelisk astride an elephant, masterfully designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Romans pet-name it Il Porcino, or \"little pig.\" The obelisk is a soaring emblem for theology and the vertiginous weight of knowledge, the beast beneath embodying that which is needed to support it\u2014a mind that is both humble and robust, and never, thank heaven, beyond a jest, even when at its own expense.\n\nStraight ahead is the curving, brick-bound mass of the Pantheon, the most complete building surviving from antiquity, and a great influence on Baroque architects. Follow Via della Minerva to Piazza della Rotonda and go to the north end of the square to get an overall view of the temple's columned portico: it once bore two Baroque bell towers of Bernini's design but, after being ridiculed for their similarity to \"donkey's ears,\" they were demolished. Enjoy the piazza and side streets, where you will find a busy caff\u00e8 and shopping scene.\n\nReturning to the Piazza della Rotunda, continue northward on Via della Maddalena and proceed into Piazza della Maddelena. In the corner is the excellent Gelateria Pasqualetti. Meanwhile, in front is the Rococo facade of the church of S. Maria Maddelena, its curly and concave stone appearing as malleable as the ice cream that you may have just eaten, a gelato for the eyes. Inside the church observe how the late-17th-century Baroque twists and meanders into the 18th-century Rococo style. Marble work was seldom given such ornate or sumptuous treatment, and here is often gilded as well, as is the magnificent organ loft.\n\nHead to Via Pozzo delle Cornacchia, directly opposite the church facade, and take it one block to the looming church across the square, San Luigi dei Francesi, the church of Rome's French community. In the left-side chapel closest to the altar are the masterpieces painted by Caravaggio on the life and martyrdom of Saint Matthew\u2014these three gigantic paintings had the same effect on 17th-century art that Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon had on 20th-century artists. Illuminated in Caravaggio's landmark chiaroscuro (light and shadow) style, these are works unrivaled for emotional spectacle. The artist's warts-and-all drama was a deeply original response to the Counter-Reformation writings by St. Carlo Borromeo and the result is Baroque at its sublime best.\n\n### The Sting of Wisdom\n\nContinue south on Via della Dogana Vecchia to Piazza di Sant'Eustachio. As culture-vulture exhaustion may be setting in, it's time for a coffee. There's no better place than Il Caff\u00e8, which, a true Roman will tell you, serves the best coffee in Rome, if not the universe. Inside the bar a cup costs only \u20ac1; outside, the price triples, but then, up on your left, the best available view of S. Ivo's dome is thrown in. Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza is considered by many to be Francesco Borromini's most astounding building. To get another look at the bizarre pinnacle crowning its dome (the church's rear entrance is on Piazza Sant'Eustachio), head down Via del Salvatore and turn left on Corso del Rinascimento to Number 40. Here a grand courtyard view of the church reveals Borromini\u2014Bernini's great rival\u2014at the dizzying top of his form.\n\nAdmire the church's concave facade and follow your gaze upward to see how Borromini mixes concave and convex shapes like a conjurer in stone. This performance is topped first with the many-niched lantern, and then the spiraling, so-called puntiglione, or giant stinger. Some suggest Borromini was inspired by that ziggurat of ziggurats\u2014the Tower of Babel, featured in many paintings of the time. A more popular theory cites the sting of a bee, and indeed the nickname means just that. This would also square with the building having been begun under Pope Urban VIII of the Barberini family, whose three-bee'd crest is much in evidence all over Rome. Neatly enough, the bee is also a symbol of wisdom and this palace of Sapienza was once the hoary home of the University of Rome.\n\n### The Queen of Piazzas\n\nLeaving the courtyard, follow all the crowds one block to reach that showstopper of Baroque Rome, Piazza Navona. The crown jewel of the centro storico, this showcases Bernini's extravagant Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, whose statues represent the four corners of the earth and, in turn, the world's great rivers. Emperor Domitian's stadium once stood on this site, hence the piazza's unusual oval shape. Before someone figured out that the piazza's church of Sant'Agnese in Agone was designed prior to the fountain, common belief held that Bernini's fountain-figures were poised as if looking in horror at the inferior creation of Borromini, Bernini's rival. For lunch, grab a ringside caff\u00e8 seat and take in the piazza spectacle\u2014this is some of the most delicious scenery on view in Europe.\n\nAfter lunch, escape the madding crowds by exiting the piazza on the little vicolo (alleyway) to the right of the church complex, Via di Tor Millina, to turn right on Via di S. Maria dell'Anima. Continue to the soaring bell tower of the church of S. Maria dell'Anima, then make a sharp left up a narrow alley to emerge on pretty Piazza della Pace. The centerpiece of one of the city's cutest streetscapes is the church of Santa Maria della Pace, commissioned by the great Chigi-family art patron, Pope Alexander VII. Although there are two great Renaissance treasures inside\u2014Raphael's Sibyls and Bramante's cloister\u2014the Baroque masterstroke here is the church facade, designed in 1657 by Pietro da Cortona to fit into the tiny piazzina, created to accommodate the 18th-century carriages of fashionable parishioners.\n\n### Grand Palazzos Come in Threes\n\nTake the street leading to the church, Via della Pace (past the always chic Antico Caff\u00e8 delle Pace) and continue a few blocks south down to the big avenue, Corso Vittorio Emmanuele II. Turn right for one or two blocks to reach the Chiesa Nuova, another of Rome's great Counter-Reformation churches (with magnificent Rubens paintings inside) and, directly to the left, Borromini's Oratorio dei Filippini. Head across the Corso another two blocks toward the Tiber along Via D. Cartari and turn left on Via Giulia, often called Rome's most beautiful street. While laid out\u2014as a ruler-straight processional to St. Peter's\u2014by Michelangelo's patron, Pope Julius II, it is lined with numerous Baroque palaces (Palazzo Sachetti, at No. 66, is still home to one of Rome's princeliest families). At No. 1 is Palazzo Falconieri, probably Borromini's most regal palace and now home to the Hungarian academy\u2014note the architect's rooftop belvedere adorned with the family \"falcons.\"\n\nLooming over everything else is the massive Palazzo Farnese, a Renaissance masterpiece topped off by Michelangelo himself. You can tour the palace (today the French Embassy) on Monday and Thursday at 3, 4, and 5 pm, though not from July 24 to September 7. (). Inside is the fabled Galleria, with frescoes painted by Annibale Carracci. These florid depictions of gods and goddesses were among the first painted in the Baroque style and were staggeringly influential.\n\nIf you can't get into the Farnese, no problem. Just a block to the south is the grand Palazzo Spada. The rich exterior trim of painted frescoes on the top story hint at the splendors within: grand salons nearly wallpapered with Old Master paintings capture the opulent, 17th-century version of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.\n\nBut don't miss the colonnato prospettico in the small courtyard between the library and the palace cortile. While the colonnaded tunnel, with a mythological figure in marble at the far end, seems to extend for 50 feet, it is actually only one-third that length.\n\nDue to anamorphic deformation used as a trick by the designer, once thought to be Borromini himself (now seen as the work of Giovanni Maria da Bitono), the columns at the far end are only two feet high!\n\n### Puccini's Choice\n\nFor the finale, head four blocks northward along Via Biscione back to the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele. Landmarking the famous Baroque church of Sant'Andrea della Valle is the highest dome in Rome (after St. Peter's).\n\nDesigned by Carlo Maderno, the nave is adorned with 17th-century frescoes by Lanfranco, making this one of the earliest ceilings in full Baroque fig.\n\nRichly marbled chapels flank the nave, the setting Puccini chose for Act I of his opera Tosca. The arias sung by Floria Tosca and her lover Cavaradossi (load it on your iPod) strike exactly the right note to conclude this tour of Rome.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nCharming, cobblestoned Trastevere might be nicknamed the world's third-smallest nation (after the Vatican, No. 2). Staunchly resisting the tides of change for centuries, the off-the-beaten-path district was known\u2014until the millionaires and chichi real estate agents arrived a decade ago\u2014as \"the real Rome.\" Heavily populated by romani di Roma\u2014those born and bred in the Eternal City for at least three generations\u2014these locals called themselves the only true Romans. To brook no arguments, they named their charming July fete the Festa de Noantri: the \"Festival of We Others,\" as the people of Trastevere pugnaciously labeled themselves so as to be distinguished from \"Voiantri,\" the \"you others\" of the rest of Rome or anywhere else.\n\nIn fact, the Trasteverini have always been proud and combative, a breed apart. Dating back to republican times when it hosted both Jewish and Syriac communities as well as assorted slaves and sailors, the area was only incorporated into the \"Urbs\" (or city proper) by Emperor Augustus in 7 BC. By the Middle Ages, Trastevere still wasn't considered truly part of Rome, and the \"foreigners\" who populated its maze of alleys and piazzas fought bitterly to obtain recognition for the neighborhood as a rione, or official district of the city. In the 14th century the Trasteverini won out and became full-fledged Romans, continuing, however, to stoutly maintain their separate identity, however.\n\nPrevious Map | Next Map | Rome Maps\n\nIt's been the case ever since. Trastevere has always attracted \"outsiders,\" and those have included celebrated artists and artisans. Raphael's model and mistress, the dark-eyed Fornarina (literally, \"the baker's daughter\"), is believed to have been a Trasteverina. The artist reportedly took time off from painting the Galatea in the nearby Villa Farnesina to woo the winsome girl at the tavern now occupied by the district's most toothsome restaurant, Romolo's. Long cocooned from \"the strange disease of modern life,\" the district these days has been colonized with trendy boutiques and discos. Today, the district is newly hip with actors and alternative thinkers. No matter: tourists still love the place, with good reason. Long considered Rome's \"Greenwich Village,\" Trastevere remains a delight for dialecticians, biscuit eaters, winebibbers, and book browsers alike.\n\n### Tiber's Island\n\nThe best gateway to Trastevere turns out to be one of Rome's most picturesque: the Ponte Fabrizio over the Isola Tiberina, the island wedged between Trastevere and the Campo area. As you stride over Rome's oldest bridge, let's not forget that Trastevere, literally translated, means \"across the Tiber.\"\n\nIn Rome every stone worth its weight has a story attached. The one behind the Tiber Island, writes ancient historian Livy, is that Etruscan leader Tarquin, on his banishment, left behind a crop of grain in the Campo Marzio. For various superstitious reasons this was uprooted, put in baskets, and thrown into the Tiber for good riddance. Mud and sediment did the rest. The resulting island was eventually walled in the shape of a ship, ready to take on board another myth: Allegedly this is where Aesculapius, god of medicine, landed from Greece (or his serpent double did). Whatever, the medical tradition continues to this day in the Hospital of Fratebenefratelli, the large building to your right. For one of Rome's most unique ancient survivals, head (in the opposite direction) down the embankment to the island's southern tip to the ancient \"stone prow\" carved with medicine's serpent. Take in the 18th-century facade of the church of San Bartolomeo, built above Aesculapius's Temple. Off to the right is what some call the world's most beautiful movie theater, the open-air Cinema d'Isola di Tiberina (which operates during the summer festival of Estate Romana). Cross the bridge\u2014the Ponte Cestio (dated 26 BC)\u2014to get to Trastevere proper.\n\n### Medieval Nooks and Crannies\n\nYou're now on the Lungotevere riverside road but continue for another block into the district to hit Piazza in Piscinula (from piscina, pool), one of Rome's most time-stained squares, home to S. Benedetto in Piscinula, a 17th-century church with a much earlier campanile, one of the smallest and cutest in Rome. Here St. Benedict, the founder of Western monasticism, once had a cell. The church has recently been restored by the Brazilian \"Heralds of the Gospel\" who, in resplendent uniform, are there on Sunday to greet visitors and worshippers alike. The multicolor 12th-century floor is a wonder in itself. On the opposite flank of the square is the 14th-century Casa dei Mattei, replete with cross-mullioned windows and loggias.\n\nHistory nestles quietly in every nook and cranny off the square, but opt for the charming incline at the northern end, the Via dell'Arco dei Tolomei, graced with a medieval house built over an arch. One block north, let history take a rest in Via della Luce at a bakeshop par excellence\u2014just look for the sign \"Biscotti.\" Several blocks farther north, the \"Middle-Aged\" want to detour up to Piazza Belli, where they'll find one of the largest medieval structures in Trastevere, the Torre degli Anguillara, a much-restored mini-fortress whose main tower dates from the 13th century.\n\nBack under the Tolomei arch, this street leads into the Via dei Salumi and one block leftward brings you to Via dell'Atleta, with a number of picturesque medieval houses. Via dell'Atleta runs into Via dei Genovesi, which commemorates the Genovese sailors who thronged Trastevere when it was the papal harbor in the 15th century: these gents roomed in the vicinity of the 15th-century church of San Giovanni dei Genovesi, which has an extraordinary 15th-century cloister. Whether Christopher Columbus ever stayed here is not recorded, but the dates would fit. Meanwhile, at a ring of the bell (at No. 12 Via Anicia), the cloister is still visitable every afternoon 3\u20136.\n\n### Saintly Portraits in Stone\n\nVia dei Genovesi leads directly to one of the district's majestic medieval landmarks, the church of Santa Cecilia, which was built above the Roman house of this martyr and patron saint of music. In 1599 her sarcophagus was found, her body inside being miraculously intact. Sculptor Stefano Maderno was summoned to attest in stone to what he saw, and sketched before decomposition set in. In a robe-turned-shroud the saint lies on her side, head turned away and a deep gash across her neck, that she's supposed to have survived for three days after suffocation in a steam bath had left her not only unscathed but singing (all this sent Marquis de Sade into rather dubious raptures). With its almost mystically white marble, the work has a haunting quality that few statues can match. But the greatest treasure can be seen only if you exit and ring the bell on the left: for \u20ac3 a nun will show you to an elevator that ascends to a Christ in Judgment by Pietro Cavallini, who art historians believe was Giotto's master. Painted in 1293, the frescoes are remarkably intact.\n\nLeaving the church, turn left and walk down Via Anicia several blocks to Piazza S. Francesco d'Assisi and San Francesco a Ripa. The fourth chapel on the left features Bernini's eye-knocking statue of the Blessed Ludovica Albertoni, a Franciscan nun whose body is buried beneath the altar. It has been remarked that the Baroque, at its most effective, served not just to educate but to sweep you off your feet. Here's an example. Marble pillow, folds, and drapery in abundance, all set off the deathbed agony and ecstasy of the nun\u2014her provocative gesture of clutching at her breast is actually an allusion to the \"milk of charity.\"\n\n### Majestic Santa Maria\n\nWe now set off for the walk's northern half by heading upward Via San Francesco a Ripa, one of Trastevere's main shopping strips. But this dreary stretch actually enhances the delight at finding, at the end of the street, Santa Maria in Trastevere, famously set on one of Rome's dreamiest piazzas. Noted for its fountain and caff\u00e8, it is the photogenic heart of the rione (district). Fellini evidently thought the same, making it a supporting star of his film Roma.\n\nStaring down at you from the 12th-century church facade are the famed medieval frescoes of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. Dramatically spotlit at night, these young ladies refer to the \"miraculous\" discovery of oil here in 39 BC. In the mosaic, the Virgin is set between the wise virgins and two foolish ones\u2014the latters' crownless heads bowed with shame at having left their lamps empty, the flame extinguished. In the church's presbytery the fons olii marks the spot from whence the oil originally flowed.\n\nThanks to its gilded ceiling, shimmering mosaics, and vast dimensions, the church nave echoes the spectacle of an ancient Roman basilica\u2014the columns are said to have come from the Baths of Caracalla. The church's main wonder, however, must be the golden mosaics behind the altar. The famous mosaics of Pietro Cavallini depict episodes in the life of the Virgin so often revisited during the Renaissance. With its use of perspective, the work\u2014completed in 1291\u2014is seen as something of a watershed between the old, static Byzantine style and the more modern techniques soon to be taken up by Giotto. This is the very dawn of Western art.\n\nThe piazza outside is the very heart of the Trastevere rione (district). With its elegant raised fountain and sidewalk caff\u00e8, this is one of Rome's most beloved outdoor \"living rooms,\" open to all comers. Through innumerable generations, this piazza has seen the comings and goings of tourists and travelers, intellectuals and artists, who lounge on the steps of the fountain or eat lunch at Sabatini's, whose food has seen much better days but whose real estate, with its tables set up directly in front of the fountain, among Rome's most coveted. Here the paths of Trastevere's residents intersect repeatedly during the day; they pause, gathering in clusters to talk animatedly in the broad accent of Rome or in a score of foreign languages. At night, it's the center of Trastevere's action, with street festivals, musicians, and gamboling dogs vying for attention from the throngs of people taking the evening air.\n\n### Raphael Was Here\n\nDirectly north of the church is Piazza di S. Egidio (the small but piquant Museo di Trastevere is here) and then you enter Via della Lungara, where, several blocks along on the right, the Villa Farnesina stands (hours are 9\u20131 daily, except Sunday). Originally built by papal banker and high-roller Agostino \"Il Magnifico\" Chigi, this is Rome at its High Renaissance best.\n\nEnter the Loggia di Galatea to find, across the ceiling, Peruzzi's 1511 horoscope of the papal banker, presumably not foretelling the family's eventual bankruptcy and the selling off of the same property (and horoscope) to the wealthy Farnese family. Off left, next to the wall, sits Sebastiano di Piombo's depiction of one-eyed giant Polyphemus with staff and giant panpipes; this is what, just next door, Raphael's Galatea is listening to in her shell-chassis, paddle-wheeled chariot. With the countermovement of its iconic putti, nymphs, sea gods, and dolphins, this legendary image became a hallmark of Renaissance harmony.\n\nIn the next room, also\u2014or at least mostly\u2014decorated by Raphael is the Marriage of Cupid and Psyche. After provoking the jealousy of Venus, Psyche has to overcome a number of trials before being deemed fit to drink the cup of immortality and marry Cupid. Here, of course is an alter ego for Agostino Chigi. The paintings are made still more wonderful by Giovanni da Udine's depictions of flower and fruit separating one from the other as if it were a giant pergolato (or arbor)\u2014gods float at every angle while ornithologists will delight in spotting Raphael's repertoire of bird species. Climbing upstairs one passes through Peruzzi's Hall of Perspectives to Chigi's private rooms. Here, in Il Sodoma's Alexander's Wedding, Roxanna is being lovingly undressed by a bevy of cupids. Note the one who is so overexcited he attempts a somersault like a footballer after a winning goal.\n\n### Queen Christina at Home\n\nDirectly across the street from the Villa Farnesina is the Galleria Corsini (Tuesday through Sunday, 8:30\u20131:30), entered via a gigantic stone staircase right out of a Piranesi print. This was formerly the palazzo of pipe-smoking Christina of Sweden, immortalized by Greta Garbo on the silver screen and to whom history, that old gossip, attaches the label, \"Queen without a realm, Christian without a faith, and a woman without shame.\" Her artistic taste is indisputable.\n\nThe second room alone contains a magnificent Rubens, Van Dyck's Madonna of the Straw, an Andrea del Sarto, and then, courtesy of Hans Hoffman, surely the hare of all hares. Worth the price of admission alone is Caravaggio's John the Baptist. In other rooms, for aficionados of high-class gore, there's Salvator Rosa's Prometheus, the vulture in flagrante and on Prometheus's face a scream to rival Munch. A visit to the Botanical Gardens that stretch behind the galleria is well worth a visit, if just to restore a sense of calm after all that Baroque bloodletting.\n\nTo get back to central Rome, continue on up Via della Lungara (past the church of Giacomo Apostolo, which has a fine Bernini inside) and cross over the Ponte Principe Amadeo. Taking advantage of one of the bus stops by the Tiber, you can take any number of buses, including the famous No. 64, back to il centro.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nTaking in the famous vista of the Roman Forum from the terraces of the Capitoline Hill, you have probably already cast your eyes down and across two millennia of history in a single glance. Here, in one fabled panorama, are the world's most striking and significant concentrations of historic remains. From this hilltop aerie, however, the erstwhile heart of ancient Rome looks like one gigantic jigsaw puzzle, the last piece being the Colosseum, looming in the distance. Historians soon realized that the Forum's big chunks of weathered marble were the very seeds of our civilization and early-20th-century archaeologists moved in to weed it and reap: in the process, they uncovered the very heart of the ancient Roman Empire. While it is fine to just let your mind contemplate the scattered pieces of the once-impressive whole, it is even better to go exploring to decipher the significance of the Forum's noble fragments. This walk does precisely that.\n\nPrevious Map | Next Map | Rome Maps\n\n### World's Mightiest Heirloom\n\nTo kick things off, we start just south of the Forum at ancient Rome's hallmark monument, the Colosseum (with its handy Colosseo Metro stop). Convincingly austere, the Colosseum is the Eternal City's yardstick of eternity. Weighing in at 100,000 tons, it must be the world's mightiest heirloom. A special road having been built to transport the Travertine stone from nearby Tivoli\u2014these quarries are still there to this day\u2014the building was begun under the emperor Titus Flavius Vespasianus (aka Vespasian) and named the Flavian Amphitheater after his family. His son Titus, according to his father's will, inherited the task of finishing it in AD 80 while his other son, Domitian, built the gladiatorial schools on the adjacent Colle Oppio.\n\nOne rationale for the building was that Rome's only previous amphitheater, the Theater of Taurus, had been destroyed in the great fire of AD 64. Another was that the new version would erase memories of wicked Nero, who had privatized a vast swath of land near the public Forum for his private palace, the so-called Domus Aurea. In fact, the Colosseum was positioned directly over a former lake in Nero's gardens, and nearby would have towered the 110-foot-high, colossal statue of Nero himself. In one of history's ironic twists, the term Flavian amphitheater never caught on. Even in its name, the Colosseum serves to publicize the very emperor whose memory it was meant to bury.\n\nA typical day at the Colosseum? The card would usually begin with a wild-beast hunt, then a pause for lunch, during which the sparse crowd was entertained with tamer displays by jugglers, magicians, and acrobats, along with third-tier fights involving \"lesser\" combatants, such as the Christians. Then, much gorier, would come the main event: the gladiators. The death rates among them have been much debated\u201430,000 is one estimate.\n\nThe building could evidently be filled in as little as 10 minutes, thanks to the 80 entrance archways. Nowadays, you can take one of the elevators upstairs to level one (the uppermost levels are closed for excavation) to spy the extensive subterranean passageways that used to funnel all the unlucky animals and gladiators into the arena.\n\n### Ancient Arches Tell the Tale\n\nLeaving the Colosseum behind, admire the Arch of Constantine, standing just to the north of the arena. The largest and best preserved of Rome's triumphal arches, it was erected in AD 315 to celebrate the victory of the emperor Constantine (280\u2013337) over Maxentius\u2014it was shortly after this battle that Constantine converted Rome to Christianity. Something of an amalgam historically, it features carved depictions of the triumphs of emperors Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, and Hadrian as well, a cost-cutting recycling that indicates the empire was no longer quite what it once was. Now proceed back westward along the black basalt stones leading to the Via Sacra and into the Forum. Albeit minus the traditional four-horse chariot and Jovian costume, you are treading the same route used by the emperors returning in triumph.\n\nUp there on the mighty pedestal of its hillock stretches the Temple of Venus and Roma. In part it was proudly designed by would-be architect Hadrian\u2014at least until the true professional Apollodurus pointed out that with Hadrian's measurements the goddess risked bumping her head on the apse, a piece of advice for which he was repaid with banishment. Off to your left, on the spur of hillside jutting from the Palatine Hill, stands the famed Arch of Titus. Completed by his brother, and successor, Domitian in AD 81, the arch in one frieze shows the Roman soldiery carrying away booty\u2014Moses's candelabra, silver trumpets, an altar table\u2014from the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem 10 years earlier. On the other side there is Titus on the same Via Sacra, in this case being charioted toward the Capitol after the campaign in Palestine begun by his father Vespasian. Through the arch, photograph the great vista of the entire Forum as it stretches toward the distant Capitoline Hill.\n\n### Massive Maxentius\n\nAfter carrying on for some hundred yards down the Via Sacra, take a small detour, doubling back to take in the massive Basilica of Maxentius, or the third of it left standing. Heavily damaged during Alaric's sack of Rome in 410, it had been founded by Maxentius in 306\u2013310, then completed by Constantine the Great, Maxentius's archenemy at the battle of the Milvian Bridge. The three remaining side vaults give an idea of the building's scale; also to how, through their use of brick and barrel vaulting, the Romans had freed themselves from the tyranny of gravity. Here once stood\u2014or sat rather\u2014the surrealistically large head and other body fragments of Constantine (now in the outside courtyard of the Palazzo dei Conservatori), the first Christian emperor. Rome's first Christian basilica, San Giovanni in Laterano, originated many of the features used in the basilica here. Not surprisingly this most majestic of ruins was much admired and studied by the great Renaissance architects and painters alike\u2014in Raphael's School of Athens the background edifice is surely a depiction of what you are seeing here. Today, the basilica is the site of wonderful concerts in summer and the occasional dramatized trial of this or that emperor (i.e., Nero and Tiberius).\n\n### Temples Still Standing Tall\n\nResuming your walk back toward the Capitoline Hill, the next building is the Temple of Romulus. The Romulus here is not Rome's founder but the son of Emperor Maxentius. Apart from the Pantheon, this is the only Roman temple to remain entirely intact\u2014so intact even the lock in the original bronze doors is said to still function. This is due to its having subsequently been used, at least until the late 19th century, as the atrium of a Christian church above. The stonework across the lintel is as perfect as when it was made, as are the two porphyry pillars. For an inside view of the same temple and, until a century ago, the attached church atrium, enter the Church of Cosma and Damiano from the Via dei Fori Inperiali side and peer through the glass at the end of the main chapel.\n\nProof of how deeply buried the Forum was throughout Medieval times can be seen in the wonderful pillars of the next building down, the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, his wife. Those stains reaching halfway up are in fact centuries-old soil marks. Further evidence of the sinking Forum are the doors of the 13th-century church above\u2014note how they seem to hang almost in midair. Now a full 30 feet above the temple's rebuilt steps, originally they would, of course, have been at ground level. Here we see an example of the Christian world not so much supplanting the pagan world as growing out of it. Meanwhile, there against the blue, read the words \"Divo Antonino\" and \"Diva Faustina,\" proclaiming the couple's self-ordained \"divination.\"\n\n### A Caesar among Caesars\n\nContinue your walk toward the Capitoline Hill by strolling by the largely vanished Basilica Emilia. To the left, however, is the Temple of Caesar, sometimes referred to as Caesar's Altar, where, after his assassination from 23 knife wounds, Caesar's body was brought hotfoot for cremation. Peep behind the low wall and now in Caesar's honor there are flowers instead of flames. Now look up and head over, just across the road known as the Vicus Tuscus, to the three wonderfully white pillars of the Temple of Castor and Pollux. This was reconstructed by Augustus to pay homage to the twin sons of Jupiter and Leda who helped the Roman army to victory back in the 5th century BC. The emperor Caligula, says Suetonius, \"had part of the temple incorporated into his palace as his own vestibule. Often he would stand between the divine brothers displaying himself for worship by those visiting the temple.\"\n\nTo this temple's right sits the Basilica Julia. After the death of Julius Caesar, all chaos broke loose in Rome, but a prelude to another long bout of civil war. This ended with the victory of Augustus who, ever the dutiful stepson, had this massive basilica completed in his father's honor. Pitted with column marks, the rectangular piece of ground remains. As with other Roman basilicas, the place was more judicial in nature, swarming, according to Pliny, with 180 judges and a plague of lawyers. Look carefully at the flooring and you might still spy a chessboard carved into the marble, perhaps by a bored litigant.\n\n### Haunt of the Vestal Virgins\n\nBacktrack a bit along the Via Sacra past the Temple of Castor and Pollux to the circular Temple of Vesta. In a tradition going back to an age when fire was a precious commodity, the famous vestal virgins kept the fire of Rome burning here. Of the original 20 columns only three remain, behind which stretch the vast remains of the House of the Vestal Virgins. Privileged in many ways\u2014they had front-row seats in the Colosseum and rights of deciding life and death for poor gladiators, for example\u2014they were also under a 30-year-long vow of chastity. As everyone knows, the notorious punishment for breaking their vow was being buried alive. But it is time to turn back and press on with our walk. Crossing the central square and walking back toward the towering Capitoline Hill, you are now entering the midsection of the open area of the Forum proper; you can see to your left the Pillar of Phocas. The last monument to be built on the by now largely abandoned Forum was this column, erected by an otherwise forgotten Byzantine emperor. In 1813, on the orders of Pope Pius VII, the area was excavated, with the assumption that the column belonged to the Temple of Jove Custode. Then, at the base, surfaced the inscription, describing how it had been erected in 608 to the Christian emperor from the east on his bequeathing the Pantheon to the Roman Church.\n\n### A Burial Too Soon\n\nThe long stone platform presiding over this area is the famous Rostra. Forum coming from an old Latin word meaning \"to meet,\" from here Rome's political elite would address the people. Indeed, this is where, with some help from Shakespeare, Mark Antony would have pronounced his rabble-rousing \"I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.\" The name Rostra dates to the custom of adorning the platform with prows of captured ships following an early naval victory off Antium\/Anzio in 338 BC.\n\nGoing back even farther is, on the other side of the Via Sacra, the so-called Lapis Niger, or Black Stone, which marks the site of a Temple to Romulus. The small sanctuary underneath goes back to the 6th century BC as does a strange column with the oldest Latin inscription yet known, cursing all those who profaned the place\u2014irreverent archaeologists take note!\n\nAltogether mightier in scale is the Curia\u2014the Senate house of ancient Rome\u2014nearby. Not the building of the earlier republican period, this is a version rebuilt by Diocletian and in turn rebuilt in 1937. Here sat the 300 members of Senate, then rendered largely powerless by Diocletian. Originally decorating the nearby rostra, the two friezes show the much earlier emperor Trajan. Meanwhile the porphyry statue without a head has been attributed to Trajan also. But there is a neater theory: With the turnover in emperors reaching to as many as six per year and porphyry being almost priceless, the head was replaceable by whatever emperor happened to be in power.\n\n### Heads and Tales\n\nContinue back down the Via Sacra, where towers one of the Forum's extant spectaculars, the Arch of Septimus Severus. Built by his sons, it celebrates Septimus's campaign against the Parthians and the ensuing influx into Rome of booty and slaves. A number of these, their hands tied behind them, are depicted. Also on view is the murderous Caracalla, son number two, though the head of his elder brother Gaeta has, Stalin-fashion, been erased. Sadly, many other heads have also had a Caracalla done on them by the erosive fumes of Roman traffic.\n\nContinuing left and up the Via Sacra, you reach the base of the celebrated Temple of Saturn. Now the name of a planet, Saturn was then as close to the earth as you can get, the word originating from sero\u2014\"to sow.\" Saturn was originally a corn god, first worshipped in Magna Grecia, then allowed, so goest the patriotic myth, to settle in Rome by the city's presiding deity, Janus. That Saturn was the God of Plenty in more than an agricultural sense is also attested to by the fact that beneath the floor was kept the wealth of the Roman treasury.\n\nPosition yourself below the easternmost two of the eight columns of Egyptian marble and peer upward as they reach higher than a rocket at Cape Canaveral and are every bit as majestic.\n\n### Hail and Farewell\n\nMeanwhile, up ahead ascends the last stretch of the Via Sacra\u2014the so-called Clivus Capitolinus. On the left is the Temple of Vespasian.\n\nBowing to the powerful nature of time, now only three splendid columns remain. Next door once stood the Temple of Concord.\n\nBuilt back in Republican times, it celebrated the peace between the often warring patricians and plebs, the two cardinal elements in the winning formula of SPQR\u2014in other words the patrician Senate (S) and the people (PQ). A few stones mark the spot\u2014and the last piece in the Forum's monumental jigsaw.\n\nFor a better sense of the whole\u2014a sort of archaeological gestalt\u2014take the steps alongside to ascend to the Campidoglio, the Capitoline Hill, where vistas from the piazza balconies will put your two or three past hours of walking into panoramic context.\n\nYou cannot help but ponder on the truth of sic transit Gloria (\"glory passes away\")\u2014a similar view by moonlight inspired Edward Gibbon to embark on his epic Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\n_Main Table of Contents _\n\nAncient Rome\n\nThe Vatican\n\nNavona and Campo\n\nCorso and Spagna\n\nRepubblica and Quirinale\n\nVilla Borghese and Piazza del Popolo\n\nTrastevere and the Ghetto\n\nAventino\n\nEsquilino and Celio\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nGetting Oriented | The Campidoglio | The Roman Forum | The Palatine Hill | The Imperial Forums | The Colosseum and Environs\n\nUpdated by Amanda Ruggeri\n\nIf you ever wanted to feel like the Caesars\u2014with all of ancient Rome (literally) at your feet\u2014simply head to Michelangelo's famed Piazza del Campidoglio. There, make a beeline for the terrace flanking the side of the center building, the Palazzo Senatorio, Rome's ceremonial city hall. From this balcony atop the Capitoline Hill you can take in a panorama that seems like a remnant of some forgotten Cecil B. DeMille movie spectacular.\n\nLooming before you is the entire Roman Forum, the caput mundi\u2014the center of the known world for centuries and where many of the world's most important events in the past 2,500 years happened. Here, all Rome shouted as one, \"Caesar has been murdered,\" and crowded to hear Mark Antony's eulogy for the fallen leader. Here, legend has it that St. Paul traversed the Forum en route to his audience with Nero. Here, Roman law and powerful armies were created, keeping the barbarian world at bay for a millennium. And here the Roman emperors staged the biggest blowout extravaganzas ever mounted for the entire population of a city, outdoing even Elizabeth Taylor's Forum entry in Cleopatra.\n\nPrevious Map | Next Map | Rome Maps\n\nBut after a more than 27-century-long parade of pageantry, you'll find that much has changed in this area, known to many locals as the Campitelli (or \"Fields\"). The rubble-scape of marble fragments scattered over the Forum area makes all but students of archaeology ask: Is this the grandeur that was Rome? It's not surprising that Shelley and Gibbon once reflected on the sense of sic transit gloria mundi\u2014\"thus pass the glories of the world.\" Yet spectacular monuments\u2014the Arch of Septimius Severus, the Palatine Hill, and the Colosseum (looming in the background), among them\u2014remind us that this was indeed the birthplace of much of Western civilization.\n\nBefore the Christian era, before the emperors, before the powerful republic that ruled the ancient seas, Rome was founded on seven hills. Two of them, the Capitoline and the Palatine, surround the Roman Forum, where the Romans of the later Republic and Imperial ages worshipped deities, debated politics, and wheeled and dealed. It's all history now (except on the fringes, this area's only residents are lazy lizards and complacent cats), but this remains one of the world's most striking and significant concentrations of ancient remains: an emphatic reminder of the genius and power that made Rome the fountainhead of the Western world.\n\n##  Getting Oriented\n\n###  Top 5 Reasons to Go\n\nThe Colosseum: Clamber up the stands to the emperor's box, and imagine the gory games as Trajan saw them.\n\nThe Roman Forum: Walk through the crumbling, romantic ruins, a trip back 2,000 years to the heart of one of the greatest empires the world has ever seen.\n\nSunset: Watch the sun go down over ancient and Renaissance Rome from the back of the Campidoglio, the best view in town.\n\nCapitoline Museums: Look eye-to-eye with the ancients\u2014the busts of emperors and philosophers are more real than ideal.\n\nCaff\u00e8 Capitolino: Sip Prosecco on the terrace of the Palazzo Caffarelli\u2014part of the Musei Capitolini complex\u2014while you take in a Cinerama scene of Roman rooftops.\n\n###  OK, Where Do I Start?\n\nOn the congested Via di Teatro di Marcello, on the spot where emperors once halted their triumphal processions\u2014and Fiats now honk in unison\u2014climb Michelangelo's sloping cordonata walkway up the famed Capitoline Hill. Take in the views over the entire Foro Romano from the piazza terrace, then tour the celebrated museum complex; use the linking terrace to visit Santa Maria in Aracoeli. Use the church's staircase back down to the street (or backtrack to the cordonata to avoid the hundred-plus steps!) and walk past the \"eighth hill of Rome\"\u2014the Monument to Victor Emmanuel\u2014to find the entrance to the Roman Forum on the Via dei Fori Imperiali. Your ticket also includes entrance to the Palatine Hill and Colosseum, meaning you can jump the lines there. As all these sites are almost entirely outdoors, good weather is ideal; while rain can be cool and keep the crowds away, it also muddies the beaten-earth paths of the Foro Romano and Palatine. In summer, get an early start on touring, as most sites are open to the sun, or take an evening stroll.\n\n###  Getting Here\n\nThe Colosseo Metro station is right across from the Colosseum proper and a short walk from both the Roman and imperial forums, as well as the Palatine Hill. Hoofing from the historic center will take about 20 minutes, much of it along the wide and busy Via dei Fori Imperiali. The little electric Bus No. 117 from the center or No. 175 from Termini will also deliver you to the Colosseum's doorstep. Any of the following buses will take you to or near the Roman Forum: Nos. 60, 75, 85, 95, and 175.\n\n###  Best Time-Outs\n\nAntico Caff\u00e8 del Brasile.   \nSince 1908, this caff\u00e8 in the heart of Monti has been a local favorite. Even Pope John Paul II was a fan: As a student, he regularly grabbed coffee here. Come for a pick-me-up\u2014including not only the caff\u00e9's own coffee blends, but chocolates and pastries, too. | Via dei Serpenti 23 , Monti | 00184 | 06\/4882319.\n\nDivin Ostilia.   \nRelax over a glass of wine at this enoteca (wine bar), just a block from the Colosseum. Sit outside or grab a table in the warm, cozy interior. Although you can find better dinner entr\u00e9es elsewhere, the wine selection is excellent and the snacks (like the cheese plate or bruschetta) are good bets, too. | Via Ostilia 4 , Colosseo | 00184 | 06\/70496526 | Station: Colosseo.\n\nIl Gelatone.   \nWho says ice cream has to make you fat? For generous scoops of delicious gelato\u2014many of them soy-based, sugar-free, or fruit-only\u2014head from the Forum across Via dei Fori Imperiali to Il Gelatone. | Via dei Serpenti 28 , Monti | 00184 | 06\/4820187.\n\n##  The Campidoglio\n\nYour first taste of ancient Rome should start from a point that embodies some of Rome's earliest and greatest moments: the Campidoglio. Here, on the Capitoline Hill (which towers over the traffic hub of Piazza Venezia), a meditative Edward Gibbon was inspired to write his 1764 classic, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Of Rome's famous seven hills, the Capitoline is the smallest and most sacred. It has always been the seat of Rome's government, and its Latin name is echoed in the designation of the national and state capitol buildings of every country in the world.\n\n### Top Attractions\n\nThe Campidoglio.   \nSpectacularly transformed by Michelangelo's late-Renaissance designs, the Campidoglio was once the epicenter of the Roman Empire, the place where the city's first shrines stood, including its most sacred, the Temple of Jupiter.\n\nOriginally, the Capitoline Hill consisted of two peaks: the Capitolium and the Arx (where Santa Maria in Aracoeli now stands). The hollow between them was known as the Asylum. Here, prospective settlers once came to seek the protection of Romulus, legendary first king of Rome\u2014hence the term asylum. Later, during the Roman Republic, in 78 BC, the Tabularium, or Hall of Records, was erected here.\n\nBy the Middle Ages, however, the Capitoline had become an unkempt hill strewn with ancient rubble.\n\nIn preparation for the impending visit of Charles V in 1536, triumphant after the empire's victory over the Moors, his host, Pope Paul III Farnese, decided that the Holy Roman Emperor should follow the route of the emperors, climaxing at the Campidoglio.\n\nBut the pope was embarrassed by the decrepit goat pasture the hill had become and commanded Michelangelo to restore the site to glory; he added a third palace along with Renaissance-style facades and a grand paved piazza.\n\nNewly excavated ancient sculptures, designed to impress the visiting emperor, were installed in the palaces, and the piazza was ornamented with the giant stone figures of the Discouri and the ancient Roman equestrian statue of Emperor Marcus Aurelius (original now in Musei Capitolini)\u2014the latter a visual reference to the corresponding glory of Charles V and the ancient emperor.\n\nThe Campidoglio Tips\n\nThe piazza centerpiece is the legendary equestrian statue of Emperor Marcus Aurelius but, as of 1999, a copy took up residence here when the actual 2nd-century AD statue moved to a new wing in the surrounding Musei Capitolini. The Sala Marco Aurelio and its glass room also protect a gold-plated Hercules along with more massive body parts, this time bronze, of what might be Constantine or that of his son Constans II (archaeologists are still undecided).\n\nWhile there are great views of the Roman Forum from the terrace balconies on either side of the Palazzo Senatorio, the best view may be from the Tabularium, the arcade balcony below the Senatorio building and accessed with admission to the Musei Capitolini. The museum also has the Terrazza Caffarelli, featuring a restaurant with a magical view looking toward Trastevere and St. Peter's.\n\nPiazza dei Campidoglio, incorporating the Palazzo Senatorio and the two Capitoline Museums, the Palazzo Nuovo, and the Palazzo dei Conservatori | 00186.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Musei Capitolini.   \nSurpassed in size and richness only by the Musei Vaticani, this immense collection was the first public museum in the world. A greatest-hits collection of Roman art through the ages, from the ancients to the baroque, it is housed in the twin Museo Capitolino and Palazzo dei Conservatori that bookend Michelangelo's famous piazza. Here, you'll find some of antiquity's most famous sculptures, such as the poignant Dying Gaul, the regal Capitoline Venus, the Esquiline Venus (identified as possibly another Mediterranean beauty, Cleopatra herself), and the Lupa Capitolina, the symbol of Rome. Although some pieces in the collection\u2014which was first assembled by Sixtus IV (1414\u201384), one of the earliest of the Renaissance popes\u2014may excite only archaeologists and art historians, others are unforgettable, including the original bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius whose copy sits in the piazza.\n\nBuy your ticket and enter the museums on the right of the piazza (as you face the center Palazzo Senatorio), into the building known as the Palazzo dei Conservatori. Before picking up a useful free map from the cloakroom, you cannot miss some of the biggest body parts ever: that giant head, foot, elbow, and imperially raised finger across the courtyard are what remains of the fabled seated statue of Constantine, which once filled the Basilica of Maxentius, his defeated rival (and the other body parts were of wood, lest the figure collapse under its own weight). Constantine believed that Rome's future lay with Christianity and such immense effigies were much in vogue in the latter days of the Roman Empire. Take the stairs up past a series of intricately detailed ancient marble reliefs to the resplendent Salone dei Orazi e Curiazi (Salon of Horatii and Curatii) on the first floor. The ceremonial hall is decorated with a magnificent gilt ceiling, carved wooden doors, and 16th-century frescoes depicting the history of ancient Rome. At both ends of the hall are statues of the baroque era's most charismatic popes: a marble Urban VIII (1568\u20131644) by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598\u20131680) and a bronze Innocent X (1574\u20131655) by Bernini's rival, Algardi (1595\u20131654).\n\nProceeding to the collection of ancient sculpture, the first room contains the exquisite Spinario: Proving that the most everyday action can be as poetic as any imperial bust, a small boy in the act of removing a thorn becomes unwittingly immortalized. Nearby is the rather eerie glass-eyed bust of Junius Brutus, first Roman consul. Farther along is a separate room devoted to the renowned symbol of Rome, the Capitoline Wolf, a 5th-century BC Etruscan bronze, the Romulus and Remus below being late additions by Antonio Pollaiolo (15th century). Donated by Sixtus IV, the work came to symbolize Roman unity.\n\n##### Marcus Aurelius Statue\n\nThe heart of the museum, however, is the Exedra of Marcus Aurelius (Sala Marco Aurelio), a large, airy room with skylights and high windows, which showcases the spectacular original bronze statue of the Roman emperor whose copy sits in the piazza below. Created in the 2nd century AD, the statue should have been melted down like so many other bronze statues of emperors after the decline of Rome, but this one is thought to have survived because it was mistaken for the Christian emperor Constantine. To the right the room segues into the area of the Temple of Jupiter, with its original ruins rising organically into the museum space. A reconstruction of the temple and Capitol Hill from the Bronze Age to present day makes for a fascinating glance through the ages. Some of the pottery and bones on display were dug up from as early as the 12th century BC, recasting Romulus and Remus as Johnny-come-latelies.\n\nOff left are rooms dedicated to statuary from the so-called Horti, or the gardens of ancient Rome's great and mega-rich. From the Horti Lamiani is the Venere Esquilina doing her hair. (Look for the fingers at the back, at the end of the missing arms.) Believe it or not, you might be gazing at the young Cleopatra invited to Rome by Julius Caesar. Or so say some experts\u2014a further clue is the asp. In the same room is an extraordinary bust of the Emperor Commodus, seen here as Hercules and unearthed in the late 1800s during building work for the new capital. On the top floor the museum's pinacoteca, or painting gallery, has some noted baroque masterpieces, including Caravaggio's The Fortune Teller (1595) and St. John the Baptist (1602; albeit, given the ram, some critics see here a representation of Isaac, the pose this time influenced by Michelangelo's ignudi), Peter Paul Rubens's (1577\u20131640) Romulus and Remus (1614), and Pietro da Cortona's (1627) sumptuous portrait of Pope Urban VIII. Adjacent to the Palazzo dei Conservatori is Palazzo Caffarelli, which holds temporary exhibitions. Here, set on the Piazzale Caffarelli, the new Caff\u00e8 Capitolino offers a spectacular vista over Rome (looking toward St. Peter's); it is open daily, except Monday, 9 to 7.\n\nTo reach the Palazzo Nuovo section of the museum (the palace on the left-hand side of the Campidoglio), take the stairs or elevator to the basement of the Palazzo dei Conservatori, where an underground corridor called the Galleria Congiunzione holds a poignant collection of ancient gravestones. But before going up into Palazzo Nuovo, be sure to take the detour to the right to the Tabularium Gallery with its unparalleled view over the Forum.\n\n##### Room of the Emperors\n\nInside the Palazzo Nuovo on the stairs you find yourself immediately dwarfed by Mars in full military rig and lion-topped sandals. Upstairs is the noted Sala degli Imperatori, lined with busts of Roman emperors, along with the Sala dei Filosofi, where busts of philosophers sit in judgment\u2014a fascinating who's who of the ancient world, and a must-see of the museum. Although many ancient Roman treasures were merely copies of Greek originals, portraiture was one area in which the Romans took precedence. Within these serried ranks are 48 Roman emperors, ranging from Augustus to Theodosius (AD 346\u2013395). On one console, you'll see the handsomely austere Augustus, who \"found Rome a city of brick and left it one of marble.\" On another rests Claudius \"the stutterer,\" an indefatigable builder brought vividly to life in the history-based novel I, Claudius, by Robert Graves. Also in this company is Nero, one of the most notorious emperors, who built for himself the fabled Domus Aurea. And, of course, there are the standout baddies: cruel Caligula (AD 12\u201341) and Caracalla (AD 186\u2013217), and the dissolute, eerily modern boy-emperor, Heliogabalus (AD 203\u2013222). In the adjacent Great Hall, be sure to take in the 16 resplendently restored marble statues. Nearby are rooms filled with masterpieces, including the legendary Dying Gaul, The Red Faun from Hadrian's Villa, and a Cupid and Psyche\u2014each worth almost a museum to itself. Downstairs near the exit is the gigantic, reclining figure of Oceanus, found in the Roman Forum and later dubbed Marforio, one of Rome's famous \"talking statues\" to which citizens from the 1500s to the 1900s affixed anonymous satirical verses and notes of political protest. | Piazza del Campidoglio, Campidoglio | 00186 | 06\/0608 | www.museicapitolini.org | \u20ac12; audio guide \u20ac5 | Tues.\u2013Sun. 9\u20138 | Station: Bus 44, 63, 64, 81, 95, 85, 492.\n\n* * *\n\nAn Emperor Cheat Sheet\n\nOCTAVIAN, or Caesar Augustus, was Rome's first emperor (27 BC\u2013AD 14). While it upended the republic once and for all, his rule began a 200-year peace known as the Pax Romana.\n\nThe name of NERO (AD 54\u201368) lives in infamy as a violent persecutor of Christians . . . and as the murderer of his wife, his mother, and countless others. Although it's not certain whether he actually fiddled as Rome burned in AD 64, he was well known as an actor.\n\nDOMITIAN (AD 81\u201396) declared himself \"Dominus et Deus,\" Lord and God. He stripped away power from the Senate, and as a result after his death he suffered \"Damnatio Memoriae\"\u2014the Senate had his name and image erased from all public records.\n\nTRAJAN (AD 98\u2013117), the first Roman emperor to be born outside Italy (in southern Spain), enlarged the empire's boundaries to include modern-day Romania, Armenia, and Upper Mesopotamia.\n\nHADRIAN (AD 117\u2013138) designed and rebuilt the Pantheon, constructed a majestic villa at Tivoli, and initiated myriad other constructions, including the famed wall across Britain.\n\nMARCUS AURELIUS (AD 161\u2013180) is remembered as a humanitarian emperor, a Stoic philosopher whose Meditations are still read today. Nonetheless, he was devoted to expansion and an aggressive leader of the empire.\n\nCONSTANTINE I (AD 306\u2013337) made his mark by legalizing Christianity, an act that changed the course of history, legitimizing the once-banned religion and paving the way for the papacy in Rome.\n\n* * *\n\nFodor's Choice |  Santa Maria di Aracoeli.   \nSitting atop its 124 steps\u2014\"the grandest loafing place of mankind,\" as Henry James put it, and the spot on which Gibbon was inspired to write his great history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire\u2014Santa Maria di Aracoeli perches on the north slope of the Capitoline Hill. You can also access the church using a less challenging staircase from Michelangelo's piazza. The church rests on the site of the temple of Juno Moneta (Admonishing Juno), which also housed the Roman mint (hence the origin of the word \"money\"). According to legend, it was here that the Sibyl, a prophetess, predicted to Augustus the coming of a redeemer. The emperor supposedly responded by erecting an altar, the Ara Coeli (Altar of Heaven). This was eventually replaced by a Benedictine monastery then church, which passed in 1250 to the Franciscans, who restored and enlarged it in Romanesque-Gothic style. Today, the Aracoeli is best known for the Santa Bambino, a much-revered olive-wood figure of the Christ Child (today a copy of the 15th-century original stolen in 1994 and as yet unfound). At Christmas, everyone pays homage to the Bambi Ges\u00f9 as children recite poems from a miniature pulpit. In true Roman style, the church interior is a historical hodgepodge\u2014classical columns and large marble fragments from pagan buildings, as well as a 13th-century Cosmatesque pavement. The richly gilded Renaissance ceiling commemorates the naval victory at Lepanto in 1571 over the Turks. The first chapel on the right is noteworthy for Pinturicchio's frescoes of San Bernardino of Siena (1486). | Via del Teatro di Marcello, on top of steep stairway, Campidoglio | 00186 | 06\/69763838 | Oct.\u2013Apr., 7\u201312:30 and 3\u20136:30; May\u2013Sept. 7\u201312:30 and 3\u20137:30 | Station: Bus 44, 160, 170, 175, 186.\n\n### Worth Noting\n\nBelvedere Tarpeo.   \nIn ancient Roman times, traitors were hurled from here to their deaths. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Tarpeian Rock became a popular stop for people making the Grand Tour, because of the view it gave of the Palatine Hill. Today, the belvedere viewing point has been long shuttered for restoration, but you can proceed a short walk down to Via di Monte Tarpeio, where the view is spectacular enough. It was on this rock that, in the 7th century BC, Tarpeia betrayed the Roman citadel to the early Romans' sworn enemies, the Sabines, only asking in return to be given the heavy gold bracelets the Sabines wore on their left arm. The scornful Sabines did indeed shower her with their gold . . . then added the crushing weight of their heavy shields, also carried on their left arms. | Via del Tempio di Giove, Campidoglio | 00186.\n\nCarcere Mamertino (Mamertine Prison). The Mamertino has two subterranean cells where Rome's enemies, most famously the Goth Jugurtha, and the indomitable Gaul Vercingetorix, were imprisoned and died, of either starvation or strangulation. In the lower cell, legend has it that St. Peter himself was held prisoner, and that he miraculously brought forth a spring of water to baptize his jailers. A church, San Giuseppe dei Falegnami, now stands over the prison. A recent restoration of the cells installed a multimedia show, which partly explains the price hike: the stop now costs almost as much as the Forum, Palatine, and Colosseum combined. The automated tour focuses on the Christian history of the cell, however, and the audio is more fluffy than historical, making this stop a must-see only for those who really must see the place where Peter and Paul once (according to myth) stood. | Via del Tulliano, Campidoglio Venezia | 00186 | 06\/0608 | \u20ac10 | Winter 9\u20135, summer 9\u20137.\n\nPalazzo Senatorio.   \nDuring the Middle Ages this city hall looked like the medieval town halls you can see in Tuscan hill towns, part fortress and part assembly hall. The building was entirely rebuilt in the 1500s as part of Michelangelo's revamping of the Campidoglio for Pope Paul III; the master's design was adapted by later architects, who wisely left the front staircase as the focus of the facade. The ancient statue of Minerva at the center was renamed the Goddess Rome, and the river gods (the River Tigris remodeled to symbolize the Tiber, to the right, and the Nile, to the left) were hauled over from the Terme di Costantino on the Quirinal Hill. Today, it is the regional seat of Rome's commune administration and is not open to the public. | Piazza del Campidoglio, Campidoglio | 00186.\n\n##  The Roman Forum\n\nFrom the entrance on Via dei Fori Imperali, descend into the extraordinary archaeological complex that is the Foro Romano. Before the 1st century, when the Roman Republic gave over to hedonistic imperial Rome, this was the heart of the empire. The Forum began life as a marshy valley between the Capitoline and Palatine hills\u2014a valley crossed by a mud track and used as a cemetery by Iron Age settlers. Over the years a market center and some huts were established here, and after the land was drained in the 6th century BC, the site eventually became a political, religious, and commercial center: the Forum.\n\nHundreds of years of plunder reduced the Forum to its current desolate state. But this enormous area was once Rome's pulsating heart, filled with stately and extravagant temples, palaces, and shops, and crowded with people from all corners of the empire. Adding to today's confusion is the fact that the Forum developed over many centuries; what you see today are not the ruins from just one period but from a span of almost 900 years, from about 500 BC to AD 400. Nonetheless, the enduring romance of the place, with its lonely columns and great broken fragments of sculpted marble and stone, makes for a quintessential Roman experience. | Entrance at Via dei Fori Imperiali, Roman Forum | 00186 | 06\/39967700 | www.pierreci.it | \u20ac12 (combined ticket with the Colosseum and Palatine Hill, if used within 2 days); audio guide Forum \u20ac5, Forum and Palatine \u20ac7 | Jan.\u2013Feb. 15, daily 8:30\u20134:30; Feb. 16\u2013Mar. 15, daily 8:30\u20135; Mar. 16\u2013last Sat. in Mar., daily 8:30\u20135:30; last Sun. in Mar.\u2013Aug., daily 8:30\u20137:15; Sept., daily 8:30\u20137; Oct. 1\u2013last Sat. in Oct., daily 8:30\u20136:30; last Sun. in Oct.\u2013Dec., daily 8:30\u20134:30 | Station: Colosseo.\n\n### Top Attractions\n\nFodor's Choice |  Arco di Settimio Severo (Arch of Septimius Severus). One of the grandest triumphal arches erected by a Roman emperor, this richly decorated monument was built in AD 203 to celebrate Severus's victory over the Parthians. It was once topped by a bronze statuary group of a chariot drawn by four or perhaps as many as six life-size horses. Masterpieces of Roman statuary, the stone reliefs on the arch were probably based on huge painted panels depicting the event, a kind of visual report on his foreign campaigns that would have been displayed during the emperor's triumphal parade in Rome to impress his subjects (and, like all statuary back then, were painted in florid, lifelike colors). | West end of Foro Romano, Roman Forum | 00186.\n\nArco di Tito (Arch of Titus). Standing at the northern approach to the Palatine Hill on the Via Sacra, this triumphal arch was erected in AD 81 to celebrate the sack of Jerusalem 10 years earlier, after the great Jewish revolt. The superb view of the Colosseum from the arch reminds us that it was the emperor Titus who helped finish the vast amphitheater, begun earlier by his father, Vespasian. Under the arch are the two great sculpted reliefs, both showing scenes from Titus's triumphal parade along this very Via Sacra. You still can make out the spoils of war plundered from Herod's Temple, including a gigantic seven-branched candelabrum (menorah) and silver trumpets. During his sacking of Jerusalem, Titus killed or deported most of the Jewish population, thus initiating the Jewish Diaspora\u2014an event that would have historical consequences for millennia. | East end of Via Sacra, Roman Forum | 00186.\n\nBasilica di Massenzio (Basilica of Maxentius). Only about one-third of the original of this gigantic basilica (or meeting hall) remains, so you can imagine what a wonder this building was when erected. Today, its great arched vaults still dominate the north side of the Via Sacra. Begun under the emperor Maxentius about AD 306, the edifice was a center of judicial and commercial activity, the last of its kind to be built in Rome. Over the centuries, like so many Roman monuments, it was exploited as a quarry for building materials and was stripped of its sumptuous marble and stucco decorations. Its coffered vaults, like the coffering inside the Pantheon's dome, later were copied by many Renaissance artists and architects. | Via Sacra, Roman Forum | 00186.\n\nComitium.   \nThe open space in front of the Curia was the political hub of ancient Rome. Julius Caesar had rearranged the Comitium, moving the Curia to its current site and transferring the imperial Rostra, the podium from which orators spoke to the people (decorated originally with the prows of captured ships, or rostra, the source for the term \"rostrum\"), to a spot just south of the Arch of Septimius Severus. It was from this location that Mark Antony delivered his funeral address in Caesar's honor. On the left of the Rostra stands what remains of the Tempio di Saturno, which served as ancient Rome's state treasury. | West end of Foro Romano, Roman Forum | 00186.\n\nCuria.   \nThis large brick structure next to the Arch of Septimius Severus, built during Diocletian's reign in the late 3rd century AD, is the Forum's best-preserved building\u2014thanks largely to having been turned into a church in the 7th century. By the time the Curia was built, the Senate, which met here, had lost practically all the power and prestige that it had possessed during the Republican era. Still, the Curia appears much as the original Senate house would have looked. Today, the Curia generally is open only if there's an exhibit inside; luckily, that's not infrequent. Definitely peek inside if it's open, and don't miss the original, intricate floor of marble and porphyry, done in opus sectile. | Via Sacra, northwest corner of Foro Romano, Roman Forum | 00186.\n\nTempio di Castore e Polluce.   \nThe sole three remaining Corinthian columns of this temple beautifully evoke the former, elegant grandeur of the Forum. This temple was dedicated in 484 BC to Castor and Pollux, the twin brothers of Helen of Troy who carried to Rome the news of victory at Lake Regillus, southeast of Rome\u2014the definitive defeat of the deposed Tarquin dynasty. The twins flew on their fabulous white steeds 20 km (12 miles) to the city to bring the news to the people before mortal messengers could arrive. Rebuilt over the centuries before Christ, the temple suffered a major fire and was reconstructed by Emperor Tiberius in 12 BC, the date of the three standing columns. | West of House of the Vestals, Roman Forum | 00186.\n\nTempio di Vesta.   \nWhile just a fragment of the original building, the remnant of this temple shows the sophisticated elegance that architecture achieved under the later empire. Set off by florid Corinthian columns, the circular tholos was rebuilt by Emperor Septimius Severus when he restored this temple around AD 205. Dedicated to Vesta\u2014the goddess of the hearth\u2014the highly privileged vestal virgins kept the sacred vestal flame alive. Next to the temple, the Casa delle Vestali, which reopened after restoration in 2011, gives a glimpse of the splendor in which the women lived out their 30-year vows of chastity. Marble statues of the vestals and fragments of mosaic pavement line the garden courtyard, which once would have been surrounded by lofty colonnades and at least 50 rooms. Chosen when they were between six and 10 years old, the six vestal virgins dedicated the next 30 years of their lives to keeping the sacred fire, a tradition that dated back to the very earliest days of Rome, when guarding the community's precious fire was essential to its well-being. Their standing in Rome was considerable; among women, they were second in rank only to the empress. Their intercession could save a condemned man, and they did, in fact, rescue Julius Caesar from the lethal vengeance of his enemy Sulla. The virgins were handsomely maintained by the state, but if they allowed the sacred fire to go out, they were scourged by the high priest, and if they broke their vows of celibacy, they were buried alive (a punishment doled out only a handful of times throughout the cult's 1,000-year history). The vestal virgins were one of the last of ancient Rome's institutions to die out, enduring to the end of the 4th century AD, even after Rome's emperors had become Christian. | South side of Via Sacra, Roman Forum | 00186.\n\nVia Sacra.   \nThe celebrated basalt-paved road that loops through the Roman Forum, lined with temples and shrines, was also the traditional route of religious and triumphal processions. Pick your way across the paving stones, some rutted with the ironclad wheels of Roman wagons, to walk in the footsteps of Caesar and Anthony. | Roman Forum | 00186.\n\n### Worth Noting\n\nBasilica Emilia.   \nOnce a great colonnaded hall, this served as a meeting place for merchants and a kind of community center of the 2nd century BC; Augustus rebuilt it in the 1st century AD. A spot on one of the basilica's preserved pieces of floor, immediately to the right as you enter the Forum, testifies to one of Rome's more harrowing moments\u2014and to the hall's purpose. That's where bronze coins melted, leaving behind green stains, when Rome was sacked and the basilica burned by the Visigoths in 410 AD. The term basilica refers not to the purpose of a church, but to the particular architectural form developed by the Romans. A rectangular hall flanked by colonnades, it could serve as a court of law or a center for business and commerce. | On right as you descend into Roman Forum from Via dei Fori Imperiali entrance, Roman Forum | 00186.\n\nBasilica Giulia.   \nThe Basilica Giulia owes its name to Julius Caesar, who ordered its construction; it was later completed by his adopted heir Augustus. One of several such basilicas in the center of Rome, it was where the Centumviri, the hundred-or-so judges forming the civil court, met to hear cases. The open space between the Basilica Emilia and this basilica was the heart of the Forum proper, prototype of Italy's famous piazzas, and the center of civic and social activity in ancient Rome. | Via Sacra, Roman Forum | 00186.\n\nColonna di Foca (Pillar of Phocas). The last monument to be added to the Forum was erected in AD 608 in honor of a Byzantine emperor who had donated the Pantheon to Pope Boniface IV. It stands 44 feet high and remains in good condition. | West end of Foro Romano, Roman Forum | 00186.\n\nSanta Francesca Romana.   \nThis church, a 10th-century edifice with a Renaissance facade, is dedicated to the patron saint of motorists; on her feast day, March 9, cars and taxis crowd the Via dei Fori Imperali below for a special blessing\u2014a cardinal and carabinieri are on hand plus a special siren to start off the ceremony. The incomparable setting continues to be a favorite for weddings. | Piazza di Santa Francesca Romana, next to Colosseum, Roman Forum | 00186.\n\nSanta Maria Antiqua.   \nThe earliest Christian site in the Forum was originally part of an imperial temple, before it was converted into a church some time in the 5th or 6th century. Within are some exceptional but faded 7th- and 8th-century frescoes of the early church fathers, saints, and popes; the styles vary from typically classical to Oriental, reflecting the empire's expansion eastward. Largely destroyed in a 9th-century earthquake, the church was abandoned only to be rebuilt in 1617, then knocked down again in 1900 following excavation work on the Forum. Its latest incarnation is still off-limits to visitors, along with restored frescoes you can read about but still not see. | South of Tempio di Castore and Polluce, at foot of Palatine Hill, Roman Forum | 00186.\n\nTempio di Antonino e Faustina.   \nErected by the Senate in honor of Faustina, deified wife of Emperor Antoninus Pius (AD 138\u2013161), Hadrian's successor, this temple was rededicated to the emperor as well upon his death. Because it was transformed into a church, it's one of the best-preserved ancient structures in the Forum. | North of Via Sacra, Roman Forum | 00186.\n\nTempio di Cesare.   \nBuilt by Augustus, Caesar's successor, the temple stands over the spot where Julius Caesar's body was cremated. A pyre was improvised by grief-crazed citizens who kept the flames going with their own possessions. | Between 2 forks of Via Sacra, Roman Forum | 00186.\n\nTempio di Venere e Roma.   \nOnce Rome's largest and possibly cleverest temple (it was dedicated to Venus and Rome or, in Latin, to \"amor\" and \"Roma\"), this temple was begun by Hadrian in AD 121 and finished 20 years later. The recent restoration took even longer\u2014some 25 years\u2014and finally ended in 2010, meaning the public can visit the temple once again. | East of Arco di Tito, Roman Forum | 00186.\n\nTempio di Vespasiano.   \nAll that remains of Vespasian's temple are three graceful Corinthian columns. They marked the site of the Forum through the centuries while the rest was hidden beneath overgrown rubble. Nearby is the ruined platform that was the Tempio di Concordia. | West end of Foro Romano, Roman Forum | 00186.\n\n##  The Palatine Hill\n\nJust beyond the Arch of Titus, the Clivus Palatinus gently rises to the heights of the Colle Palatino (Palatine Hill)\u2014the oldest inhabited site in Rome. Despite its location overlooking the Forum's traffic and attendant noise, the Palatine was the most coveted address for ancient Rome's rich and famous. More than a few of the 12 Caesars called the Palatine home, including Caligula, who was murdered in the still-standing and unnerving (even today) tunnel, the Cryptoporticus. The palace of Tiberius was the first to be built here; others followed, notably the gigantic extravaganza constructed for Emperor Domitian. But perhaps the most famous lodging goes back to Rome's very beginning. Once upon a time, skeptics thought Romulus was a myth. Then, about a century ago, Rome's greatest archaeologist, Rodolfo Lanciani, excavated a site on the hill and uncovered the remains of an Iron Age settlement dating back to the 9th century BC, supporting the belief that Romulus, founder of Rome, lived here. In fall 2007, archaeologists unearthed a sacred sanctuary dedicated to Romulus and Remus set beneath the House of Augustus near the Palatine Hill. This sanctuary is now being renovated.\n\nDuring the Republican era, the Palatino became the \"Beverly Hills\" of ancient Rome. Hortensius, Cicero, Catiline, Crassus, and Agrippa all had homes here. Augustus was born on the hill; the House of Livia, reserved for Augustus's wife, is today the hill's best-preserved structure. To visit the ruins of the Palatine (some scholars think this name gave rise to our term \"palace\") in roughly chronological order, start from the southeast area facing the Aventine. | Entrances at Piazza del Colosseo and Via di San Gregorio 30, Roman Forum | 00184 | 06\/39967700 |  www.pierreci.it | \u20ac12 (combined ticket with the Colosseum and Roman Forum, if used within 2 days) | Daily 8:30 am\u2013one hour before sunset | Station: Colosseo.\n\n### Top Attractions\n\nCasa di Augustus (House of Augustus). First discovered in the 1970s and only opened in 2006, this was the residence of the great Emperor Augustus (27 BC\u201314 AD)\u2014before he became great (archaeologists have recently found two courtyards rather than one, though, in the style of Rome's ancient Greek kings, suggesting Augustus maintained this house after his ascension to prominence). The house here dates to the time when Augustus was known merely as Octavian, before the death of, and Octavian's adoption by, his great uncle Julius Caesar. Four rooms have exquisite examples of Roman wall decorative frescoes (so precious that only five people at a time are admitted). Startlingly vivid and detailed are the depictions of a narrow stage with side doors and some striking comic theater masks. | Northwest crest of Palatino, Palatine Hill\/Ancient Rome | 00184 | 06\/39967700 |  www.pierreci.it | Mon., Wed., and weekends 11\u20133:30.\n\nCasa di Livia (House of Livia). First excavated in 1839, this house was identifiable from the name inscribed on a lead pipe, Iulia Augusta. In other words, it belonged to the notorious Livia that\u2014according to Robert Graves' I, Claudius\u2014made a career of dispatching half of the Roman imperial family. (There's actually very little evidence for such claims.) She was the wife of Rome's first, and possibly greatest, emperor, Augustus. He married Livia when she was six months pregnant by her previous husband, whom Augustus \"encouraged\" to get a divorce. As empress, Livia became a role model for Roman women, serving her husband faithfully, shunning excessive displays of wealth, and managing her household. But she also had real influence: As well as playing politics behind the scenes, she even had the rare honor (for a woman) of being in charge of her own finances. Here, atop the Palatine, is where she made her private retreat and living quarters. The delicate, delightful frescoes reflect the sophisticated taste of wealthy Romans, whose love of beauty and theatrical conception of nature were revived by their descendants in the Renaissance Age. While closed at the time of this writing, the House of Livia will sometimes open for brief periods, so check by phoning or going online at |  www.pierreci.it. | Northwest crest of Palatino, Palatine Hill\/Ancient Rome | 00184 | 06\/39967450 |  www.pierreci.it | Tues.\u2013Thurs. 9\u20131.\n\nCirco Massimo (Circus Maximus). From the belvedere of the Domus Flavia, you can see the Circus Maximus, the giant arena where more than 300,000 spectators watched chariot races while the emperor looked on from this very spot. Ancient Rome's oldest and largest racetrack lies in a natural hollow between two hills. The oval course stretches about 650 yards from end to end; on certain occasions, there were as many as 24 chariot races a day and competitions could last for 15 days. The charioteers could amass fortunes rather like the sports stars of today (the Portuguese Diocles\u2014one of many such miliari\u2014is said to have totted up winnings of 35 million sesterci). The noise and the excitement of the crowd must have reached astonishing levels as the charioteers competed in teams, each with its own colors\u2014the Reds, the Blues, etc. Betting also provided Rome's majority of unemployed with a potentially lucrative occupation. The central ridge was the site of two Egyptian obelisks (now in Piazza del Popolo and Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano). Picture the great chariot race scene from MGM's Ben-Hur and you have an inkling of what this all looked like. | Valley between Palatine and Aventine hills | 00153 | Station: Circo Massimo.\n\nDomus Augustana.   \nIn the Palazzi Imperiali complex, this palace, named for the \"August\" emperor, consisted of private apartments for Emperor Domitian and his family. Here Domitian\u2014Master and God, as he liked to be called\u2014would retire to dismember flies (at least according to Suetonius). | Southern crest of Palatino, Palatine Hill\/Ancient Rome | 00184.\n\nDomus Flavia.   \nDomitian used this palace in the Palazzi Imperiali complex for official functions and ceremonies. Also called Palazzo dei Flavi, it included a basilica where the emperor could hold judiciary hearings. There were also a large audience hall, a peristyle (a columned courtyard), and the imperial triclinium (dining room), the latter set in a sunken declivity overlooking the Circus Maximus\u2014some of its mosaic floors and stone banquettes are still in place. Domitian had the walls and courtyards of this and the adjoining Domus Augustana covered with the shiniest marble, to act as mirrors to alert him to any knife in the back. They failed in their purpose. He died in a palace plot, engineered, some say, by his wife Domitia. | Southern crest of Palatino, Palatine Hill\/Ancient Rome | 00184.\n\n### Worth Noting\n\nMuseo Palatino.   \nThe Palatine Museum charts the history of the hill from Archaic times with quaint models of early villages (ground floor) through to Roman times (ground and upper floors). On display in Room V are painted terra-cotta moldings and sculptural decorations from various temples (notably the Temple of Apollo Actiacus, whose name derives from the god to whom Octavian attributed his victory at Actium; the severed heads of the Medusa in the terra-cotta panels symbolize the defeated Queen of Egypt). Upon request, museum staff will accompany visitors to see the 16th-century frescoes of the Loggia Mattei. Portions of the paintings have been returned here from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In the same building are frescoes detached from the Aula Isaica, one of the chambers belonging to the House of Augustus. | Northwest crest of Palatino, Palatine Hill\/Ancient Rome | 00184 | \u20ac12 (combined ticket with the Colosseum, Roman Forum, and Imperial Forums, if used within 2 days) | Daily 8:30\u20134 | Station: Colosseo.\n\nOrti Farnesiani.   \nAlessandro Farnese, a nephew of Pope Paul III, commissioned the 16th-century architect Vignola to lay out this archetypal Italian garden over the ruins of the Palace of Tiberius, up a few steps from the House of Livia. This was yet another example of the Renaissance renewing an ancient Roman tradition. To paraphrase the poet Martial, the statue-studded gardens of the Flavian Palace were such as to make even an Egyptian potentate turn green with envy. | Monte Palatino, Palatine Hill\/Ancient Rome | 00184.\n\nStadio Palatino.   \nDomitian may have created this vast, open space adjoining his palace as a private hippodrome, or simply as a sunken garden. It also may have been used to stage games and other amusements for the emperor's benefit. | Southeast crest of Palatino, Palatine Hill\/Ancient Rome | 00184.\n\n##  The Imperial Forums\n\nA complex of five grandly conceived squares flanked with colonnades and temples, the Fori Imperiali (Imperial Fora) formed the magnificent monumental core of ancient Rome, together with the original Roman Forum. Excavations at the start of the 21st century have revealed more of the Imperial Fora than seen in nearly a thousand years.\n\nFrom Piazza del Colosseo, head northwest on Via dei Fori Imperiali toward Piazza Venezia. On the walls to your left, maps in marble and bronze put up by Benito Mussolini show the extent of the Roman Republic and Empire. The dictator's own dreams of empire led him to construct this avenue, cutting brutally through the Imperial Fora, so that he would have a suitable venue for parades celebrating his expected military triumphs. Among the Fori Imperiali along the avenue, you can see the Foro di Cesare (Forum of Caesar) and the Foro di Augusto (Forum of Augustus). The grandest of all the Imperial Fora was the Foro di Traiano (Forum of Trajan), with its huge semicircular Mercati Traianei and the Colonna di Traiano (Trajan's Column). You can walk through part of Trajan's Markets through the new Museo dei Fori Imperiali, which presents the Imperial Forums and shows how they would have been used, through both ancient fragments and artifacts and modern multimedia. On very rare occasions, guided tours of the Imperial Forums may be offered (check with the tourist office). The fora also are illuminated at night. | Via dei Fori Imperiali, Roman Forum | 00186 | 06\/0608 |  www.mercatiditraiano.it | Museum, \u20ac8.50 | Museum open Tues.\u2013Sun. 9\u20137 | Station: Colosseo.\n\n### Top Attractions\n\nColonna di Traiano (Trajan's Column). The remarkable series of reliefs spiraling up this column celebrate the emperor's victories over the Dacians in today's Romania. It has stood in this spot since AD 113. The scenes on the column are an important primary source for information on the Roman army and its tactics. An inscription on the base declares that the column was erected in Trajan's honor and that its height corresponds to the height of the hill that was razed to create a level area for the grandiose Foro di Traiano. The emperor's ashes, no longer here, were kept in a golden urn in a chamber at the column's base; his statue stood atop the column until 1587, when the pope had it replaced with a statue of St. Peter. | Via del Foro di Traiano, Roman Forum | 00186.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Foro di Traiano (Forum of Trajan). Of all the Imperial Fora complexes, Trajan's was the grandest and most imposing, a veritable city unto itself. Designed by architect Apollodorus of Damascus, it comprised a vast basilica (at the time of writing closed for restoration), two libraries, and a colonnade laid out around the square, all once covered with rich marble ornamentation. Adjoining the forum were the Mercati Traianei (Trajan's markets), a huge, multilevel brick complex of shops, walkways, and terraces that was essentially an ancient shopping mall. The Museo dei Fori Imperiali (Imperial Forums Museum) opened in 2007, taking advantage of the forum's soaring, vaulted spaces to showcase archaeological fragments and sculptures while presenting a video re-creation of the original complex. In addition, the series of terraced rooms offers an impressive overview of the entire forum.\n\nTo build a complex of this magnitude, Apollodorus and his patron clearly had to have great confidence, not to mention almost unlimited means, and cheap labor at their disposal, this readily provided by captives from Trajans' Dacian wars. Formerly thought to be the Roman equivalent of a multipurpose commercial center, with shops, taverns, and depots, the site is now believed to be more of an administrative complex for storing and regulating Rome's enormous food supplies. They also contained two semicircular lecture halls, one at either end, which were likely associated with the libraries in Trajan's Forum. The markets' architectural centerpiece is the enormous curved wall, or hexedra, that shores up the side of the Quirinal Hill exposed by Apollodorus's gangs of laborers. Covered galleries and streets were constructed at various levels, following the hexedra's curves and giving the complex a strikingly modern appearance.\n\nAs you enter the markets, a large, vaulted hall stands in front of you. Two stories of shops or offices rise up on either side. It's thought that they were an administrative center for food handouts to the city's poor. Head for the flight of steps at the far end that leads down to Via Biberatica. (Bibere is Latin for \"to drink,\" and the shops that open onto the street are believed to have been taverns.) Then head back to the three tiers of shops\/offices that line the upper levels of the great hexedra, and look out over the remains of the forum. Empty and bare today, the cubicles were once ancient Rome's busiest market stalls. Though it seems to be part of the market, the Torre delle Milizie (Tower of the Militia), the tall brick tower, which is a prominent feature of Rome's skyline, was built in the early 1200s. | Entrance: Via IV Novembre 94, Roman Forum | 00186 | 06\/0608 |  www.mercatiditraiano.it | \u20ac11 | Tues.\u2013Sun. 9\u20137 (ticket office closes at 6) | Station: Bus 85, 175, 186, 810, 850, H, 64, 70.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Santi Cosma e Damiano.   \nHome to one of the most striking Early Christian mosaics in the world, this church was adapted in the 6th century from two ancient buildings: the library in Vespasian's Forum of Peace and a hall of the Temple of Romulus (dedicated to the son of Maxentius and at Christmas the setting for a Christmas crib). In the apse is the famous AD 530 mosaic of Christ in Glory. It reveals how popes at the time strove to re-create the splendor of imperial audience halls into Christian churches: Christ wears a gold, Roman-style toga, and his pose recalls that of an emperor addressing his subjects. He floats on a blue sky streaked with a flaming sunset\u2014a miracle of tesserae mosaic-work. To his side are the figures of Sts. Peter and Paul, who present to him Cosmas and Damian, two Syrian benefactors whose charity was such that they were branded Christians and condemned to death. Beneath this awe-inspiring work is an enchanting mosaic frieze of holy lambs. | Via in Miranda 11 , Roman Forum | 00186 | 06\/6920441 | Daily 9\u20131 and 3\u20137 | Station: Bus 85, 850, 87, 571, 3, 117.\n\n### Worth Noting\n\nForo di Augusto (Forum of Augustus). These ruins, along with those of the Foro di Nerva, on the northeast side of Via dei Fori Imperiali, give only a hint of what must have been impressive edifices. | Via dei Fori Imperiali, Roman Forum | 00186 | Station: Colosseo.\n\nForo di Cesare (Forum of Caesar). To try to rival the original Roman Forum, Julius Caesar had this forum built in the middle of the 1st century BC. Each year without fail, on the Ides of March, an unknown hand lays a bouquet at the foot of Caesar's statue. | Via dei Fori Imperiali, Roman Forum | 00186 | 06\/0608.\n\n##  The Colosseum and Environs\n\nLegend has it that as long as the Colosseum stands, Rome will stand; and when Rome falls, so will the world. No visit to Rome is complete without a trip to the obstinate oval that has been the iconic symbol of the city for centuries. Looming over a group of the Roman Empire's most magnificent monuments to imperial wealth and power, the Colosseo was the gigantic sports arena built by Vespasian and Titus. To its west stands the Arch of Constantine, a majestic, ornate triumphal arch, built solely as a tribute to the emperor Constantine; victorious armies purportedly marched under it on their return from war. On the eastern side of the Colosseum, hidden under the Colle Oppio, is Nero's opulent Domus Aurea, a palace that stands as testimony to the lavish lifestyles of the emperors\u2014unfortunately, closed, once again, for restoration after rainwater caused part of the roof to collapse in 2010.\n\n### Top Attractions\n\nFodor's Choice |  Arco di Costantino (Arch of Constantine). This majestic arch was erected in AD 315 to commemorate Constantine's victory over Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge. It was just before this battle, in AD 312, that Constantine\u2014the emperor who converted Rome to Christianity\u2014had a vision of a cross in the heavens and heard the words \"In this sign thou shalt conquer.\" Many of the rich marble decorations for the arch were scavenged from earlier monuments, both saving money and allying Constantine with the greatest emperors of the past. It is easy to picture ranks of Roman legionnaires marching under the great barrel vault. | Piazza del Colosseo, Colosseo | 00184 | Station: Colosseo.\n\nFodor's Choice |  The Colosseum.   \nThe most spectacular extant edifice of ancient Rome, the Colosseo has a history that is half gore, half glory. Here, before 50,000 spectators, gladiators would salute the emperor and cry Ave, imperator, morituri te salutant (\"Hail, emperor, men soon to die salute thee\"); it is said that when one day they heard the emperor Claudius respond, \"or maybe not,\" they became so offended that they called a strike. Scene of countless Hollywood spectacles\u2014Deborah Kerr besieged by lions in Quo Vadis, Victor Mature laying down his arms in Demetrius and the Gladiators, and Russell Crowe fighting an emperor in a computer-generated stadium in Gladiator, to name just a few\u2014the Colosseum still awes onlookers today with its power and might. And today's sightseers are in luck: for the first time in millennia, the newly restored hypogeum (the basement level of the arena, where gladiators and beasts got ready for battle), along with the third level of the Colosseum, have been newly restored and reopened to the public in fall 2010.\n\nDesigned by order of the Flavian emperor Vespasian in AD 72, the Colosseum was inaugurated by Titus eight years later with a program of games lasting 100 days (such shows were a quick way to political popularity\u2014or, to put it another way, a people that yawns is ripe for revolt). The arena has a circumference of 573 yards and was faced with travertine from nearby Tivoli. Its construction was a remarkable feat of engineering, for it stands on marshy terrain reclaimed by draining an artificial lake on the grounds of Nero's Domus Aurea. Originally known as the Flavian amphitheater, it came to be called the Colosseo because it stood on the site of the Colossus of Nero, a 115-foot-tall gilded bronze statue of the emperor that once towered here. Inside, senators had marble seats up front and the vestal virgins took the ringside position, while the plebs sat in wooden tiers at the back, then the masses above on the top tier. Over all was the amazing velarium, an ingenious system of sail-like awnings rigged on ropes and maneuvered by sailors from the imperial fleet, who would unfurl them to protect the arena's occupants from sun or rain.\n\nThe Subterranean Hypogeum. Once inside, take the steep stairs or elevator up to the second floor, where you can get a birds'-eye view of the hypogeum: the subterranean passageways that were the architectural engine rooms that made the slaughter above proceed like clockwork. In a scene prefiguring something from Dante's Inferno, hundreds of beasts would wait to be eventually launched via a series of slave-powered hoists and lifts into the bloodthirsty sand of the arena above. The newly restored hypogeum, along with the third level of the Colosseum, reopened to much acclaim in fall 2010 (visitable only via a prebooked, guided tour). Since then, however, it's open and shut, depending on the season and recent rains. Check the Pierreci website, www.pierreci.it, for its current state.\n\nThumbs Down? Although the Colosseum had 80 entrances, it only had one exit named after the Roman goddess of death\u2014the Porta Libitinaria\u2014which was how dead gladiators were trundled out of the arena. Historians state that most of these warriors did survive to fight another day. If the die was cast, however, the rule was that a victorious gladiator was the person to decide to take his opponent's life. He was often spurred on by the audience and the emperor\u2014pollice verso meant the downturned thumb. Gladiatorial combat, or munera, is now traced back to the funeral rites of the early Etruscans when prisoners of war would sometimes be sacrificed to placate the spirits of the underworld. Rome's city council, in conjunction with Amnesty International, tries to make amends for these horrors by floodlighting the Colosseum by night every time a death sentence is commuted or a country votes to abolish capital punishment.\n\nAs well as the sellers pushing tours on the piazza outside the Colosseum, you'll come across costumed men who call themselves the \"gladiators.\" They're actually dressed as Roman centurions, but that doesn't stop them from posing for pictures with tourists\u2014and then insisting on a \u20ac5, \u20ac10, or even higher price afterwards. If you just have to get that photo op with a sword on your neck, make sure you set the price with the \"gladiator\" beforehand.\n\nLegend has it that as long as the Colosseum stands, Rome will stand; and when Rome falls, so will the world . . . not that the prophecy deterred Renaissance princes (and even a pope) from using the Colosseum as a quarry. In the 19th century, poets came to view the arena by moonlight; today, mellow golden spotlights make the arena a spectacular sight.\n\nTips. Are there ways to beat the long ticket lines at the Colosseum? Yes and no. First off, if you go to the Roman Forum, a couple of hundred yards down Via dei Fori Imperiali on your left, or to the Palatine, down Via di San Gregorio, the \u20ac12 ticket you purchase there includes admission to the Colosseum and, even better, lets you jump to the head of the looooooong line. Another way is to buy the Romapass (www.romapass.it) ticket\u2014the Colosseo is covered and you get booted to the front of the line. Or you can book a ticket in advance through www.pierreci.it (small surcharge)\u2014the main ticket reservation service for many Italian cultural sights. Finally, you can book another tour online with a company (do your research to make sure it's reputable) that lets you \"skip the line.\"\n\nNo matter what, however, avoid the tours that are being sold on-the-spot right around the Colosseum, including on the piazza and just outside the Metro. It's all part of a fairly disreputable system that goes on both there and at the Vatican. While the (usually young and English-speaking) \"sellers\" themselves vary and often work for different companies, their big selling point is always the same: You can skip the line. Although this makes them tempting if you haven't come up with any other game plan, be aware that the tour guides tend to be dry or, due to heavy accents, all but incomprehensible, the tour groups huge, and the tour itself rushed. Plan on an alternative way to get past the line so you don't fall into the last-minute-tour trap.\n\nThe exhibition space upstairs often features fascinating temporary exhibitions, included in your ticket price. A bookshop is also on-site. | Piazza del Colosseo | 00184 | 06\/39967700 | www.pierreci.it | \u20ac12 (combined ticket with the Roman Forum, Palatine Hill, and Imperial Forums, if used within 2 days) | Daily 8:30\u20131 hr before sunset | Station: Colosseo; Bus 117, 87, 186, 85, 850.\n\n### Worth Noting\n\nDomus Aurea (Golden House of Nero). Legend has it that Nero famously fiddled while Rome burned. Fancying himself a great actor and poet, he played, as it turns out, his harp to accompany his recital of \"The Destruction of Troy\" while gazing at the flames of Rome's catastrophic fire of AD 64. Anti-Neronian historians propagandized that Nero, in fact, had set the Great Fire to clear out a vast tract of the city center to build his new palace. Today's historians discount this as historical folderol (going so far as to point to the fact that there was a full moon on the evening of July 19, hardly the propitious occasion to commit arson). But legend or not, Nero did get to build his new palace, the extravagant Domus Aurea (Golden House)\u2014a vast \"suburban villa\" that was inspired by the emperor's pleasure palace at Baia on the Bay of Naples. His new digs were huge and sumptuous, with a facade of pure gold, seawater piped into the baths, decorations of mother-of-pearl, fretted ivory, and other precious materials, and vast gardens. It was said that after completing this gigantic house, Nero exclaimed, \"Now I can live like a human being!\" Unfortunately, following damage due to flooding in December 2008, the Domus is closed for restorations once again. | Via della Domus Aurea, Colle Oppio | 00184 | 06\/39967700 information about possible future openings | Station: Colosseo.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nGetting Oriented | Top Attractions | Worth Noting\n\nClimbing the steps to St. Peter's Basilica feels monumental, like a journey that has reached its climactic end. Harlequin-costumed Swiss Guards stand at attention, curly spears at their sides, dreaming fiercely of their God and His country as you pass through the gates. Suddenly, all is cool and dark . . . and you are dwarfed by a gargantuan hall and its magnificence.\n\nPrevious Map | Next Map | Rome Maps\n\nLike jewels for giants, colored stones stud the floor and walls; above is a ceiling so high it must lead to heaven itself. Great, shining marble figures of saints frozen mid-whirl loom from niches and corners. And at the end, a throne, for an unseen king whose greatness (it is implied) must mirror the greatness of his palace. For this basilica is a palace, the dazzling center of power for a king and a place of supplication for his subjects. Whether his kingdom is earthly or otherwise may be in the eye of the beholder.\n\nPrevious Map | Next Map | Rome Maps\n\nFor good Catholics and sinners alike, the Vatican is an exercise in spirituality, requiring patience but delivering joy. Some come here to savor a heavenly Michelangelo fresco\u2014others to find their soul. But what all the visitors share, for a few hours, is an awe-inspiring landscape that offers a famous sight for every taste. Rooms decorated by Raphael, antique sculptures like the Apollo Belvedere, famous paintings by Giotto and Bellini, and, perhaps most of all, the Sistine Chapel: For the lover of beauty, few places are as historically important as this epitome of faith and grandeur.\n\nPrevious Map | Next Map | Rome Maps\n\nThe story of this area's importance dates back to the 1st century, when St. Peter, known (albeit retroactively) as the first pope, was buried here. The first basilica in his honor rose in this spot under Emperor Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome, some 250 years later. It wasn't until the Middle Ages, however, that the papacy decided to make this area not only a major spiritual center, but the spot from which they would wield temporal power, as well. Today, it's difficult not to be reminded of that worldly power when you glimpse the massive walls surrounding Vatican City\u2014a sign that you're entering an independent, sovereign state, established by the Lateran Treaty of 1929 between the Holy See and Mussolini's government.\n\nPrevious Map | Next Map | Rome Maps\n\nVatican City covers 108 acres on a hill west of the Tiber and is separated from the city on all sides, except at Piazza di San Pietro, by high walls. Within the walls, about 1,000 people are permanent residents. The Vatican has its own daily newspaper (L'Osservatore Romano), issues its own stamps, mints its own coins, and has its own postal system (one run, people say thankfully, by the Swiss). Within its territory are administrative and foreign offices, a pharmacy, banks, an astronomical observatory, a print shop, a mosaic school and art restoration institute, a tiny train station, a supermarket, a small department store, and several gas stations. The sovereign of this little state is the pope, Benedict XVI (elected April 2005). His main role is as spiritual leader to the world's Catholic community.\n\n##  Getting Oriented\n\nToday, there are two principal reasons for sightseeing at the Vatican. One is to visit the Basilica di San Pietro, the most overwhelming architectural achievement of the Renaissance; the other is to visit the Vatican Museums, which contain collections of staggering richness and diversity. Here at the Vatican great artists are honored almost as much as any holy power: the paintings, frescoes, sculptures, and buildings are as much monuments to their genius as to the Catholic Church.\n\nInside the basilica\u2014breathtaking both for its sheer size and for its extravagant interior\u2014are artistic masterpieces including Michelangelo's Piet\u00e0 and Bernini's great bronze baldacchino (canopy) over the main altar. The Vatican Museums, their entrance located a 10-minute walk from the piazza, hold endless collections of many of the greatest works of Western art. The Laoco\u00f6n, Leonardo's St. Jerome, and Raphael's Transfiguration all are here. The Sistine Chapel, accessible only through the museums, is Michelangelo's magnificent artistic legacy and his ceiling is the High Renaissance in excelsis, in more ways than one. Between the Vatican and the once-moated bulk of Castel Sant'Angelo\u2014erstwhile mausoleum of Emperor Hadrian and now an imposing relic of medieval Rome\u2014the pope's covered passageway flanks an enclave of workers and craftspeople, the old Borgo neighborhood, whose workaday charm has begun to succumb to gentrification (and, right outside the Vatican walls, to a plethora of tourist traps and souvenir shops).\n\n### Getting Here\n\nFrom Termini station, hop on the No. 40 Express or the famously crowded No. 64 to deliver you to Piazza San Pietro. On either, as on any bus in Rome, watch out for pickpockets.\n\nBoth routes swing past Largo Argentina, where you can also get the 571 or 46. Metro stops Cipro or Ottaviano (Musei Vaticani) will get you within about a 10-minute walk of the entrance to the Vatican Museums.\n\nA leisurely meander from the historic center across the exquisite Ponte Sant'Angelo footbridge will take about a half hour.\n\n### How to Beat Those Long Lines\n\nHome to the Sistine Chapel and the Raphael rooms, the Vatican Museums are among the most congested of all Rome's attractions.\n\nFor years, people thought the best way to get a jump on the crowds was to be at the front entrance when it opened at 8:30 am, particularly on the last Sunday of the month when entrance is free (other Sundays the museums are closed).\n\nThe problem was that everyone else had the same idea. Result: Rome's version of the Calgary stampede.\n\nInstead, the best way to avoid long lines is to arrive between noon and 2, when lines will be very short or even nonexistent, except Sundays when admissions close at 12:30. Even better is to schedule your visit during the Wednesday Papal Mass, held in the piazza of St. Peter's or at Aula Paolo Sesto. This is usually 10:30 am\u2014to see the pope's calendar, log on to: www.vatican.va. Finally, you can purchase your ticket in advance online for an extra \u20ac4.\n\nOr book a tour, either with the Vatican Museums directly or with a private agency that guarantees a skip-the-line entrance. The Vatican's own guided tour of the museums and Sistine Chapel, which can be booked online, costs \u20ac31 and lasts two hours.\n\nAll this with the proviso that, traditionally, in July the pope is away on holiday in Val d'Aosta, then in August to mid-September moves to Castel Gandolfo, papal masses being held there instead.\n\nHours for the Vatican Museums now run 9\u20134 (last entrance) and exit by 6 (including Saturdays).\n\nThe last Sunday of the month, when entrance is free, hours are 9\u201312:30 (last entrance) and closure by 2.\n\nThe Museums close the first three Sundays of every month; other dates of closures include January 1 and 6, February 11, May 1, June 11 and 29, August 14 and 15, November 1, and December 8, 25, and 26.\n\n### Top 5 Reasons to Go\n\nMichelangelo's Sistine Ceiling: The most sublime example of artistry in the world, this 10,000-square-foot fresco took the artist four long, neck-craning years to finish.\n\nSt. Peter's Dome: Climb the claustrophobic and twisting Renaissance stairs to the very top for a view that you will really feel you've earned (or take the elevator on the right of the main church portico).\n\nPapal Blessing: Join the singing, flag-waving throngs from around the world at the Wednesday general audience on St. Peter's Square (October\u2013June only, weather permitting).\n\nVatican Museums: Savor one of the Western world's best art collections\u2014from the Apollo Belvedere to Raphael's Transfiguration, this is pure Masterpiece Theater. Taken all together, culture here approaches critical mass.\n\nSt. Peter's Basilica: Stand in awe of both the seat of world Catholicism and a Renaissance masterwork.\n\n##  Top Attractions\n\nBasilica di San Pietro.   \nThe world's largest church, built over the tomb of St. Peter, is the most imposing and breathtaking architectural achievement of the Renaissance (although much of the lavish interior dates to the Baroque). The physical statistics are impressive: it covers 18,000 square yards, runs 212 yards in length, and is surmounted by a dome that rises 435 feet and measures 138 feet across its base. Its history is equally impressive. No fewer than five of Italy's greatest artists\u2014Bramante, Raphael, Peruzzi, Antonio Sangallo the Younger, and Michelangelo\u2014died while striving to erect this new St. Peter's.\n\nThe history of the original St. Peter's goes back to AD 349, when the emperor Constantine completed a basilica over the site of the tomb of St. Peter, the Church's first pope. The original church stood for more than 1,000 years, undergoing a number of restorations and alterations, until toward the middle of the 15th century, it was verging on collapse. In 1452 a reconstruction job began but was quickly abandoned for lack of money. In 1503, Pope Julius II instructed the architect Bramante to raze all the existing buildings and to build a new basilica, one that would surpass even Constantine's for grandeur. It wasn't until 1626 that the basilica was completed and consecrated.\n\n##### St. Peter's Crossing and Dome\n\nThough Bramante made little progress in rebuilding St. Peter's, he succeeded in outlining a basic plan for the church. He also, crucially, built the piers of the crossings\u2014the massive pillars supporting the dome. After Bramante's death in 1514, Raphael, the Sangallos, and Peruzzi all proposed, at one time or another, variations on the original plan. In 1546, however, Pope Paul III turned to Michelangelo and forced the aging artist to complete the building. Michelangelo returned to Bramante's first idea of having a centralized Greek-cross plan\u2014that is, with the \"arms\" of the church all the same length\u2014and completed most of the exterior architecture except for the dome and the facade. His design for the dome, however, was modified after his death by Giacomo della Porta (his dome was much taller in proportion). Pope Paul V wanted a Latin-cross church (a church with one \"arm\" longer than the rest), so Carlo Maderno lengthened one of the arms to create a longer central nave.\n\n##### Works by Giotto and Filarete\n\nAs you climb the shallow steps up to the great church, flanked by the statues of Sts. Peter and Paul, you'll see the Loggia delle Benedizioni (Benediction Loggia) over the central portal. This is the balcony where newly elected popes are proclaimed, and where they stand to give their apostolic blessing on solemn feast days. The vault of the vestibule is encrusted with rich stuccowork, and the mosaic above the central entrance to the portico is a much-restored work by the 14th-century painter Giotto that was in the original basilica. The bronze doors of the main entrance also were salvaged from the old basilica. The sculptor Filarete worked on them for 12 years; they show scenes from the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul, and the life of Pope Eugene IV (1431\u201347), Filarete's patron.\n\nPause a moment to appraise the size of the great building. The people near the main altar seem dwarfed by the incredible dimensions of this immense temple. The statues, the pillars, and the holy-water stoups borne by colossal cherubs are all imposing. Walk over to where the cherub clings to a pier and place your arm across the sole of the cherub's foot; you will discover that it's as long as the distance from your fingers to your elbow. It's because the proportions of this giant building are in such perfect harmony that its vastness may escape you at first. Brass inscriptions in the marble pavement down the center of the nave indicate the approximate lengths of the world's other principal Christian churches, all of which fall far short of the 186-meter span of St. Peter's Basilica. In its megascale\u2014inspired by the spatial volumes of ancient Roman ruins\u2014the church reflects Roman grandiosit\u00e0 in all its majesty.\n\nAs you enter the great nave, immediately to your right, behind a protective glass partition, is Michelangelo's Piet\u00e0 , sculpted when the artist was only 25. The work was of such genius, some rivals spread rumors it was by someone else, prompting the artist to inscribe his name, unusually for him, across Mary's sash. Farther down, with its heavyweight crown barely denting its marble cushion, is Carlo Fontana's monument to Catholic convert and abdicated Queen Christina of Sweden (who is buried in the Grotte Vaticane below). Just across the way, in the Cappella di San Sebastiano, now lies the tomb of Blessed Pope John Paul II. The beloved pope's remains were moved into the chapel after his beatification on May 1, 2011. Exquisite bronze grilles and doors by Borromini open into the third chapel in the right aisle, the Cappella del Santissimo Sacramento (Chapel of the Most Holy Sacrament, generally open to visitors only from 7 am\u20138:30 am), with a Baroque fresco of the Trinity by Pietro da Cortona. The lovely carved angels are by Bernini. At the last pillar on the right (the pier with Bernini's statue of St. Longinus) is a bronze statue of St. Peter, whose right foot is ritually touched by lines of pilgrims. In the right transept, over the door to the Cappella di San Michele (Chapel of St. Michael), usually closed, Canova created a brooding Neoclassical monument to Pope Clement XIII.\n\n##### Bernini's Baldacchino\n\nIn the central crossing, Bernini's great bronze baldacchino\u2014a huge, spiral-columned canopy\u2014rises high over the altare papale (papal altar). At 100,000 pounds, it's said to be the largest, heaviest bronze object in the world. Circling the baldacchino are four larger-than-life statues of saints whose relics the Vatican has; the one of St. Longinus, holding the spear that pierced Christ's side, is another Bernini masterpiece. Meanwhile, Bernini designed the splendid gilt-bronze Cattedra di San Pietro (throne of St. Peter) in the apse above the main altar to contain a wooden and ivory chair that St. Peter himself is said to have used, though in fact it doesn't date from farther back than medieval times. (You can see a copy of the chair in the treasury.) Above, Bernini placed a window of thin alabaster sheets that diffuses a golden light around the dove, symbol of the Holy Spirit, in the center.\n\nTwo of the major papal funeral monuments in St. Peter's Basilica are on either side of the apse and unfortunately are usually only dimly lighted. To the right is the tomb of Pope Urban VIII; to the left is the tomb of Pope Paul III. Paul's tomb is of an earlier date, designed between 1551 and 1575 by Giacomo della Porta, the architect who completed the dome of St. Peter's Basilica after Michelangelo's death. Many believed the nude figure of Justice to be a portrait of the pope's beautiful sister, Giulia. The charms of this alluring figure were such that in the 19th century, it was thought that she should no longer be allowed to distract worshippers from their prayers, and she was thenceforth clad in marble drapery. It was in emulation of this splendid late-Renaissance work that Urban VIII ordered Bernini to design his tomb. The real star here, however, is la Bella Morte (\"Beautiful Death\") who, all bone and elbows, dispatches the deceased pope above to a register of blue-black marble. The tomb of Pope Alexander VII, also designed by Bernini, stands to the left of the altar as you look up the nave, behind the farthest pier of the crossing. This may be the most haunting memorial in the basilica, thanks to another frightening skeletonized figure of Death, holding an hourglass in its upraised hand to tell the pope his time is up. Pope Alexander, however, was well prepared, having kept a coffin (also designed by Bernini) in his bedroom and made a habit of dining off plates embossed with skulls.\n\n##### Subsidiary Attractions\n\nVatican Necropolis. With advance notice you can take a 1\u00bc-hour guided tour in English of the Vatican Necropolis, under the basilica, which gives a rare glimpse of Early Christian Roman burial customs and a closer look at the tomb of St. Peter. Apply by fax or email (scavi@fsp.va) at least 2\u20133 weeks in advance, specifying the number of people in the group (all must be age 15 or older), preferred language, preferred time, available dates, and your contact information in Rome. | 06\/69885318 | Fax06\/69873017 | \u20ac12 | Ufficio Scavi Mon.\u2013Sat. 9\u20136, visits 9\u20133:30.\n\nMuseo Storico-Artistico e Tesoro (Historical-Artistic Museum and Treasury). Under the Pope Pius V monument, the entrance to the sacristy also leads to the Museo Storico-Artistico e Tesoro, a small collection of Vatican treasures. They range from the massive and beautifully sculptured 15th-century tomb of Pope Sixtus IV by Pollaiuolo, which you can view from above, to a jeweled cross dating from the 6th century and a marble tabernacle by Donatello. Continue on down the left nave past Algardi's tomb of St. Leo. The handsome bronze grilles in the Cappella del Coro (Chapel of the Choir) were designed by Borromini to complement those opposite in the Cappella del Santissimo Sacramento. The next pillar holds a rearrangement of the Pollaiuolo brothers' monument to Pope Innocent VIII, the only major tomb to have been transferred from the old basilica. Lacking in bulk compared to many of its Baroque counterparts, it more than makes up in Renaissance elegance. The next chapel contains the handsome bronze monument to Pope John XXIII by contemporary sculptor Emilio Greco. On the last pier in this nave stands a monument by the late-18th-century Venetian sculptor Canova to the ill-fated Stuarts\u2014the 18th-century Roman Catholic claimants to the British throne, who were long exiled in Rome and some of whom are buried in the crypt below. | 06\/69881840 | \u20ac10 (includes audioguide) | Apr. 1\u2013Sept. 30, daily 8 am\u20137 pm; Oct. 1\u2013Mar. 31, daily 8 am\u20136:20 pm.\n\nDome of St. Peter's. Above, the vast sweep of the basilica's dome is the cynosure of all eyes. Proceed to the right side of the Basilica's vestibule; from here, you can either take the elevator or climb the long flight of shallow stairs to the roof. From here, you'll see a surreal landscape of vast, sloping terraces, punctuated by domes. The roof affords unusual perspectives both on the dome above and the piazza below. The terrace is equipped with the inevitable souvenir shop and restrooms. A short flight of stairs leads to the entrance of the tamburo (drum)\u2014the base of the dome\u2014where, appropriately enough, there's a bust of Michelangelo, the dome's principal designer. Within the drum, another short ramp and staircase give access to the gallery encircling the base of the dome. (You also have the option of taking an elevator to this point). From here, you have a dove's-eye view of the interior of the church. If you're overly energetic, you can take the stairs that wind around the elevator to reach the roof. Only if you're of stout heart and strong lungs should you then make the taxing climb from the drum of the dome up to the lanterna (lantern) at the dome's very apex. A narrow, seemingly interminable staircase follows the curve of the dome between inner and outer shells, finally releasing you into the cramped space of the lantern balcony for an absolutely gorgeous panorama of Rome and the countryside on a clear day. There's also a nearly complete view of the palaces, courtyards, and gardens of the Vatican. Be aware, however, that it's a tiring, slightly claustrophobic climb. There's one stairway for going up and a different one for coming down, so you can't change your mind halfway and turn back. | 06\/69883462 | Elevator \u20ac7, stairs \u20ac5 | Daily Apr.\u2013Sept., 8 am\u20136 pm; Oct.\u2013Mar., 8 am\u20134 pm; on a papal audience Wed., opens after the audience finishes (about 12 pm), closed during ceremonies in piazza.\n\nGrotte Vaticane (Vatican Grottoes). The entrance to the Grotte Vaticane is to the right of the Basilica's main entrance. The crypt, lined with marble-faced chapels and tombs occupying the area of Constantine's basilica, stands over what is believed to be the tomb of St. Peter himself, flanked by two angels and visible through glass. Among the most beautiful tombs leading up to it are that of Borgia pope Calixtus III with its carving of the Risen Christ, and the tomb of Paul II featuring angels carved by Renaissance great Mino da Fiesole | Free | Weekdays and Sat., 9\u20134; Sun. and holidays, 1:30\u20133:30; closed while the papal audience takes place in St. Peter's Square (until about noon on Wed.)\n\nPiazza di San Pietro | 00193 | Apr.\u2013Sept., daily 7\u20137; Oct.\u2013Mar., daily 7\u20136; closed during the papal audience in St. Peter's Square Wed. mornings until about noon | Station: Ottaviano-San Pietro.\n\n* * *\n\nMeet the Pope\n\nPiazza San Pietro is the scene of large papal audiences as well as special commemorations, masses, and beatification ceremonies. When he's in Rome, the pope makes an appearance every Sunday at noon (call the Vatican Information office to find out if the pope is in town and the exact time) at the window of the Vatican Palace. He addresses the crowd and blesses all present. The pope also holds mass audiences in the square on Wednesday morning about 10:30 am; for a seat, a ticket is necessary. In the winter and inclement circumstances, the audience is held in an indoor audience hall adjacent to the basilica (Aula Paolo Sesto). During summer, while the pope is vacationing at Castel Gandolfo in the Castelli Romani hills outside Rome, he gives a talk and blessing from a balcony of the papal palace there. For admission to an audience, apply for free tickets by phone or fax in advance, indicating the date you prefer, the language you speak, and the hotel in which you will stay. Contact the Prefettura della Casa Pontefice by telephone (06\/69883114) or fax ( 06\/69885863). Or apply for tickets before the Wednesday audience in person at the Prefettura, open on Monday 9\u20131 and Tuesday 9\u20136, located beyond the Portone di Bronzo (Bronze Door) at the end of the right-hand colonnade. You also can arrange your tickets for free through the Santa Susanna American Church (Via XX Settembre 15, near Termini | 06\/69001821). The best way is to email your request to tickets@santasusanna.org. You can pick up your tickets on Tuesday between 5 and 6:45 or on Wednesday morning 7\u20138:15. For a fee, travel agencies make arrangements that include transportation. Arrive early, as security is tight and the best places fill up fast.\n\n* * *\n\nQuick Bites: Insalata Ricca. Insalata Ricca, about halfway between the Vatican Museums and St. Peter's Basilica, offers no-nonsense light meals: pasta, salads, pizza, and the like. While unremarkable, keep it in mind on a hot day\u2014its air-conditioning is the best in the neighborhood. | Piazza Risorgimento 6 | 00193 | 06\/39730387.\n\n* * *\n\nVatican Dress Code\n\nTo enter the Musei Vaticani (Vatican Museums), the Sistine Chapel, and the Basilica di San Pietro you must comply with the Vatican's dress code, or you may be turned away by the implacable custodians stationed at the doors. (Also no penknives, which will show up under the metal detector.) For both men and women, shorts and tank tops are taboo, as are miniskirts and other revealing clothing. Wear a jacket or shawl over sleeveless tops, and avoid T-shirts with writing or pictures that could risk giving offense. If you opt to start at the Musei Vaticani, note that the entrance on Viale Vaticano (there's a separate exit on the same street) can be reached by Bus No. 49 from Piazza Cavour, which stops right in front; on foot from Piazza del Risorgimento (Bus 81 or Tram 19); or a brief walk from the Via Cipro\u2013Musei Vaticani stop on Metro line A. The collections of the museums are immense, covering about 7 km (4\u00bd mile) of displays. You can rent a taped, if somewhat dry, commentary in English explaining the Sistine Chapel and the Raphael rooms. You cannot take any photographs in the Sistine Chapel. Elsewhere, you're free to photograph what you like, barring use of flash, tripod, or other special equipment, for which permission must be obtained. To economize on time and effort, once you've seen the frescoes in the Raphael rooms, you can skip much of the modern religious art in good conscience, and get on with your tour. With some 20,000 visitors a day, recession notwithstanding, lines at the entrance to the Cappella Sistina (Sistine Chapel) can move slowly, as custodians block further entrance when the room becomes crowded. It may be possible to exit the museums from the Sistine Chapel into St. Peter's, saving further legwork. A sign at the entrance to the museums indicates whether the \"For Tour Groups\" exit is open. While visitors in the past could use this by following an exiting tour group, lately the guards there have been sterner on this practice. Be aware, too, that the Sistine Chapel is a holy place; loud talking and other excessive noise is frowned upon and can get you shushed.\n\n* * *\n\nFodor's Choice |  Cappella Sistina (Sistine Chapel).  \nIn 1508, the redoubtable Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to fresco the more than 10,000 square feet of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling. (Sistine, by the way, is simply the adjective from Sixtus, in reference to Pope Sixtus IV, who commissioned the chapel itself.) The task took four years, and it's said that for many years afterward Michelangelo couldn't read anything without holding it over his head. The result, however, was the greatest artwork of the Renaissance. A pair of binoculars helps greatly, as does a small mirror\u2014hold the mirror facing the ceiling and look down to study the reflection.\n\nBefore the chapel was consecrated in 1483, its lower walls were decorated by famed artists including Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Signorelli, and Pinturicchio. They painted scenes from the life of Moses on one wall and episodes from the life of Christ on the other. Later, Julius II, dissatisfied with the simple vault decoration\u2014stars painted on the ceiling\u2014decided to call in Michelangelo. At the time, Michelangelo was carving Julius II's resplendent tomb, a project that never came near completion. He had no desire to give the project up to paint a ceiling, considering the task unworthy of him. Julius was not, however, a man to be trifled with, and Michelangelo reluctantly began work.\n\nMore than 20 years later, Michelangelo was called on again, this time by the Farnese pope Paul III, to add to the chapel's decoration by painting the Last Judgment on the wall over the altar. The subject was well suited to the aging and embittered artist, who had been deeply moved by the horrendous Sack of Rome in 1527 and the confusions and disturbances of the Reformation. The painting stirred up controversy even before it was unveiled in 1541, shocking many Vatican officials, especially one Biagio di Cesena, who criticized its \"indecent\" nudes. Michelangelo retaliated by painting Biagio's face on Minos, judge of the underworld\u2014the figure with donkey's ears in the lower right-hand corner of the work. Biagio pleaded with Pope Paul to have Michelangelo erase his portrait, but the pontiff replied that while he could intercede for those in purgatory, he had no power over hell. As if to sign this, his late great fresco, Michelangelo painted his own face on the flayed-off human skin in St. Bartholomew's hand. | Vatican Palace; entry only through Musei Vaticani | 00193.\n\nCastel Sant'Angelo.   \nStanding between the Tiber and the Vatican, this circular and medieval \"castle\" has long been one of Rome's most distinctive landmarks. Opera lovers know it well as the setting for the final scene of Puccini's Tosca; at the opera's end, the tempestuous diva throws herself from the rampart on the upper terrace. In fact, the structure began life many centuries before as a mausoleum for the emperor Hadrian. Started in AD 135, it was completed by the emperor's successor, Antoninus Pius, about five years later. It initially consisted of a great square base topped by a marble-clad cylinder on which was planted a ring of cypress trees. Above them towered a gigantic statue of Hadrian. From the mid-6th century the building became a fortress, a place of refuge for popes during wars and sieges. Its name dates from 590, when Pope Gregory the Great, during a procession to plead for the end of a plague, saw an angel standing on the summit of the castle, sheathing his sword. Taking this as a sign that the plague was at an end, the pope built a small chapel at the top, placing a statue next to it to celebrate his vision\u2014thus the name, Castel Sant'Angelo.\n\nEnter the building through the original Roman door of Hadrian's tomb. From here, you pass through a courtyard enclosed in the base of the classical monument. You enter a vaulted brick corridor that hints at grim punishments in dank cells. On the right, a spiral ramp leads up to the chamber in which Hadrian's ashes were kept. Where the ramp ends, the Borgia pope Alexander VI's staircase begins. Part of it consisted of a wooden drawbridge, which could isolate the upper part of the castle completely. The staircase ends at the Cortile dell'Angelo, a courtyard that has become the resting place of neatly piled stone cannonballs as well as the marble angel that stood above the castle. (It was replaced by a bronze sculpture in 1753.) In the rooms off the Cortile dell'Angelo, look for the Cappella di Papa Leone X (Chapel of Pope Leo X), with a facade by Michelangelo.\n\nIn the courtyard named for Pope Alexander VI, a wellhead bears the Borgia coat of arms. The courtyard is surrounded by gloomy cells and huge storerooms that could hold great quantities of oil and grain in case of siege. Benvenuto Cellini, the rowdy 16th-century Florentine goldsmith, sculptor, and boastful autobiographer, spent some time in Castel Sant'Angelo's foul prisons; so did Giordano Bruno, a heretical monk who was later burned at the stake in Campo de' Fiori, and Beatrice Cenci, accused of patricide and incest and executed just across Ponte Sant'Angelo.\n\nTake the stairs at the far end of the courtyard to the open terrace for a view of the Passetto, the fortified corridor connecting Castel Sant'Angelo with the Vatican and recently featured in the book and film Angels and Demons (it's possible to request a visit; call for more information). Pope Clement VII used the Passetto to make his way safely to the castle during the Sack of Rome in 1527. Near here is a caff\u00e8 for refreshments. Continue your walk along the perimeter of the tower and climb the few stairs to the appartamento papale (papal apartment). As if times of crisis were no object, the Sala Paolina (Pauline Room), the first you enter, was decorated in the 16th century by Pierino del Vaga and assistants with lavish frescoes of scenes from the Old Testament and the lives of St. Paul and Alexander the Great. Look for the trompe l'oeil door with a figure climbing the stairs. From another false door, a black-clad figure peers into the room. This is believed to be a portrait of an illegitimate son of the powerful Orsini family. Out on to the upper terrace, at the feet of the bronze angel, take in a magnificent view of the city below.\n\nIn July and August, the Notti Animate di Castel Sant'Angelo (\"Animated Nights\") traditionally take place, with the castle and its terraces hosting restaurants, bars, gelaterie, live shows and performances, as well as extended hours. However, the event was called off in both 2010 and 2011. Romans are crossing their fingers that it will be back soon. | Lungotevere Castello 50 | 00193 | 06\/6819111 Central line,  06\/6896003 Tickets |  www.castelsantangelo.com | \u20ac8.50 | Tues.\u2013Sun. 9\u20137:30 (ticket office closes 6:30) | Station: Ottaviano.\n\n* * *\n\nTips on Touring the Vatican Museums\n\nRemember that the Vatican's museum complex is humongous\u2014only after walking through what seems miles of galleries do you see the entrance to the Sistine Chapel (which cannot be entered from St. Peter's Basilica directly). Check out the Sistine location vis-\u00e0-vis the main church on their website www.stpetersbasilica.org. Most people\u2014especially those who rent an audio guide and must return it to the main desk\u2014tour the complex, see the Sistine, then trudge back to the main museum entrance, itself a 15-minute walk from St. Peter's Square.\n\nThat said, there is an \"insider\" way to exit directly from the Sistine Chapel to St. Peter's Basilica: Look for the \"tour groups only\" door on the right as you face the rear of the chapel and, when a group exits, go with the flow and follow them. This will deposit you on the porch of St. Peter's Basilica. While this served as a sly trick for years, guards and guides both have gotten stricter about the practice, meaning you might be the victim of a stern guard or a head count that leaves you in the cold. Also note that if you run to the Sistine Chapel, then do the \"short-cut\" exit into the basilica, you will have missed the rest of the Vatican Museum collection.\n\nPlans are afoot to broaden the sidewalk leading to the museum, to install electronic information panels, and also to build a streamlined roof to protect queuers from sun or rain (until then, umbrellas are recommended). Another possibility is to visit in the evening. This experiment began in 2009 and has been running intermittently ever since, with the Vatican opening on many Friday evenings from 7 to 11. While the major hits, like the Sistine Chapel, are usually open during these special openings, many more off-the-beaten-path rooms and galleries are not. Reservations are essential (and possible over the Internet at www.vatican.va).\n\n* * *\n\nFodor's Choice |  Musei Vaticani (Vatican Museums).  \nOther than the pope and his papal court, the occupants of the Vatican are some of the most famous artworks in the world. The museums that contain them are part of the Vatican Palace, residence of the popes since 1377. The palace consists of an estimated 1,400 rooms, chapels, and galleries. The pope and his household occupy only a small part of the palace; most of the rest is given over to the Vatican Library and Museums. Beyond the glories of the Sistine Chapel, the collection is so extraordinarily rich you may just wish to skim the surface, but few will want to miss out on the great antique sculptures, Raphael Rooms, and the Old Master paintings, such as Leonardo da Vinci's St. Jerome.\n\nAmong the collections on the way to the chapel, the Egyptian Museum (in which Room II reproduces an underground chamber tomb of the Valley of Kings) is well worth a stop. The Chiaramonti Museum was organized by the Neoclassical sculptor Canova and contains almost 1,000 copies of classical sculpture. The gems of the Vatican's sculpture collection are in the Pio-Clementino Museum, however. Just off the hall in Room X, you can find the Apoxyomenos (Scraper), a beautiful 1st-century AD copy of the famous bronze statue of an athlete. There are other even more famous pieces in the Octagonal Courtyard, where Pope Julius II installed the pick of his private collection. On the left stands the celebrated Apollo Belvedere. In the far corner, on the same side of the courtyard, is the Laoco\u00f6n group. Found on Rome's Esquiline Hill in 1506, this antique sculpture group influenced Renaissance artists perhaps more than any other.\n\nIn the Hall of the Muses, the Belvedere Torso occupies center stage: This is a fragment of a 1st-century BC statue, probably of Hercules, all rippling muscles and classical dignity, much admired by Michelangelo. The lovely neoclassical room of the Rotonda has an ancient mosaic pavement and a huge porphyry basin from Nero's palace.\n\nThe room on the Greek-cross plan contains two fine porphyry sarcophagi (burial caskets), one for St. Constantia and one for St. Helena, daughter and mother of the emperor Constantine, respectively.\n\nUpstairs is an Etruscan Museum, an Antiquarium, with Roman originals; and the domed Sala della Biga, with an ancient chariot. In addition, there are the Candelabra Gallery and the Tapestry Gallery, with tapestries designed by Raphael's students. The incredibly long Gallery of Maps, frescoed with 40 maps of Italy and the papal territories, was commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII in 1580. Nearby is the Apartment of Pius V.\n\n##### The Raphael Rooms\n\nRivaling the Sistine Chapel for artistic interest\u2014and for the number of visitors\u2014are the Stanze di Raffaello (Raphael Rooms). Pope Julius II moved into this suite in 1507, four years after his election. Reluctant to continue living in the Borgia apartments downstairs, with their memories of his ill-famed predecessor Alexander VI, he called in Raphael to decorate his new quarters. When people talk about the Italian High Renaissance\u2014thought to be the very pinnacle of Western art\u2014it's probably Raphael's frescoes they're thinking about.\n\nThe Stanza della Segnatura, the first to be frescoed, was painted almost entirely by Raphael himself (his assistants painted much of the other rooms). The theme of the room, which may broadly be said to be \"enlightenment,\" reflects the fact that this was meant to be Julius's private library. Instead, it was used mainly as a room for signing documents, hence segnatura (signature). Theology triumphs in the fresco known as the Disputa, or Debate on the Holy Sacrament, on the wall in front of you as you enter. Opposite, the School of Athens glorifies philosophy in its greatest exponents. Plato (likely a portrait of Leonardo da Vinci), in the center, debates a point with Aristotle. The pensive, gloomy figure on the stairs is thought to be modeled after Michelangelo, who was painting the Sistine ceiling at the same time Raphael was working here. Michelangelo does not appear in preparatory drawings, so Raphael may have added his fellow artist's portrait after admiring his work. In the foreground on the right, the figure with the compass is Euclid, depicted as the architect Bramante; on the far right, the handsome youth just behind the white-clad older man is Raphael himself. Over the window on the left is Mt. Parnassus, the abode of the Muses, with Apollo, famous poets (many of them likenesses of Raphael's contemporaries), and the Muses themselves. In the lunette over the window opposite, Raphael painted figures representing and alluding to the Cardinal and Theological Virtues, and subjects showing the establishment of written codes of law. Beautiful personifications of the four subject areas, Theology, Poetry, Philosophy, and Jurisprudence, are painted in circular pictures on the ceiling above.\n\nHowever, the rooms aren't arranged chronologically. Today, for crowd-management purposes, you head down an outdoor gallery to loop back through them; as you go, look across the way to see, very far away, the Pinecone Courtyard near where you entered the museums. The first Raphael Room is the Hall of Constantine\u2014actually decorated by Giulio Romano and Raphael's other assistants after the master's untimely death in 1520. The frescoes represent various scenes from the life of Emperor Constantine, including the epic-sized Battle of the Milvian Bridge. Guided by three low-flying angels, Constantine charges to victory as his rival Maxentius drowns in the river below.\n\nThe Room of Heliodorus is a private antechamber. Working on the theme of Divine Providence's miraculous intervention in defense of the faith, Raphael depicted Leo the Great's encounter with Attila; it's on the wall in front of you as you enter. The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple of Jerusalem, opposite, refers to Pope Julius II's attempt to exert papal power to expel the French from Italy. The pope himself appears on the left, watching the scene. On the window wall, the Liberation of St. Peter is one of Raphael's best-known and most effective works.\n\nAfter the Room of the Signature, the last room is the Room of the Borgo Fire. The final room painted in Raphael's lifetime, it was executed mainly by Giulio Romano, who worked from Raphael's drawings for the new pope, Leo X. It was used for the meetings of the Segnatura Gratiae et Iustitiae, the Holy See's highest court. The frescoes depict stories of previous popes called Leo, the best of them showing the great fire in the Borgo (the neighborhood between the Vatican and Castel Sant'Angelo) that threatened to destroy the original St. Peter's Basilica in AD 847; miraculously, Pope Leo IV extinguished it with the sign of the cross.\n\nThe tiny Chapel of Nicholas V is rarely open. But if you can access it, do: One of the Renaissance's greatest gems, it's aglow with Fra Angelico (1395\u20131455) frescoes of episodes from the life of St. Stephen (above) and St. Lawrence (below). If it weren't under the same roof as Raphael's and Michelangelo's works, it would undoubtedly draw greater attention.\n\nDownstairs, enter the recently restored Borgia apartments, where some of the Vatican's most fascinating historical figures are depicted on elaborately painted ceilings. Pinturicchio designed the frescoes at the end of the 15th century, though the paintings were greatly retouched in later centuries. It's generally believed that Cesare Borgia murdered his sister Lucrezia's husband, Alphonse of Aragon, in the Room of the Sibyl. In the Room of the Saints, Pinturicchio painted his self-portrait in the figure to the left of the possible portrait of the architect Antonio da Sangallo. (His profession is made clear by the fact that he holds a T-square.) The lovely St. Catherine of Alexandria is said to represent Lucrezia Borgia herself.\n\nIn the frescoed exhibition halls, the Vatican Library displays precious illuminated manuscripts and documents from its vast collections. The Aldobrandini Marriage Room contains beautiful ancient frescoes of a Roman nuptial rite, named for their subsequent owner, Cardinal Aldobrandini. The Braccio Nuovo (New Wing) holds an additional collection of ancient Greek and Roman statues, the most famous of which is the Augustus of Prima Porta, in the fourth niche from the end on the left. It's considered a faithful likeness of the emperor Augustus, who was 40 years old at the time. Note the workmanship in the reliefs on his armor.\n\n##### The Vatican Pinacoteca\n\nEqually celebrated are the works on view in the Pinacoteca (Picture Gallery). These often world-famous paintings, almost exclusively of religious subjects, are arranged in chronological order, beginning with works of the 12th and 13th centuries. Room II has a marvelous Giotto triptych, painted on both sides, which formerly stood on the high altar in the old St. Peter's. In Room III you'll see Madonnas by the Florentine 15th-century painters Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi. Room VIII contains some of Raphael's greatest creations, including the exceptional Transfiguration, the Coronation of the Virgin, and the Foligno Madonna, as well as the tapestries that Raphael designed to hang in the Sistine Chapel. The next room contains Leonardo's beautiful (though unfinished) St. Jerome and a Bellini Piet\u00e0. A highlight for many is Caravaggio's gigantic Deposition, in Room XII. In the courtyard outside the Pinacoteca you can admire a beautiful view of the dome of St. Peter's, as well the reliefs from the base of the now-destroyed column of Antoninus Pius. A fitting finale to your Vatican visit can be found in the Museo Pio Cristiano (Museum of Christian Antiquities), where the most famous piece is the 3rd-century AD statue called the Good Shepherd, much reproduced as a devotional image.\n\nTIP To avoid the line into the museums, which can be three hours long in the high season, consider booking your ticket in advance online (biglietteriamusei.vatican.va); there is a \u20ac4 surcharge. For those interested in guided visits to the Vatican Museums, tours are \u20ac31 to \u20ac36, including entrance tickets, and can also be booked online. One new offering is a regular two-hour guided tour of the Vatican Gardens. Also new are the semiregular Friday night openings, allowing visitors to the museums until 11 pm; call to confirm. For more information, call | 06\/69884676 or go to | mv.vatican.va. For information on tours, call | 06\/69883145 or 06\/69884676; visually impaired visitors can arrange tactile tours by calling | 06\/69884947. Wheelchairs are free and can be booked in advance by emailing | accoglienza.musei@scv.va or by request at the \"Special Permits\" desk in the entrance hall. Note: Ushers at the entrance of St. Peter's and sometimes the Vatican Museums will bar entry to people with bare knees or bare shoulders. | Viale Vaticano (near intersection with Via Leone IV) | 00165 |  www.vatican.va | \u20ac15; free last Sun. of the month | Mon.\u2013Sat. 9\u20136 (last entrance at 4), last Sun. of month 9\u201312:30 | Closed Jan. 1 and 6, Feb. 11, Mar. 19, Easter and Easter Monday, May 1, June 29, Aug. 14 and 15, Nov. 1, and Dec. 8, 25, and 26 | Station: Cipro\u2013Musei Vaticani or Ottaviano\u2013San Pietro. Bus 64, 40.\n\nQuick Bites: Hostaria Dino e Toni. Many of the restaurants near the Vatican are touristy and terrible, so this eatery stands out. It serves typical Roman fare, nice and fresh from the nearby outdoor market on Via Andrea Doria, plus pizza. It's closed Sunday. | Via Leone IV 60 | 00193 | 06\/39733284.\n\nPiazza di San Pietro.   \nMostly enclosed within high walls that recall the papacy's stormy history, the Vatican opens the spectacular arms of Bernini's colonnade to embrace the world only at St. Peter's Square, scene of the pope's public appearances. One of Bernini's most spectacular masterpieces, the elliptical Piazza di San Pietro was completed in 1667 after only 11 years' work and holds 400,000 people.\n\nSurrounded by a pair of quadruple colonnades, it is gloriously studded with 140 statues of saints and martyrs. Look for the two disks set into the piazza's pavement on either side of the central obelisk. If you stand on either disk, a trick of perspective makes the colonnades look like a single row of columns.\n\nBernini had an even grander visual effect in mind when he designed the square. By opening up this immense, airy, and luminous space in a neighborhood of narrow, shadowy streets, he created a contrast that would surprise and impress anyone who emerged from the darkness into the light, in a characteristically Baroque metaphor.\n\nAt the piazza center, the 85-foot-high Egyptian obelisk was brought to Rome by Caligula in AD 37 and moved here in 1586 by Pope Sixtus V. The emblem at the top of the obelisk is the Chigi star, in honor of Pope Alexander VII, a member of the powerful Chigi family, who commissioned the piazza.\n\nAlexander demanded that Bernini make the pope visible to as many people as possible from the Benediction Loggia and to provide a covered passageway for papal processions.\n\nPiazza di San Pietro Tips\n\nOfficially called Informazioni per turisti e pellegrini, the Main Information Office is just left of the basilica as you face it, a couple of doors down from the Braccio di Carlo Magno bookshop. On the south side of the Piazza Pio XII square, you'll find another Vatican bookshop, which contains the Libreria Benedetto XVI.\n\nAs for the famous Vatican post offices (known for fast handling of outgoing mail), they can be found on both sides of St. Peter's Square and inside the Vatican Museums complex. You can also buy Vatican stamps and coins at the shop annexed to the information office. Although postage rates are the same at the Vatican as elsewhere in Italy, the stamps are not interchangeable, so any material stamped with Vatican stamps must be placed into a blue or yellow Posta Vaticana box.\n\nPublic toilets are near the Information Office, under the colonnade, and outside the exit of the crypt.\n\nWest end of Via della Conciliazione, Vatican | 00193 | 06\/69881662 |  upt@scv.va | Daily 6:30 am\u201311 pm (midnight during Christmas) | Station: Cipro-Musei Vaticani or Ottaviano-San Pietro.\n\n##  Worth Noting\n\nGiardini Vaticani (Vatican Gardens).  \nNeatly trimmed lawns and flower beds extend over the hills behind St. Peter's Basilica, an area dotted with some interesting constructions and other, duller ones that serve as office buildings. The Vatican Gardens occupy almost 40 acres of land on the Vatican hill. The gardens include a formal Italian garden, a flowering French garden, a romantic English landscape, and a small forest; there's also the little-used Vatican railroad station, which now houses a museum of coins and stamps made in the Vatican. Take a two-hour walking tour with an official Vatican guide (make sure to wear good walking shoes) or, instead, opt for a one-hour RomaCristiana minibus tour of the gardens, done with an audio guide. For either tour, a reservation is necessary. | For official Vatican tour, Centro Servizi, south side of Piazza San Pietro; for RomaCristiana tour, ORP St. Peter's Office at Piazza Pio XII 9 | 00193 | 06\/69883145 Vatican tour,  06\/88816186 minibus tour |  www.vatican.va | \u20ac31 for 2-hour tour with Vatican guide (includes \u20ac15 entrance ticket to Vatican museums) or \u20ac15 for 1-hour bus ride with RomaCristiana | Tours Mon., Tues., and Thurs.\u2013Sat. | Station: Cipro-Musei Vaticani.\n\nPonte Sant'Angelo.   \nAngels designed by Baroque master Bernini line the most beautiful of central Rome's 20-odd bridges. Bernini himself carved only two of the angels (those with the scroll and the crown of thorns), both of which were moved to the church of Sant'Andrea delle Fratte shortly afterward due to the wishes of the Bernini family. Though copies, the angels on the bridge today convey forcefully the grace and characteristic sense of movement\u2014a key element of Baroque sculpture\u2014of Bernini's best work. Originally built in AD 133\u2013134, the Ponte Elio, as it was originally called, was a bridge over the Tiber to Hadrian's Mausoleum. Pope Gregory changed the bridge's name after he had a vision of an angel sheathing its sword to signal the ending of the plague of 590. In medieval times, continuing its sacral function, the bridge became an important element in funneling pilgrims toward St. Peter's. As such, in 1667 Pope Clement IX commissioned Bernini to design 10 angels bearing the symbols of the Passion, turning the bridge into a sort of Via Crucis. | Between Lungotevere Castello and Lungotevere Altoviti, San Pietro | 00193 | Station: Ottaviano.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nGetting Oriented | Navona | Campo\n\nIf the Navona quarter doesn't enchant you, nothing in Rome will. Flowered balconies, brilliantly colored palazzi, Bernini's best fountain, friendly sidewalk caff\u00e8, priceless Caravaggio altarpieces, and the city's most Baroque squares all make Navona into the crown jewel of the city's historic center. This is not where Rome began (that's the Palatine and Capitoline hills), but it's where all the centuries come together most beautifully. As you wander from the ethereal interior of the ancient Pantheon to explore the Raphaels at Santa Maria della Pace and then discover the gold-on-gold splendor of Il Ges\u00f9, you'll quickly learn that this part of Rome supersaturates the senses.\n\nToday, the district's tiny streets brim over with parliamentarians doing deals over plates of saltimbocca, fashionistas shopping for shoes, and tourists from every part of the world. Everywhere, caff\u00e8, restaurants, and artisan shops line the twisted streets and the lopsided piazzas, even as elegant ladies living in apartments upstairs lean out French windows for a breath of air. It's crowded here, and often noisy, but every moment in the centro is a slice of Roman life, and you'd be perfectly justified in just strolling the streets and taking it all in.\n\nPrevious Map | Next Map | Rome Maps\n\nBut it would be a crime to miss out on the cultural treasures this neighborhood holds. The Baroque, Rome's finest artistic moment, was born and raised here, in Bernini's marvelous statuary, in Caravaggio's almost unbearably realistic paintings, in the frippery and froth of its best and most beautiful churches. Piazza Navona is the most theatrical piazza in town, its pedestrian-only oval focused on three of Bernini's fountains, including the sensational Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (Fountain of the Four Rivers). It's flanked by some of the city's most elegant buildings, first among them Borromini's church of Sant'Agnese in Agone, a masterpiece of the Baroque. Just one street over, the church of San Luigi dei Francesi showcases three of Caravaggio's greatest paintings. The churches of Il Ges\u00f9, Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza, and Santa Maria della Pace are each treasures in their own way: Il Ges\u00f9 grand and imposing, Sant'Ivo eccentric and whimsical, and Santa Maria jewel-like and theatrical.\n\nIn Piazza Navona, the Baroque rules. However, just across the road is the Pantheon, ancient Rome's best-preserved temple, which escaped destruction due to its consecration in 608 AD as a Christian church, which it remains today. Its dome was until the last century the largest ever built, anywhere; its architectural balance and harmony inspired and informed countless Renaissance artists, Michelangelo and Raphael included. But not all of the area's treasures are of the artistic nature: Campo de' Fiori, the famous market piazza, is a must-see in the morning, when farm and fish stalls bring the square to life with shouting, shopping, and smells. In the evening until past midnight, outdoor bars and restaurants transform this humble square into a hot spot. For Romans, the Navona neighborhood is their downtown\u2014a largely residential area that stretches eastward of the Tiber over to Via del Corso, a main avenue. While locals refer to this district by a number of names\u2014particularly Campo Marzio, Parione, and Regola\u2014we choose the most popular moniker to refer to the northern half of the district set around Piazza Navona.\n\nThe southern half we call Campo, referring to its charming hub, the Campo de' Fiori. Occupying the horn of land that pushes the Tiber westward toward the Vatican, the entire area has been an integral part of the city since ancient times. Rome's first emperor and prime scenographer Augustus got things started by transforming the Campo Marzio's military exercise ground into an alternative city-center to the Forum. During the Renaissance the area's proximity to both the Vatican and Lateran palaces drew many of Rome's richest people to settle here and greatest artists to work here. Today, when a busker sings a melancholy song about his bella citt\u00e0, chances are he's moved to music by the winding alleys and gentle light of this place: the achingly beautiful heart of the centro storico.\n\n##  Getting Oriented\n\n###  Getting Here\n\nIn the heart of the centro storico (historical center), this neighborhood is an easy walk across the river from the Vatican or Trastevere and a half-hour amble from the Spanish Steps neighborhood. Bussing it from Termini or the Vatican, take the No. 40 Express or the No. 64 and get off at Largo Torre Argentina, a 10-minute stroll to either Campo de' Fiori or Piazza Navona. Another option is the electric No. 116\u2014tiny enough for narrow streets\u2014that winds its way from Via Veneto past the Spanish Steps to Campo de' Fiori.\n\n###  OK, Where Do I Start?\n\nTwo blocks west of Piazza Venezia\u2014Rome's central transportation hub\u2014sits the grandmother of Rome's 17th-century churches, Il Ges\u00f9, whose splendor makes it a fitting overture to this sumptuously Baroque quarter. After this curtain-raiser, cross Corso Vittorio Emanuele and take Via del Ges\u00f9, turning left onto Via Pi\u00e8 di Marmo to enter Piazza della Minerva. On the right is Santa Maria sopra Minerva, whose piazza contains Rome's most delightful Baroque conceit, the 17th-century elephant obelisk memorial designed by Bernini. Straight ahead is one of the wonders of the world, the ancient Pantheon, with that postcard icon, Piazza Navona, just a few blocks to the west. As cornucopic with art treasures as any in Rome, this district would take about five hours to explore, not counting breaks\u2014but taking breaks is what this area is all about. Chill out at Campo de' Fiori, a Monday-to-Saturday morning market that becomes a nighttime scene-arena, or hit Piazza Navona in the evening, the ideal time to rest on a bench and revel in the dramatic way the lights hit the fountains and church.\n\n###  Best Time-Outs\n\nObik\u00e0 Mozzarella Bar.   \nThe first of its kind in the world, this takes the sushi bar concept and instead offers a mouthwatering range of buffalo mozzarella from Naples. The decor is white-wall minimalism, the clientele chic, and the weekend brunch to die for. Grab coffees or salads to go. | Via dei Prefetti 26, Navona | 00186 | 06\/6832630.\n\nCul de Sac.   \nLocated steps from Piazza Navona, Cul de Sac was one of the first wine bars in Rome. Today, it offers small plates of Italian specialties\u2014as well as a good wine list and outdoor seating. | Piazza Pasquino 73, Navona | 00186 | 06\/68801094.\n\nGiolitti.   \nThe Pantheon area is ice-cream heaven, but this, opened in 1900, is considered the best gelateria. The scene at the counter often looks like the storming of the Bastille. Remember to pay the cashier first, then head to the counter. | Via Uffizi del Vicario 40, Pantheon | 00186 | 06\/6991243 |  www.giolitti.it | Daily 7 am\u20132 am.\n\n###  Top 5 Reasons to Go\n\nPiazza Navona: Take yourself for the ultimate Roman passeggiata (promenade) in the city's most glorious piazza\u2014the showcase for Rome's exuberant Baroque style\u2014and savor how Bernini's fantastic fountain is set off by the curves and steeples of Borromini's church of Sant'Agnese.\n\nCaravaggio: Feel the power of 17th-century Rome's rebel artist in three of his finest paintings, at the church of San Luigi dei Francesi, all dazzling with the chiaroscuro use of light and shadow.\n\nThe Pantheon: Gaze up to the heavens through the dome of Rome's best-preserved ancient temple\u2014could this be the world's only architecturally perfect building?\n\nCampo de' Fiori: Stroll through the morning market, basket in hand, for a taste of the sweet life.\n\nVia Giulia: Lined with regal palaces\u2014still home to some of Rome's princeliest families\u2014this is a Renaissance-era diorama you can walk through.\n\n##  Navona\n\nIn terms of sheer sensual enjoyment\u2014from a mouthwatering range of restaurants and caff\u00e8 to the ornate Baroque settings\u2014it's tough to top this area of Rome. Just a few blocks, and some 1,200 years, separate the two main showstoppers: Piazza Navona and the Pantheon. The first is the most beautiful Baroque piazza in the world, which serves as the open-air salon for this quarter of Rome. As if this is not grandeur enough, across Corso di Rinascimento\u2014and more than a millennium away\u2014is the Pantheon, the grandest extant building still standing from ancient Rome. Even today, it's topped by the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome. Near the same massive hub, Bernini's delightful elephant obelisk shows small can also be beautiful. And beautiful is the word to describe this entire area, one that is packed with Baroque wonders, charming stores, and very happy sightseers.\n\n### Top Attractions\n\nFodor's Choice |  Palazzo Altemps.   \nContaining some of the finest ancient Roman statues in the world, this collection formerly made up the core of the Museo Nazionale Romano. As of 1995, it was moved to these new, suitably grander digs. The palace's sober exterior belies a magnificence that appears as soon as you walk into the majestic courtyard, studded with statues and covered in part by a retractable awning. The restored interior hints at the Roman lifestyle of the 16th through 18th centuries while showcasing the most illustrious pieces from the Museo Nazionale, including the Ludovisi family collection. In the frescoed salons you can see the Galata, a poignant work portraying a barbarian warrior who chooses death for himself and his wife rather than humiliation by the enemy. Another highlight is the large Ludovisi sarcophagus, magnificently carved from marble. In a place of honor is the Ludovisi Throne, which shows a goddess emerging from the sea and being helped by her acolytes. For centuries this was heralded as one of the most sublime Greek sculptures but, today, at least one authoritative art historian considers it a colossally overrated fake. Look for the framed explanations of the exhibits that detail (in English) how and exactly where Renaissance sculptors, Bernini among them, added missing pieces to the classical works. In the lavishly frescoed Loggia stand busts of the Caesars. In the wing once occupied by early-20th-century poet Gabriele D'Annunzio (who married into the Altemps family), three rooms newly opened in 2009 now host the museum's Egyptian collection. | Piazza Sant'Apollinare 46, Navona | 00186 | 06\/39967700 |  www.pierreci.it | \u20ac10, includes other 3 venues of Museo Nazionale Romano (Crypta Balbi, Palazzo Massimo, Museo Diocleziano) | Tues.\u2013Sun. 9\u20137:45 (ticket office closes 1 hr before).\n\nFodor's Choice |  Pantheon.   \nOne of the wonders of the ancient world, this onetime pagan temple, a marvel of architectural harmony and proportion, is the best-preserved ancient building in Rome. It was entirely rebuilt by the emperor Hadrian around AD 120 on the site of an earlier pantheon (from the Greek pan, all, and theon, gods) erected in 27 BC by Augustus's general Agrippa. It's thought that the majestic circular building was actually designed by Hadrian, as were many of the temples, palaces, and lakes of his enormous villa at Tivoli. Hadrian nonetheless retained the inscription over the entrance from the original building (today, unfortunately, replaced with modern letters) that named Agrippa as the builder. This caused enormous confusion among historians until, in 1892, a French architect discovered that all the bricks used in the Pantheon dated from Hadrian's time.\n\nThe most striking thing about the Pantheon is not its size, immense though it is (until 1960 the dome was the largest ever built), nor even the phenomenal technical difficulties posed by so vast a construction; rather, it's the remarkable unity of the building. You don't have to look far to find the reason for this harmony: the diameter described by the dome is exactly equal to its height. It's the use of such simple mathematical balance that gives classical architecture its characteristic sense of proportion and its nobility and why some call it the world's only architecturally perfect building. The great opening at the apex of the dome, the oculus, is nearly 30 feet in diameter and was the temple's only source of light. It was intended to symbolize the \"all-seeing eye of heaven.\"\n\nTo do the interior justice defied even Byron. He piles up adjectives, but none seems to fit: \"Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime.\" Not surprising, perhaps, when describing a dome 141 feet high and the same across. Although little is known for sure about the Pantheon's origins or purpose, it's worth noting that the five levels of trapezoidal coffers represent the course of the five then-known planets and their concentric spheres. Then, ruling over them, comes the sun represented symbolically and literally by the 30-foot-wide eye at the top. The heavenly symmetry is further paralleled by the coffers themselves: 28 to each row, the number of lunar cycles. Note how each coffer takes five planetary steps toward the wall. Then in the center of each would have shone a small bronze star. Down below the seven large niches were occupied not by saints, but, it's thought, by statues of Mars, Venus, the deified Caesar, and the other \"astral deities,\" including the Moon and the Sun, the sol invictus.\n\nThe Pantheon is by far the best preserved of the major monuments of imperial Rome, a condition that is the result of it being consecrated as a church in AD 608. (It's still a working and Mass-holding church today, and it's the church name, the Basilica of Saint Mary and the Martyrs, that you'll see on the official signs.) No building, church or not, escaped some degree of plundering through the turbulent centuries of Rome's history after the fall of the empire. In 655, for example, the gilded bronze covering the dome was stripped. Similarly, in the early 17th century, Pope Urban VIII removed the bronze beams of the portico. Although the legend holds that the metal went to the baldacchino (canopy) over the high altar at St. Peter's Basilica, the reality may be worse\u2014it went to cannons at Castel Sant'Angelo. Most of its interior marble facing has also been stripped and replaced over the centuries. Nonetheless, the Pantheon suffered less than many other ancient structures.\n\nToday, the Pantheon serves as one of the city's important burial places. Its most famous tomb is that of Raphael (between the second and third chapels on the left as you enter). The inscription reads \"Here lies Raphael; while he lived, mother Nature feared to be outdone; and when he died, she feared to die with him.\" Amazingly, the temple's original bronze doors have remained intact (if restored and parts of which were even melted down and recast at one point) for more than 1,800 years. Be sure to ponder them as you leave. One-hour tours (\u20ac8) are run regularly in English; check at the information desk on your right as you enter. | Piazza della Rotonda, Navona | 00186 | 06\/68300230 | Free; audio guides \u20ac5 suggested donation | Mon.\u2013Sat. 8:30\u20137:30, Sun. 9\u20136 | Station: Closest bus hub: Argentina (buses 40, 85, 53, 46, 64, 87, 571, tram 8).\n\nQuick Bites: Tazza d'Oro. On the east corner of the Pantheon's piazza, the Tazza d'Oro coffee bar (no tables, no frills) is the place for serious coffee drinkers. Indulge in their granita di caff\u00e8 con panna (coffee ice with whipped cream). For a classy but gently priced meal, head to Vicolo della Palomba 23, just a corner away from Palazzo Altemps, to find the snazzily named Il Desiderio Preso per la Coda (\"Desire Taken by the Tail\")\u2014the name comes from a play written by Picasso. | Via degli Orfani 86, Pantheon | 00186.\n\nPiazza Navona.   \nHere, everything that makes Rome unique is compressed into one beautiful Baroque piazza. Always camera-ready, Piazza Navona has Bernini sculptures, three gorgeous fountains, a magnificently Baroque church (Sant'Agnese in Agone), and, best of all, the excitement of so many people strolling, admiring the fountains, and enjoying the view.\n\nThe piazza has been an entertainment venue for Romans ever since being built over Domitian's circus (pieces of the arena are still visible near adjacent Piazza Sant'Apollinare). Although undoubtedly more touristy today, the square still has the carefree air of the days when it was the scene of medieval jousts and 17th-century carnivals. Today, it's the site of a lively Christmas \"Befana\" fair.\n\nThe piazza still looks much as it did during the 17th century, after the Pamphili pope Innocent X decided to make it over into a monument to his family to rival the Barberini's palace at the Quattro Fontane.\n\nAt center stage is the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, created for Innocent X by Bernini in 1651. Bernini's powerful figures of the four rivers represent the four corners of the world: the Nile; the Ganges; the Danube; and the Plata, with its hand raised. One story has it that the figure of the Nile\u2014the figure closest to Sant' Agnese in Agone\u2014hides its head because it can't bear to look upon the church's \"inferior\" facade designed by Francesco Borromini, Bernini's rival. In fact, the facade was built after the fountain, and the statue hides its head because it represents a river whose source was then unknown.\n\nPiazza Navona Tips\n\nOn the eve of Epiphany (January 5\u20136), Piazza Navona's toy fair explodes in joyful conclusion, with much noise and rowdiness to encourage Befana, an old woman who brings toys to good children and pieces of coal (represented by similar-looking candy) to the naughty. Dealers also set up before Christmas to sell trinkets and presepio (cr\u00e8che) figures, while the toy stores of Al Sogno (at No. 53) and Bert\u00e9 (at No. 3) enchant year-round.\n\nIf you want a caff\u00e8 with one of the most beautiful, if pricey, views in Rome, grab a seat on Piazza Navona. The sidewalk tables of the Tre Scalini caff\u00e8 (Piazza Navona 30, 06\/6879148) offer a grandstand view of all the action. This is the place that invented the tartufo, a luscious chocolate ice-cream specialty. Piazza Navona is lined with caff\u00e8, though, so pick and choose. Just be aware that the restaurants here are food-with-a-view in quality\u2014but what a view!\n\nJunction of Via della Cuccagna, Corsia Agonale, Via di Sant'Agnese, and Via Agonale | 00186\n\nFodor's Choice |  San Luigi dei Francesi.   \nA pilgrimage spot for art lovers everywhere, San Luigi's Contarelli Chapel is adorned with three stunningly dramatic works by Caravaggio (1571\u20131610), the Baroque master of the heightened approach to light and dark. Located at the altar end of the left nave, they were commissioned for San Luigi, the official church of Rome's French colony (San Luigi is St. Louis, patron of France). The inevitable coin machine will light up his Calling of St. Matthew, Matthew and the Angel, and Matthew's Martyrdom, seen from left to right, and Caravaggio's mastery of light takes it from there. When painted, they caused considerable consternation to the clergy of San Luigi, who thought the artist's dramatically realistic approach was scandalously disrespectful. A first version of the altarpiece was rejected; the priests were not particularly happy with the other two, either. Time has fully vindicated Caravaggio's patron, Cardinal Francesco del Monte, who secured the commission for these works and stoutly defended them. They're now recognized to be among the world's greatest paintings. | Piazza San Luigi dei Francesi, Navona | 00186 | 06\/688271 | Weekdays 10\u201312:30 and 3\u20137 (closed Thurs. afternoon).\n\nFodor's Choice |  Sant'Agnese in Agone.   \nThe quintessence of Baroque architecture, this church has a facade that remains a wonderfully rich m\u00e9lange of bell towers, concave spaces, and dovetailed stone and marble, the creation of Francesco Borromini (1599\u20131667), a contemporary and rival of Bernini. Next to his new Pamphilj family palace, Pope Innocent X had the adjacent chapel expanded into this full-fledged church. The work was first assigned to the architect Rainaldi. However, Donna Olimpia, the pope's famously domineering sister, became increasingly impatient with how the work was going and brought in Borromini, whose wonderful concave entrance has the magical effect of making the dome appear much larger than it actually is. The name of this church comes from agona, the source of the word navona and a corruption of the Latin agonalis, describing the type of games held there in Roman times. The saint associated with the church is Agnes, who was martyred here in the piazza's forerunner, the Stadium of Domitian. As she was stripped nude before the crowd, her hair miraculously grew to maintain her modesty before she was killed. The interior is a marvel of modular Baroque space and is ornamented by giant marble reliefs sculpted by Raggi and Ferrata. | Piazza Navona, Navona | 00186 | 06\/68192134 | Tues.\u2013Sun. 9:30\u201312:30 and 3:30\u20137.\n\nSanta Maria della Pace.   \nOne of Rome's most delightful little architectural stage sets was created in 1656 when Pietro da Cortona (1596\u20131669) was commissioned by Pope Alexander VII to enlarge the tiny Piazza della Pace so as to accommodate the carriages of the wealthy parishioners arriving at the church of Santa Maria. His architectural solution was to design a new church facade complete with semicircular portico, add arches to give architectural unity to the piazza, and then complete it with a series of bijou-size palaces (now some of the most coveted addresses in Rome). Within the 15th-century church are two great Renaissance treasures: Raphael's fresco above the first altar on your right depicts the Four Sibyls, almost exact, if more relaxed, replicas of Michelangelo's. The fine decorations of the Cesi Chapel, second on the right, were designed in the mid-16th century by Sangallo. Opposite is Peruzzi's wonderful fresco of the Madonna and Child. Meanwhile, the octagon below the dome is something of an art gallery in itself with works by Cavaliere Arpino, Orazio Gentileschi, and others as Cozzo's Eternity fills the lantern above. Behind the church proper is its cloister, designed by Bramante (architect of St. Peter's) as the very first expression of High Renaissance style in Rome. | Via Arco della Pace 5, Navona | 00186 | 06\/6861156 | Mon., Wed., and Sat. 9\u2013noon.\n\nSanta Maria sopra Minerva.   \nThe name of the church reveals that it was built sopra (over) the ruins of a temple of Minerva, ancient goddess of wisdom. Erected in 1280 by the Dominicans on severe Italian Gothic lines, it has undergone a number of more or less happy restorations to the interior. Certainly, as the city's major Gothic church, it provides a refreshing contrast to Baroque flamboyance. Have a \u20ac1 coin handy to illuminate the Cappella Carafa in the right transept, where Filippino Lippi's (1457\u20131504) glowing frescoes are well worth the small investment, opening up the deepest azure expanse of sky where musical angels hover around the Virgin. Under the main altar is the tomb of St. Catherine of Siena, one of Italy's patron saints. Left of the altar you'll find Michelangelo's famed Risen Christ and the tomb of the gentle artist Fra Angelico. In front of the church, the little obelisk-bearing elephant (under restoration at the time of this printing) carved by Bernini is perhaps the city's most charming sculpture. An inscription on the base of Bernini's Elephant Obelisk references the church's ancient patroness, reading something to the effect that it takes a strong mind to sustain solid wisdom. | Piazza della Minerva, Navona | 00186 | 06\/6793926 | Weekdays 8\u20137, weekends 8\u201312:30 and 3:30\u20137.\n\nSant'Ivo alla Sapienza.   \nThe main facade of this eccentric Baroque church, probably Borromini's best, is on the stately courtyard of an austere building that once housed Rome's university. Sant'Ivo has what must surely be one of the most delightful domes in all of Rome\u2014a golden spiral said to have been inspired by a bee's stinger. The bee symbol is a reminder that Borromini built the church on commission from the Barberini pope Urban VIII (a swarm of bees figure on the Barberini family crest). The interior, open only for three hours on Sunday, is worth a look, especially if you share Borromini's taste for complex mathematical architectural idiosyncrasies. \"I didn't take up architecture solely to be a copyist,\" Borromini once said. Sant'Ivo is certainly the proof. | Corso Rinascimento 40, Navona | 00186 | 06\/6864987 | Sun. 9\u2013noon | Station: Bus 130, 116, 186, 492, 30, 70, 81, or 87.\n\n### Worth Noting\n\nMuseo Mario Praz.   \nOn the top floor of the Palazzo Primoli\u2014the same building (separate entrance) that houses the Museo Napoleonico\u2014is one of Rome's most unusual museums. As if in amber, the apartment in which the famous Italian essayist Mario Praz lived is preserved intact, decorated with a lifetime's accumulation of delightful Baroque and Neoclassical art and antiques arranged and rearranged to create symmetries that take the visitor by surprise like the best trompe d'oeil. As author of The Romantic Sensibility and A History of Interior Decoration, Praz was fabled for his taste for the arcane and the bizarre; here his reputation for the same lives on. | Via Zanardelli 1, Navona | 00186 | 06\/6861089 |  www.museopraz.beniculturali.it | Free | Tues.\u2013Sun. 9\u20132 and 2:30\u20137:30 (ticket office closes 1 hr before closing) | Station: Bus 492, 70, 628, 81, 116.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Museo Napoleonico.   \nHoused in an opulent collection of velvet-and-crystal salons that hauntingly capture the fragile charm of early-19th-century Rome, this small museum in the Palazzo Primoli contains a specialized and rich collection of Napol\u00e9on memorabilia, including a bust by Canova of the general's sister, Pauline Borghese (as well as a plaster cast of her left bust). You may well ask why this outpost of Napol\u00e9on is in Rome, but in 1809 the French emperor had made a grab for Rome, kidnapping Pope Pius VII and proclaiming his young son the King of Rome. All came to naught a few years later, when the emperor was routed off his French throne. Upstairs is the Museo Mario Praz. | Museo Napoleonico: Palazzo Primoli, Piazza di Ponte Umberto I, Navona | 00186 | 06\/68806286 |  www.museonapoleonico.it | \u20ac7 | Tues.\u2013Sun. 9 am\u20137 pm | Station: Bus lines 70, 30, 81, 628, 492.\n\nOratorio dei Filippini.   \nHoused in a Baroque masterwork by Borromini, this former religious residence named for Saint Philip Neri, founder in 1551 of the Congregation of the Oratorians, now contains Rome's Archivio Storico. Only the newly restored courtyard is visitable. Like the Jesuits, the Oratorians\u2014or Filippini, as they were commonly known\u2014were one of the new religious orders established in the mid-16th century as part of the Counter-Reformation. Neri, a man of rare charm and wit, insisted that the members of the order\u2014most of them young noblemen whom he had recruited personally\u2014not only renounce their worldly goods, but also work as common laborers in the building of Neri's great church of Santa Maria in Vallicella. The Oratory itself, once headquarters of the order, was built by Borromini between 1637 and 1662. Its gently curving facade is typical of Borromini's insistence on introducing movement into everything he designed. The inspiration here is that of arms extended in welcome to the poor (but perhaps also to gulls and pigeons who, with infallible architectural taste, line the parapets in the cooler months). | Piazza della Chiesa Nuova (Corso Vittorio Emanuele), Navona | 00186 | 06\/6892537 | Under extensive restoration at this press time (courtyard is visitable).\n\nPalazzo Massimo alle Colonne.   \nFollowing the shape of Emperor Domitian's Odeon arena, a curving, columned portico identifies this otherwise inconspicuous palace on a traffic-swept bend of Corso Vittorio Emanuele. In the 1530s Renaissance architect Baldassare Peruzzi built this new palace for the Massimo family, after their previous dwelling had been destroyed during the sack of Rome. (High in the papal aristocracy, they boasted an ancestor who had been responsible for the defeat of Hannibal.) If you're here on March 16, you'll be able to go upstairs to take part (on an individual basis but not in groups) in commemorations of a miracle performed here in 1583 by Philip Neri, who is said to have recalled a young member of the family, one Paolo Massimo, from the dead. | Corso Vittorio Emanuele II 141, Navona | 00186.\n\nPiazza di Pasquino.   \nThis tiny piazza takes its name from the figure in the corner, the remnant of an old Roman statue depicting Menelaus. The statue underwent a name change in the 16th century when Pasquino, a cobbler or barber (and part-time satirist), started writing comments around the base. The habit caught on; soon everyone was doing it. The most loquacious of Rome's \"talking statues,\" its lack of arms or face is more than made up for with commentary of any topic of the day. | Piazza di Pasquino, Navona | 00186.\n\nSant'Agostino.   \nCaravaggio's celebrated Madonna of the Pilgrims\u2014which scandalized all of Rome because a kneeling pilgrim is pictured, all too realistically for the era's tastes, with dirt on the soles of his feet, with the Madonna standing in a less than majestic pose in a dilapidated doorway\u2014is in the first chapel on the left. At the third column down the nave, admire Raphael's blue-robed Isaiah, said to be inspired by Michelangelo's prophets on the Sistine ceiling (Raphael, with the help of Bramante, had taken the odd peek at the master's original against strict orders of secrecy). Directly below is Sansovino's Leonardo-influenced sculpture, St. Anne and the Madonna with Child. As you leave, in a niche just inside the door, is the sculpted Madonna and Child, known to the Romans as the \"Madonna del Parto\" (of Childbirth) and piled high with ex-votos. The artist is Jacopo Tatti, also sometimes confusingly known as Sansovino after his master. | Piazza Sant'Agostino, Navona | 00186 | 06\/68801962 | Daily 7:45\u2013noon and 4\u20137:30.\n\nSanta Maria in Vallicella\/Chiesa Nuova.   \nThis church, also known as Chiesa Nuova (New Church), was built toward the end of the 16th century at the urging of Philip Neri, and like Il Ges\u00f9 is a product of the fervor of the Counter-Reformation. It has a sturdy Baroque interior, all white and gold, with ceiling frescoes by Pietro da Cortona depicting a miracle reputed to have occurred during the church's construction: the Virgin and strong-armed angels hold up the broken roof to prevent it crashing down onto the congregation below. The Church is most famed for its three magnificent altarpieces by Rubens. | Piazza della Chiesa Nuova, Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, Navona | 00186 | 06\/6875289 | Daily 8\u2013noon and 5:30\u20137.\n\n##  Campo\n\nPicture a district as the most charming theater, a cast of gods and godlings, saints and sibyls, tritons and cherubs, with the odd ice-cream seller, acrobat, or clown wandering in-between. Add a backdrop to please an emperor or pope, lowlier caff\u00e8-owners and restaurateurs charging for a stage-side view. Such is Campo, which anchors the southern sector of this quarter in the heart of the centro. Campo de' Fiori itself has barely changed from the days of the Renaissance. The area is also studded with other 16th-century treasures like the Palazzo Farnese, a palace Michelangelo helped design; the Palazzo Spada; and Via Giulia, the ruler-straight street laid out by Pope Julius II and long considered Rome's most coveted address.\n\n### Top Attractions\n\nIl Ges\u00f9.   \nThe mother church of the Jesuits in Rome is the prototype of all Counter-Reformation churches. Considered the first fully Baroque church, it has spectacular decor that tells a lot about an era of religious triumph and turmoil. Its architecture (the overall design was by Vignola, the facade by della Porta) influenced ecclesiastical building in Rome for more than a century and was exported by the Jesuits throughout the rest of Europe. Though consecrated as early as 1584, the interior of the church wasn't decorated for another 100 years. It was originally intended that the interior be left plain to the point of austerity\u2014but, when it was finally embellished, no expense was spared. Its interior drips with gold and lapis lazuli, gold and precious marbles, gold and more gold, all covered by a fantastically painted ceiling by Baciccia. Unfortunately, the church is also one of Rome's most crepuscular, so its visual magnificence is considerably dulled by lack of light.\n\nThe architectural significance of Il Ges\u00f9 extends far beyond the splendid interior. The first of the great Counter-Reformation churches, it was put up after the Council of Trent (1545\u201363) had signaled the determination of the Roman Catholic Church to fight back against the Reformed Protestant heretics of northern Europe. The church decided to do so through the use of overwhelming pomp and majesty, in its effort to woo believers. As a harbinger of ecclesiastical spectacle, Il Ges\u00f9 spawned imitations throughout Italy and the other Catholic countries of Europe as well as the Americas.\n\nThe most striking element is the ceiling, which is covered with frescoes that swirl down from on high to merge with painted stucco figures at the base, the illusion of space in the two-dimensional painting becoming the reality of three dimensions in the sculpted figures. Baciccia, their painter, achieved extraordinary effects in these frescoes, especially in the Triumph of the Holy Name of Jesus, over the nave. Here, the figures representing evil cast out of heaven seem to be hurtling down onto the observer. For details, the spectacle is best viewed through a specially tilted mirror in the nave.\n\nThe founder of the Jesuit order himself is buried in the Chapel of St. Ignatius, in the left-hand transept. This is surely the most sumptuous Baroque altar in Rome; as is typical, the enormous globe of lapis lazuli that crowns it is really only a shell of lapis over a stucco base\u2014after all, Baroque decoration prides itself on achieving stunning effects and illusions. The heavy bronze altar rail by architect Carlo Fontana is in keeping with the surrounding opulence. | Piazza del Ges\u00f9, off Via del Plebiscito, Campo | 00186 | 06\/697001 |  www.chiesadelgesu.org | Daily 7\u201312:30 and 4\u20137:30.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Campo de' Fiori.   \nA bustling marketplace in the morning (Mon.\u2013Sat. 8 am\u20131 pm) and a trendy meeting place the rest of the day (and night), this piazza has plenty of earthy charm. By sunset, all the fish, fruit, and flower vendors disappear and this so-called piazza trasformista takes on another identity, bar-life bulging out into the street, one person's carousal another's insomnia. Brooding over the piazza is a hooded statue of the philosopher Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake here in 1600 for heresy. | Junction of Via dei Baullari, Via Giubbonari, Via del Pellegrino, and Piazza della Cancelleria, Campo | 00186.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Palazzo Farnese.   \nThe most beautiful Renaissance palace in Rome, the Palazzo Farnese is fabled for the Galleria Carracci, whose ceiling is to the Baroque age what the Sistine ceiling is to the Renaissance. The Farnese family rose to great power and wealth during the Renaissance, in part because of the favor Pope Alexander VI showed to the beautiful Giulia Farnese. The massive palace was begun when, with Alexander's aid, Giulia's brother became cardinal; it was further enlarged on his election as Pope Paul III in 1534. The uppermost frieze decorations and main window overlooking the piazza are the work of Michelangelo, who also designed part of the courtyard, as well as the graceful arch over Via Giulia at the back. The facade on Piazza Farnese has recently been cleaned, further revealing geometrical brick configurations that have long been thought to hold some occult meaning. When looking up at the palace, try to catch a glimpse of the splendid frescoed ceilings, including the Galleria Carracci vault painted by Annibale Carracci between 1597 and 1604. The Carracci gallery depicts the loves of the gods, a supremely pagan theme that the artist painted in a swirling style that announced the birth of the Baroque. Other opulent salons are among the largest in Rome, including the Salon of Hercules, which has an overpowering replica of the ancient Farnese Hercules front and center. For the first time, the French Embassy, which occupies the palace, now offers weekly tours in English; be sure to book in advance (at least eight days ahead is necessary in any case). Book online at |  www.inventerrome.com | French Embassy, Servizio Culturale, Piazza Farnese 67, Campo | 00186 | 06\/686011 |  visite-farnese@inventerrome.it | \u20ac5 | Open only to tours. English tour is Wed. at 3.\n\nPalazzo Spada.   \nIn this neighborhood of huge, austere palaces, Palazzo Spada strikes an almost frivolous note, with its upper stories covered with stuccos and statues and its pretty ornament-encrusted courtyard. While the palazzo houses an impressive collection of Old Master paintings, it is most famous for its trompe l'oeil garden gallery, a delightful example of the sort of architectural games rich Romans of the 17th century found irresistible. Even if you don't go into the gallery, step into the courtyard and look through the glass window of the library to the colonnaded corridor in the adjacent courtyard. See\u2014or seem to see\u2014Borromini's 8-meter-long gallery quadrupled in depth, a sort of optical telescope taking the Renaissance's art of perspective to another level, as it stretches out for a great distance with a large statue at the end. In fact the distance is an illusion: the corridor grows progressively narrower and the columns progressively smaller as they near the statue, which is just 2 feet tall. The Baroque prided itself on special effects, and this is rightly one of the most famous. It long was thought that Borromini was responsible for this ruse; it's now known that it was designed by an Augustinian priest, Giovanni Maria da Bitonto. Upstairs is a seignorial picture gallery with the paintings shown as they would have been, piled on top of each other clear to the ceiling. Outstanding works include Brueghel's Landscape with Windmills, Titian's Musician, and Andrea del Sarto's Visitation. Look for the fact sheets that have descriptive notes about the objects in each room. | Piazza Capo di Ferro 13, Campo | 00186 | 06\/6874893, 06\/8555952 guided tours,  06\/6832409 information and ticket booking |  www.galleriaborghese.it | \u20ac5 | Tues.\u2013Sun. 8:30\u20137:30.\n\nSant'Andrea della Valle.   \nTopped by the highest dome in Rome (designed by Maderno) after St. Peter's, this huge and imposing 17th-century church is remarkably balanced in design. Fortunately, its facade, which had been turned a sooty gray from pollution, has been recently cleaned to a near-sparkling white. Use the handy mirror that's provided to examine the early-17th-century frescoes in the choir vault by Domenichino and those by Lanfranco in the dome. One of the earliest ceilings done in full Baroque style, its upward vortex was influenced by Correggio's dome in Parma, of which Lanfranco was also a citizen. (Bring a few coins to light the paintings, which can be very dim.) The three massive paintings of Saint Andrew's martyrdom are by Maria Preti (1650\u201351). Richly marbled and decorated chapels flank the nave, and in such a space, Puccini set the first act of Tosca. | Piazza Vidoni 6 , Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, Campo | 00186 | 06\/6861339 | Weekdays and Sat. 7:30\u2013noon and 4:30\u20137:30; Sun. 7:30\u201312:45 and 4:30\u20137:45.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Via Giulia.   \nStill a Renaissance-era diorama and one of Rome's most exclusive addresses, Via Giulia was the first street in Rome since ancient times to be laid out in a straight line. Named for Pope Julius II (of Sistine Chapel fame) who commissioned it in the early 1500s as part of a scheme to open up a grandiose approach to St. Peter's Basilica (using funds from the taxation of prostitutes), it became flanked with elegant churches and palaces. Though the pope's plans to change the face of the city were only partially completed, Via Giulia became an important thoroughfare in Renaissance Rome. Today, after more than four centuries, it remains the \"salon of Rome,\" address of choice for Roman aristocrats. A stroll will reveal elegant palaces and old churches (one, San Eligio, at No. 18, reputedly designed by Raphael himself). The area around Via Giulia is a wonderful section to wander through and get the feel of daily life as carried on in a centuries-old setting. Among the buildings that merit your attention are Palazzo Sacchetti (Via Giulia 66), with an imposing stone portal (inside are some of Rome's grandest state rooms, still, after 300 years, the private quarters of the Marchesi Sacchetti), and the forbidding brick building that housed the Carceri Nuove, \"New Prison,\" (Via Giulia 52), Rome's prison for more than two centuries and now the offices of Direzione Nazionale Antimafia. Near the bridge that arches over the southern end of Via Giulia is the church of Santa Maria dell'Orazione e Morte (Holy Mary of Prayer and Death), with stone skulls on its door. These are a symbol of a confraternity that was charged with burying the bodies of the unidentified dead found in the city streets. Home since 1927 to the Hungarian Academy, the Palazzo Falconieri (Via Giulia 1 | 06\/6889671) was designed by Borromini\u2014note the architect's roof-top belvedere adorned with statues of the family \"falcons,\" best viewed from around the block along the Tiber embankment. TIP With a prior booking and a \u20ac5 fee, you can visit the Borromini-designed salons and loggia. Remnant of a master plan by Michelangelo, the arch over the street was meant to link massive Palazzo Farnese, on the east side of Via Giulia, with the building across the street and a bridge to the Villa Farnesina, directly across the river. Finally, on the right and rather green with age, dribbles that star of many a postcard, the Fontana del Mascherone. | Between Piazza dell'Oro and Piazza San Vincenzo Pallotti, Campo | 00186.\n\n### Worth Noting\n\nSan Giovanni dei Fiorentini.   \nImbued with the supreme grace of the Florentine Renaissance, this often-overlooked church dedicated to Florence's patron saint, John the Baptist, stands in what was the heart of the Florentine colony in Rome's centro storico. Many of these Florentines were goldsmiths, bankers, and money changers who contributed to the building of the church. Talented goldsmith and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini of Florence, known for his vindictive nature as much as for his genius, lived nearby. While the church was designed by Sansovino, Raphael (yes, he was also an architect) was among those who competed for this commission. Today, the church interior makes you feel you have wandered inside a perfect Renaissance space, one so harmonious it seems to be a Raphael pop-up 3-D painting. Borromini executed a splendid altar for the Falconieri family chapel in the choir. He's buried under the dome, despite the fact that those who committed suicide normally were refused a Christian burial. The late animal-loving pastor allowed well-behaved pets to keep their owners company at services, a tradition that lives on today. | Via Accaioli 2 , Piazza dell'Oro, Campo | 00186 | 06\/68892059 | Daily 7:30\u2013noon and 5\u20137.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nGetting Oriented | Around Via del Corso | Spagna\n\nIn spirit, and in fact, this section of Rome is its most grandiose. The overblown Vittoriano monument, the labyrinthine treasure-chest palaces of Rome's surviving aristocracy, even the diamond-draped denizens of Via Condotti: all embody the exuberant ego of a city at the center of its own universe. Here's where you'll see ladies in furs, picking at pastries at caff\u00e8 tables, and walk through a thousand snapshots as you climb the famous Spanish Steps, admired by generations from Byron to Versace. As if to keep up with the area's gilded palaces, the local monuments seem aware that they, too, are expected to put on a show.\n\nPrevious Map | Next Map | Rome Maps\n\nRight at the top of everyone's sightseeing list is the great Baroque confection of the Trevi Fountain: the Elton John of hydrants tinkling tirelessly for its droves of fans. Legend has it that a coin in the water guarantees a return. Even the most rational of us may find it hard to resist throwing one in, just in case. Since pickpockets favor this tourist-heavy spot, be particularly aware as you withdraw that wallet to keep your throw from being very expensive indeed. The Trevi is Rome's most celebrated waterwork, and you can rest assured, you are not the only one who knows it. Once you've chucked in your change, follow the crowds and get ready to take some very serious time to explore this neighborhood, which extends along Via del Corso, the ruler-straight avenue that divides central Rome neatly in half.\n\nIf Rome has a Main Street, it's Via del Corso, which is often jammed with swarms of Roman teenagers, in from the city's outlying districts for a ritual stroll that resembles a strutting migration of lemmings in blue jeans. Corso begins at noisy, chaotic Piazza Venezia, the imperial-size hub of all this ostentation, presided over by the Vittoriano, also known as the Altare della Patria (Altar of the Nation), or, less piously, as the \"typewriter,\" the \"wedding cake,\" or the Eighth Hill of Rome. Sitting grandly off the avenue are the Palazzo Doria-Pamphilj and the Palazzo Colonna\u2014two of the city's great art collections housed in magnificent family palaces.\n\nPrevious Map | Next Map | Rome Maps\n\nExtending just east of Via del Corso, but miles away in style, Piazza di Spagna and its surrounding streets are where the elite meet. Back when, 19th-century artists used to troll the area around the Spanish Steps for models; today, it remains a magnet all day and well into the night for smooching Romans and camera-toting tourists. The density of high-fashion boutiques and trendy little shops leaves little room for any but the richest of residents: the locals are the ladies loaded down with Prada bags and tottering on Gucci stilettos. Lest you think the neighborhood is all Johnny-come-lately frivolity, stop into the Antico Caff\u00e8 Greco, the one-time haunt of Franz Lizst, Mark Twain, and Hans Christian Andersen. It's been operating since 1760, making it one of the oldest caff\u00e8 in the world. Prepare to linger.\n\n##  Getting Oriented\n\n###  Getting Here\n\nA short walking distance from Piazza del Popolo, the Pantheon, and the Trevi Fountain, the \"Spagna\" area of the Spanish Steps is nearly impossible to miss. One of Rome's handiest subway stations, Spagna, is tucked just left of the steps (complete with elevator to spare the climb to the top if need be). Buses No. 117 and No. 119 hum through the area (the latter tootles up Via del Balbuino, famed for its shops); the No. 117 from the Colosseum and the No. 119 from Piazza del Popolo.\n\n###  OK, Where Do I Start?\n\nBegin at Piazza Venezia, the square in front of the gigantic monument to Vittorio Emanuele II. Head north on Via del Corso, Rome's main drag (or, a must if it is Saturday morning, head east one block to the gilded Palazzo Colonna art collection), for a block or so to dazzling Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, loaded with priceless Old Master paintings and one resident prince. Farther up the Corso, Via di Sant'Ignazio leads to the 18th-century stage-set of Piazza di Sant'Ignazio, home to the Church of Sant'Ignazio, where the famous ceiling frescoes hold a surprise or two.\n\nA few blocks farther up the Corso, turn right and you'll soon hear the enchanting Fontana di Trevi. Continuing northwest you'll hit that postcard icon, the Spanish Steps, surrounded by Rome's most glamorous shops.\n\n###  Best Time-Outs\n\nCaff\u00e8 Ciampini.   \nJust off the Corso in the jewel of a piazza, San Lorenzo in Lucina, sits this turn-of-the-century tearoom-gelateria-caff\u00e8. Stand at the elegant bar for a quick espresso, or pay a bit more to sit outdoors under a big umbrella, lingering over an aperitivo and a plateful of yummy hors d'oeuvres that come with it. | Piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina 29, Corso | 00186 | 06\/6876606.\n\nLa Campana.   \nLa Campana, which a document dates way back to 1518, still remains a favorite for its honest Roman cuisine, slightly upmarket feel (white tablecloths! professional servers!), moderate prices, and the best coda alla vaccinara (oxtail) in Rome. | Vicolo della Campana 18, Navona | 00186 | 06\/6875273 | www.ristorantelacampana.com.\n\n###  Top 5 Reasons to Go\n\nTrevi Fountain: In the pantheon of waterworks, this is Elvis\u2014overblown, flashy, and reliably thronged by its legions of fans.\n\nThe Spanish Steps: Sprawl seductively on the world's most celebrated stairway\u2014everyone's doing it. If you're able to make it to the top, a Cinerama view awaits you.\n\nSee Heaven: Stand beneath the stupendous ceiling of San Ignazio\u2014Rome's most splendiferous Baroque church\u2014and, courtesy of painter-priest Fra Andrea Pozzo, prepare to be transported heavenward.\n\nLifestyles of the Rich and Famous: Take a peek through the keyhole of two of Rome's grandest palaces, the Palazzo Doria-Pamphilj and the Palazzo Colonna, for an intimate look at the homes of Rome's 17th-century grandees.\n\nLuxe Shopping on Via Condotti: You can get from Bulgari to Gucci to Valentino to Ferragamo with no effort at all, except perhaps that of navigating (and ogling) the crowds of shoppers.\n\n##  Around Via del Corso\n\nBecause of the 20th-century grime, traffic-ridden Via del Corso appears to be nothing more than a major thoroughfare connecting Piazza Venezia and Piazza del Popolo. In fact, between dodging Vespas, it's easy to forget that the gray and stolid atmosphere comes partially from the enormous palaces lining both sides of the street. Most of them were built over the past 300 years by princely families who wanted to secure front-row seats for the frantic antics of Carnevale. But once you step past entrances here, you'll discover some of Rome's grandest 17th- and 18th- century treasures, including Baroque ballrooms, glittering churches, and great Old Master paintings. And, oh, yes, the god-size and thundering Trevi Fountain. For that, be sure to have your camera\u2014and coins\u2014ready.\n\n### Top Attractions\n\nAra Pacis Augustae (Altar of Augustan Peace). This vibrant monument of the imperial age has been housed in one of Rome's newest architectural landmarks: a gleaming, rectangular glass-and-travertine structure designed by American architect Richard Meier. Overlooking the Tiber on one side and the ruins of the marble-clad Mausoleo di Augusto (Mausoleum of Augustus) on the other, the result is a serene, luminous oasis right in Rome's center. Opened in 2006, after a decade of bitter controversy over the monument's relocation, the altar itself dates back to 13 BC; it was commissioned to celebrate the Pax Romana, the era of peace ushered in by Augustus's military victories. It is covered with spectacular and moving relief sculptures. Like all ancient Roman monuments of this type, you have to imagine them painted in vibrant colors, now long gone. The reliefs on the short sides show myths associated with Rome's founding and glory; the long sides display a procession of the imperial family. It's fun to try to play \"who's who\"\u2014although half of his body is missing, Augustus is identifiable as the first full figure at the procession's head on the south-side frieze\u2014but academics still argue over exact identifications. Notice the poignant presence of several forlorn children; historians now believe they attest to the ambition of Augustus's notorious wife, the Empress Livia, who gained the throne for her son, Tiberius, by dispatching his family rivals with poison, leaving a slew of orphans in her wake. | Lungotevere in Augusta, around Via del Corso | 00186 | 06\/0608 | www.arapacis.it | \u20ac7.50 | Tues.\u2013Sun. 9\u20137 (last admission 1 hr before closing) | Station: Flaminio (Piazza del Popolo).\n\n* * *\n\nThree Coins and a Triton\n\nWho hasn't wanted to emulate Dorothy McGuire, Jean Peters, and Maggie McNamara in Three Coins in the Fountain\u2014your Roman fountain fantasy will cost no more than the change in your pocket, and who knows? Your wish might come true.\n\nAnyone who's thrown a coin backward over a shoulder into the Fontana di Trevi to ensure a return to Rome appreciates the magic of the city's fountains.\n\nFrom the magnificence of the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi in Piazza Navona to the graceful caprice of the Fontana delle Tartarughe in the Ghetto, the water-spouting sculptures seem as essential to the piazzas they inhabit as the cobblestones and ocher buildings that surround them.\n\nRome's original fountains date back to ancient times, when they were part of the city's remarkable aqueduct system.\n\nBut from AD 537 to 1562 the waterworks were in disrepair and the city's fountains lay dry and crumbling. Romans were left to draw their water from the Tiber and from wells.\n\nDuring the Renaissance, the popes brought running water back to the city as a means of currying political favor.\n\nTo mark the restoration of the Virgin Aqueduct, architect Giacomo della Porta designed 18 unassuming, functional fountains.\n\nEach consisted of a large basin with two or three levels of smaller basins in the center, which were built and placed throughout the city at points along the water line.\n\nAlthough nearly all of della Porta's fountains remain, their spare Renaissance design is virtually unrecognizable. With the Baroque era, most were elaborately redecorated with dolphins, obelisks, and sea monsters.\n\nOf this next generation of Baroque fountaineers, the most famous is Gian Lorenzo Bernini.\n\nBernini's writhing, muscular creatures of myth adorn most of Rome's most visible fountains, including the Fontana di Trevi (perhaps named for the three streets\u2014tre vie\u2014that converge at its piazza); the Fontana del Nettuno, with its tritons, in Piazza Barberini; and, in Piazza Navona, the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, whose hulking figures represent the four great rivers of the known world: the Nile, the Ganges, the Danube, and the Plata.\n\nThe most common type of fountain in Rome is a kind rarely noted by visitors: the small, inconspicuous drinking fountains that burble away from side-street walls, old stone niches, and fire hydrant\u2013like installations on street corners.\n\nYou can drink this water. Many of these fontanelle even have pipes fitted with a little hole from which water shoots up when you hold your hand under the main spout.\n\nTo combine the glorious Roman fountain with a drink of water, head to Piazza di Spagna, where the Barcaccia fountain is outfitted with spouts from which you can wet your whistle.\n\n* * *\n\nFodor's Choice |  Le Domus Romane di Palazzo Valentini.   \nIf you find your imagination stretching to picture Rome as it was two millennia ago, make sure to check out this \"new\" ancient site just a stone's throw from Piazza Venezia. As commonly done in Renaissance-era Rome, 16th-century builders filled in the ancient structures with landfill, using them as foundations for Palazzo Valentini. Unwittingly, the builders also preserved the ruins beneath, which archaeologists rediscovered in 2007 excavations. It took another three years for the two opulent, Imperial-era villas to open to the public on a regular basis.\n\nDescending below Palazzo Valentini, which has been the seat of the Provincia of Rome since 1873, is like walking into another world. Not only are the villas luxurious and well preserved, still retaining their beautiful mosaics, inlaid marble floors, and staircases, but\u2014unlike any other site in Rome\u2014the ruins have been made to \"come alive\" through multimedia. Sophisticated light shows re-create what it all would have looked like while a dramatic, automated voiceover accompanies you as you walk through the rooms, pointing out cool finds (the heating system for the private baths, the mysterious fragment of a statue, the porcelain dumped here when part of the site became a dump in the Renaissance) and evidence of tragedy (the burn layer from a fire that ripped through the home). If it sounds corny, hold your skepticism: It's an effectively done, excellent way to actually \"experience\" the villa as ancient Romans would have\u2014and learn a lot about ancient Rome in the process. A multimedia presentation halfway through also shows you what central Rome would have looked like 2,000 years ago.\n\nThe multimedia tour takes about an hour. There are limited spots, so book in advance over the phone, online, or by stopping by in person; make sure you book the English tour. The tour should be enjoyable for older children, but little ones might be afraid of how dark the rooms can be. | Via IV Novembre 119\/A, near Piazza Venezia | 00187 | 06\/32810 | www.palazzovalentini.it | \u20ac7.50.\n\nMonumento a Vittorio Emanuele II, or Altare della Patria (Victor Emmanuel Monument, or Altar of the Nation).  \nThe huge white mass of the \"Vittoriano\" is an inescapable landmark\u2014Romans say you can avoid its image only if you're actually standing on it. Some have likened it to a huge wedding cake; others, to an immense typewriter. Though not held in the highest esteem by present-day citizens, it was the source of great civic pride at the time of its construction, at the turn of the 20th century. To create this elaborate marble monster and the vast piazza on which it stands, architects blithely destroyed many ancient and medieval buildings and altered the slope of the Capitoline Hill, which abuts it. Built to honor the unification of Italy and the nation's first king, Victor Emmanuel II, it also shelters the eternal flame at the tomb of Italy's Unknown Soldier killed during World War I. The flame is guarded day and night by sentinels, while inside the building there is the (rather dry) Institute of the History of the Risorgimento. You can't avoid the monumento, so enjoy neo-imperial grandiosity at its most bombastic.\n\nThe views from the top are some of Rome's most panoramic. The only way up is by elevator (located to the right as you face the monument); stop at the museum entrances (to the left and right of the structure) to get a pamphlet identifying the sculpture groups on the monument itself and the landmarks you will be able to see once at the top. Opposite the monument, note the enclosed olive-green wooden veranda fronting the palace on the corner of Via del Plebiscito and Via Corso. For the many years that she lived in Rome, Napol\u00e9on's mother had a fine view from this spot of the local goings-on. | Entrance at Piazza Ara Coeli, next to Piazza Venezia, around Via del Corso | 00186 | 06\/0608 | www.060608.it | Monument free, museum free, elevator \u20ac7 | Elevator open Mon\u2013Thurs. 9:30\u20135:45; Fri. and weekends 9:30\u20136:45; stairs open winter 9:30\u20134:30, summer 9:30\u20135:30.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Palazzo Colonna.   \nRome's grandest family built itself Rome's grandest palazzo in the 18th century\u2014it's so immense, it faces Piazza Santi Apostoli on one side and the Quirinal Hill on the other (a little bridge over Via della Pilotta links the palace with the gardens on the hill). While still home to some Colonna patricians, the palace also holds the family picture gallery, open to the public one day a week. The galleria is itself a setting of aristocratic grandeur; you'll recognize the Sala Grande as the site where Audrey Hepburn meets the press in Roman Holiday. At one end looms the ancient red marble column (colonna in Italian), which is the family's emblem; above the vast room is the spectacular ceiling fresco of the Battle of Lepanto painted by Giovanni Coli and Filippo Gherardi in 1675\u2014the center scene almost puts the computer-generated special effects of Hollywood to shame. Adding redundant luster to the opulently stuccoed and frescoed salons are works by Poussin, Tintoretto, and Veronese, and a number of portraits of illustrious members of the family such as Vittoria Colonna\u2014Michelangelo's muse and longtime friend\u2014and Marcantonio Colonna, who led the papal forces in the great naval victory at Lepanto in 1577. Lost in the array of madonnas, saints, goddesses, popes, and cardinals is, spoon at the ready, with mouth missing some front teeth, Annibale Carracci's lonely Bean-eater. As W.H. Auden put it, \"Grub first, art later.\" At 11:45, there's a guided tour in English, included in your entrance fee. | Via della Pilotta 17, around Via del Corso | 00187 | 06\/6784350 | www.galleriacolonna.it | \u20ac10 | Sat. 9\u20131:15, English tour 11:45.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Palazzo Doria Pamphilj.   \nAlong with the Palazzo Colonna and the Galleria Borghese, this spectacular family palace provides the best glimpse of aristocratic Rome. Here, the main attractions are the legendary Old Master paintings, including treasures by Vel\u00e1zquez and Caravaggio, the splendor of the main galleries, and a unique suite of private family apartments. The beauty of the graceful 18th-century facade of this patrician palace may escape you unless you take time to step to the opposite side of the street for a good view; it was designed by Gabriele Valvassori in 1730. The foundations of the immense complex of buildings probably date from classical times. The current building dates from the 15th century, with the exception of the facade. It passed through several hands before it became the property of the famous seafaring Doria family of Genoa, who had married into the Roman Pamphilj (also spelled Pamphili) clan. As in most of Rome's older patrician residences, the family still lives in part of the palace.\n\nHoused in four braccia (wings) that line the palace's courtyard, the picture gallery contains 550 paintings, including three pictures by Caravaggio\u2014a young St. John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene, and the breathtaking Rest on the Flight to Egypt. Off the eyepopping Galleria degli Specchi (Gallery of Mirrors)\u2014a smaller version of the one at Versailles\u2014are the famous Vel\u00e1zquez Pope Innocent X, considered by some historians to be the greatest portrait ever painted, and the Bernini bust of the same Pamphilj pope. Elsewhere you'll find a Titian, a double portrait by Raphael, and some noted 17th-century landscapes by Claude Lorrain and Gaspar Dughet. The audio guide by Prince Jonathan Doria Pamphilj, the current heir (born in England, he was adopted by the late Principessa Orietta), provides an intimate family history well worth listening to. | Via del Corso 305, around Via del Corso | 00186 | 06\/6797323 | www.doriapamphilj.it | \u20ac10.50 | Daily 10\u20135.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Sant'Ignazio.   \nRome's largest Jesuit church, this 17th-century landmark harbors some of the most city's magnificent trompe-l'oeil paintings. To get the full effect of the marvelous illusionistic ceiling by priest-artist Andrea Pozzo, stand on the small disk set into the floor of the nave. The heavenly vision above you, seemingly extending upward almost indefinitely, represents the Allegory of the Missionary Work of the Jesuits and is part of Pozzo's cycle of works in this church exalting the early history of the Jesuit Order, whose founder was the reformer Ignatius of Loyola. The saint soars heavenward, supported by a cast of thousands; not far behind is Saint Francis Xavier, apostle of the Indies, leading a crowd of Eastern converts; a bare-breasted, spear-wielding America in American Indian headdress rides a jaguar; Europe with crown and scepter sits serene on a heftily rumped horse; while a splendid Africa with gold tiara perches on a lucky crocodile. The artist repeated this illusionist technique, so popular in the late 17th century, in the false dome, which is actually a flat canvas\u2014a trompe l'oeil trick used when the budget drained dry. The overall effect of the frescoes is dazzling (be sure to have coins handy for the machine that switches on the lights) and was fully intended to rival that produced by Baciccia in the nearby mother church of Il Ges\u00f9. Scattered around the nave are several awe-inspiring altars; their soaring columns, gold-on-gold decoration, and gilded statues make these the last word in splendor. The church is often host to concerts of sacred music performed by choirs from all over the world. Look for posters at the church doors for more information. | Piazza Sant'Ignazio, around Via del Corso | 00186 | 06\/6794560 | Daily 7:30\u20137.\n\nTrevi Fountain.   \nAlive with rushing waters commanded by an imperious Oceanus, the Fontana di Trevi (Trevi Fountain) earned full-fledged iconic status in 1954 when it starred in 20th-Century Fox's Three Coins in the Fountain. As the first color film in Cinemascope to be produced on location, it caused practically half of America to pack their bags for the Eternal City.\n\nFrom the very start, however, the Trevi has been all about theatrical effects. An aquatic marvel in a city filled with them, the fountain's unique drama is largely due to the site: its vast basin is squeezed into the tight meeting of three little streets (the tre vie, which may give the fountain its name) with cascades emerging as if from the wall of Palazzo Poli.\n\nThe conceit of a fountain emerging full-force from a palace was first envisioned by Bernini and Pietro da Cortona for Pope Urban VIII's plan to rebuild the fountain (which marked the end-point of the ancient Acqua Vergine aqueduct, created in 18 BC by Agrippa).\n\nOnly three popes later, under Pope Clement XIII, did Nicolo Salvi finally break ground with his winning design.\n\nSalvi had his cake and ate it, too, for while he dazzles the eye with Baroque pyrotechnics\u2014the sculpted seashells, the roaring seabeasts, the divalike mermaids\u2014he has slyly incorporated them in a stately triumphal arch (in fact, Clement was then restoring Rome's Arch of Constantine).\n\nSalvi, unfortunately, did not live to see his masterpiece completed in 1762: working in the culverts of the aqueduct 11 years earlier, he caught his death of cold and died.\n\nTrevi Fountain Tips\n\nEveryone knows the famous legend that if you throw a coin into the Trevi Fountain you will ensure a return trip to the Eternal City. But not everyone knows how to do it the right way: You must toss a coin with your right hand over your left shoulder, with your back to the fountain. One coin means you'll return to Rome; two, you'll return and fall in love; three, you'll return, find love, and marry. The fountain grosses some \u20ac600,000 a year, and aside from incidences of opportunists fishing coins from the water, all of the money goes to charity.\n\nEven though you might like to reenact Anita Ekberg and Marcello Mastroianni's famous Trevi dip in La Dolce Vita, be forewarned that police guard the fountain 24 hours a day to keep out movie buffs and lovebirds alike. Transgressors risk a fine of up to \u20ac500.\n\nAround the corner, the Gelateria San Crispino (Via della Panetteria 42, 06\/6793924) is for discerning palettes, with unusual taste combinations and natural ingredients.\n\nPiazza di Trevi, accessed by Via Tritone, Via Poli, Via delle Muratte, Via del Lavatore, and Via di San Vincenzo, Trevi | 00187.\n\n### Worth Noting\n\nColonna di Marco Aurelio.   \nInspired by Trajan's Column, this 2nd-century AD column is composed of 27 blocks of marble covered in reliefs recording Marcus Aurelius's victory over the Germans. A bronze statue of St. Paul, which replaced the effigy of Marcus Aurelius in the 16th century, stands at the top. The column is the centerpiece of Piazza Colonna. | Piazza Colonna, alongside Via del Corso | 00187.\n\nPalazzo Venezia.   \nCenterpiece of Piazza Venezia, this palace was originally built for Venetian cardinal Pietro Barbo, who became Pope Paul II. It was also the backdrop used by Mussolini to harangue crowds with dreams of empire from the balcony over the main portal. Lights were left on through the night during his reign to suggest that the Fascist leader worked without pause. The palace shows a mixture of Renaissance grace and heavy medieval lines. Generally, however, the only way to see the handsome salons inside is when there is a temporary exhibition on. The caff\u00e8 on the loggia has a pleasant view over the garden courtyard. | Via del Plebiscito 118, around Via del Corso | 00186 | 06\/69994388 | Tues.\u2013Sun. 8:30\u20137:30 during exhibitions.\n\nPiazza Venezia.   \nThe geographic heart of Rome, this is the spot from which all distances from Rome are calculated and the principal crossroads of city traffic. Piazza Venezia stands at what was the beginning of Via Flaminia, the ancient Roman road leading east across Italy to Fano on the Adriatic Sea. The Via Flaminia was, and remains, a vital artery. Its initial tract, from Piazza Venezia to Piazza del Popolo, is now known as Via del Corso, after the horse races (corse) that were run here during the wild Roman carnival celebrations of the 17th and 18th centuries. It also happens to be one of Rome's busiest shopping streets. The massive female bust near the church of San Marco in the corner of the piazza, a fragment of the statue of Isis, is known to the Romans as Madama Lucrezia. This was one of the \"talking statues\" on which anonymous poets hung verses pungent with political satire, a practice that has not entirely disappeared. | Junction of Via del Corso, Via Plebiscito, and Via Cesare Battisti, around Via del Corso | 00186.\n\n##  Spagna\n\nPiazza di Spagna may be the soul of tourist Rome, but forget the \"meet you at the Spanish Steps\" thing\u2014it can take hours to find familiar faces in the dense throng. Conversely, heavy crowds mean prime people-watching. Besides the riot of artists and panhandlers, there's an army of travelers, fashion snobs drawn by Rome's most elegant shops, and plenty of young Italians. This entire area also has hosted the grandest of Grand Tourists: Goethe, Lord Byron, the Brownings, and Buffalo Bill frequented the Antico Caff\u00e8 Greco on Via Condotti. Piazza di Spagna's main draw, however, remains the 18th-century Spanish Steps, which connect ritzy shops at the bottom of the hill with ritzy hotels (and one lovely church) at the top. The reward for climbing the scalinata is a dizzying view of central Rome. Because the steps face west, the views are especially good around sunset.\n\n### Top Attractions\n\nKeats-Shelley Memorial House.   \nSent to Rome in a last-ditch attempt to treat his consumption, English Romantic poet John Keats lived\u2014and died\u2014here, in the \"Casina Rossa\" (the name refers to the blush-pink facade) at the foot of the Spanish Steps. At that point, this was the heart of the colorful bohemian quarter of Rome that was especially favored by the English. Keats had become celebrated through such poems as \"Ode to a Nightingale\" and \"She Walks in Beauty,\" but his trip to Rome was fruitless. He breathed his last here on February 23, 1821, aged only 25, forevermore the epitome of the doomed poet. In this \"Casina di Keats,\" you can visit his rooms, although all his furnishings were burned after his death as a sanitary measure by the local authorities. You'll also find a rather quaint collection of memorabilia of English literary figures of the period\u2014Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Joseph Severn, and Leigh Hunt as well as Keats\u2014and an exhaustive library of works on the Romantics. | Piazza di Spagna 26, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/6784235 | www.keats-shelley-house.org | \u20ac4.50 | Weekdays 10\u20131 and 2\u20136, Sat. 11\u20132 and 3\u20136 | Station: Spagna.\n\nMuseo-Atelier Canova Tadolini.   \nA gorgeous remnant of Rome's 19th-century artistic milieu, this is the former atelier of Antonio Canova, Europe's greatest Neoclassic sculptor. Fabled for his frostily perfect statues of antique goddesses and fashionable princesses (sometimes in the same work, as in the Galleria Borghese's nearly naked Principessa Pauline Borghese posing as a \"Victorious Venus\"), he was given commissions by the poshest people. Today, his studio\u2014atmospherically crammed to the gills with models, study sketches, and tools of the trade\u2014has become a caff\u00e8 and restaurant, so you can ogle Canova's domain for the price of a very expensive meal (or a cheaper coffee at the bar). | Via del Babuino 150 A\/B, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/32110702 | Closed Sun. | Station: Spagna.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Palazzetto Zuccaro.   \nThe most amusing house in all of Italy, this folly was designed in 1591 by noted painter Federico Zuccaro to form a monster's face. Typical of the outr\u00e9 Mannerist style of the period, the eyes are the house's windows; the entrance portal is through the monster's mouth. Zuccaro (1540\u20131609)\u2014whose frescoes adorn many Roman churches, including Trinit\u00e0 del Monti just up the block\u2014sank all of his money into his new home, dying in debt before his curious memorial, as it turned out to be, was completed. Today, it is the property of the Biblioteca Hertziana, Rome's prestigious fine-arts library; unfortunately, at press time, the fa\u00e7ade has been sheathed for a long-term renovation project, but when the wraps come off, it will return to its previous claim-to-fame: one of Rome's best photo ops, as many people like to be photographed in front of the main door with their own mouth wide open! Leading up to the quaint Piazza Trinit\u00e0 del Monti, Via Gregoriana is a real charmer and has long been one of Rome's most elegant addresses, home to such residents as 19th-century painter Ingres and writer Hans Christian Andersen, along with famed couturier Valentino's first couture salon. | Via Gregoriana 30, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/69993421 Biblioteca Hertziana | Station: Spagna.\n\nSant'Andrea delle Fratte.   \nCopies have replaced Bernini's original angels on the Ponte Sant'Angelo, but two of the originals are here, on either side of the choir. The door in the right aisle leads into one of Rome's hidden gardens, where orange trees bloom in the cloister. Borromini's fantastic contributions\u2014the dome and a curious bell tower with its droop-winged angels looking out over the city\u2014are best seen from Via Capo le Case, across Via Due Macelli. | Via Sant'Andrea delle Fratte 1 (Via della Mercede), Spagna | 00187 | 06\/6793191 | www.santandreadellefratte.it | Apr.\u2013Oct., daily 6:30\u2013noon and 4:30\u20137:30; Nov.\u2013Mar., daily 6:30\u201312:30 and 4\u20137 | Station: Spagna.\n\nFodor's Choice |  The Spanish Steps.   \nThat icon of postcard Rome, the Spanish Steps (often called simply la scalinata\u2014\"the staircase\"\u2014by Italians) and the Piazza di Spagna from which they ascend both get their names from the Spanish Embassy to the Vatican on the piazza\u2014even though the staircase was built with French funds in 1723. In honor of a diplomatic visit by the king of Spain, the hillside was transformed by architect Francesco de Sanctis to link the church of Trinit\u00e0 dei Monti at the top with the Via dei Condotti below. In an allusion to the church, the staircase is divided by three landings (beautifully banked with azaleas from mid-April to mid-May). For centuries, the scalinata and its neighborhood have welcomed tourists, dukes, and writers in search of inspiration\u2014among them Stendhal, Honor\u00e9 de Balzac, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Byron, along with today's enthusiastic hordes. Bookending the bottom of the steps are two monuments to the 18th-century days when the English colonized the area: to the right, the Keats-Shelley House, to the left, Babington's Tea Rooms, both beautifully redolent of the Grand Tour era. For weary sightseers, there is an elevator at Vicolo del Bottino 8 (next to the adjacent Metro entrance). TIP In recent years, a low-grade but annoying scam has proliferated in the piazza. This is the \"rose scam,\" where a man comes up to a female tourist with a rose and insists he's giving it to her for free. When she takes it, he waits a couple of beats and then goes to a gentleman in her party, asking for just a few euros for the flower. Often, everyone concerned is too embarrassed not to pay. If this happens to you, simply firmly refuse the rose from the beginning, or hand it back when you're asked for money. Unless you want it, of course! | Junction of Via Condotti, Via del Babuino, and Via Due Macelli, Spagna | 00187 | Station: Spagna.\n\nQuick Bites: Antico Caff\u00e8 Greco. You may prefer to limit your shopping on Via Condotti to the window variety, but there's one thing here that everybody can afford\u2014a stand-up coffee at the bar at the Antico Caff\u00e8 Greco, set just off the Piazza di Spagna and the Fontana della Barcaccia. With its tiny marble-top tables and velour settees, this 200-year-old institution has long been the haunt of artists and literati; it's closed Sunday. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Byron, and Franz Liszt were habitu\u00e9s. Buffalo Bill stopped in when his road show hit Rome. The caff\u00e8 is still a haven for writers and artists, along with plenty of Gucci-clad ladies. The tab picks up considerably if you decide to sit down to enjoy table service. | Via Condotti 86, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/6791700 | www.anticocaffegreco.eu.\n\nIl Palazzetto. For the ultimate view from atop the Spanish Steps, you can climb up, taking the elevator from inside the Spagna Metro...or pay for the privilege at the glamorous wine bar Il Palazzetto, where an interior elevator takes you to the level of the top terrace. | Vicolo del Bottino 8, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/699341000 | www.ilpalazzettoroma.com.\n\n### Worth Noting\n\nFontana della Barcaccia (Leaky Boat Fountain). At the center of Piazza di Spagna and at the bottom of the Spanish Steps, this curious, half-sunken boat gently spills out water rather than cascading it dramatically; it may have been designed that way to make the most of the area's low water pressure. It was thanks to the Barberini pope Urban VIII, who commissioned the fountain, that there was any water at all in this area, which was becoming increasingly built up during the 17th century. He restored one of the ancient Roman aqueducts that once channeled water here. The bees and suns on the boat constitute the Barberini motif. Some insist that the Berninis (Pietro and his more famous son Gian Lorenzo) intended the fountain to be a reminder that this part of town was often flooded by the Tiber; others that it represents the Ship of the Church; and still others that it marks the presumed site of the emperor Domitian's water stadium in which sea battles were reenacted in the glory days of the Roman Empire. | Piazza del Spagna, Spagna | 00187 | Station: Spagna.\n\nGagosian Gallery.   \nOne of the most prestigious modern art galleries opened this Rome branch in 2007. In a former bank, temporary exhibitions include many mega-stars, including Cy Twombly, Damien Hirst, and Jeff Koons. | Via Francesco Crispi 16, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/42086498 | www.gagosian.com | Tues.\u2013Sat. 10:30\u20137 and by appointment | Station: Spagna.\n\nGalleria d'Arte Moderna.   \nAfter an 8-year renovation, Rome's modern art gallery reopened in fall 2011. The completely overhauled space\u2014which happens to be the lovely, 18th-century convent of the Discalced Carmelites\u2014perfectly shows off the gem of a collection, which focuses on Roman 19th- and 20th-century paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures. With more than 3,000 pieces by artists like Giorgio de Chirico, Gino Severini, Scipione, Antonio Donghi, and Giacomo Manz\u00f9, the permanent collection is too large all to be on display at once, so exhibits rotate. Regardless of what the particular exhibit is, stop by to soak in another side of the city: one where, in the near-empty halls, tranquillity and contemplation reign. | Via Francesco Crispi 24, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/0608 | www.galleriaartemodernaroma.it | \u20ac5.50 | Tues.\u2013Sun. 10\u20136 | Station: Spagna.\n\nTrinit\u00e0 dei Monti.   \nStanding high above the Spanish Steps, this 16th-century church has a rare double-tower facade, suggestive of late-Gothic French style\u2014in fact, the French crown paid for the church's construction. Today, it is beautiful primarily for its dramatic location and magnificent views. | Piazza Trinit\u00e0 dei Monti, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/6794179 | Tues.\u2013Sun. 8\u20131 and 3\u20138 | Station: Spagna.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nGetting Oriented | Repubblica | Quirinale\n\nJust west of Rome's modern Termini train station, this area offers an extraordinary Roman blend of old and new. Although ancient artworks, great Bernini sculptures, and Baroque landmarks lure the traveler, this was, for the most part, the \"new\" Rome of the 19th century: the area owes its broad avenues and dignified palazzos to the city's transformation after 1870, when it became the capital of a newly unified Italy. Toward Via Veneto, the influx of ministries set off a frenzied building boom and distinguished turn-of-the-20th-century architecture became the neighborhood's hallmark. As a gateway, Piazza della Repubblica was laid out to serve as a monumental foyer between the rail station and the rest of the city. And as this square proves, time in Rome comes layered like nowhere else on earth.\n\nFlanking the train station's plate-glass entrance is an elephantine-colored mass of masonry that dates back millennia\u2014a stretch of the so-called Servian Walls, the city boundary built when Rome was still a republic way back in the 6th century BC. Fast-forward about three centuries to find the piazza's main landmark, the vast ruins of the Baths of Diocletian (Terme di Diocleziano). They were subsequently transformed into a Renaissance monastery and, by Michelangelo's own design, to the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli. Following the layout of the ancient baths and the concave entrance to the church (with the nearby 1890s buildings curving likewise as if in tribute), the piazza is a square only in name. At its center lies the turn-of-the-20th-century Fountain of the Naiads, which works wonders with the Roman sunlight. Its busty nymphs and buffed sea tritons announce that beauty awaits at many of the sights in this district.\n\nPrevious Map | Next Map | Rome Maps\n\nOff to the right, or west from Via Nazionale, lies the Quirinale, a hill set with various jewels of the Baroque era, including masterpieces by Bernini and Borromini. Nearby stands Palazzo Barberini, a grand and gorgeous 16th-century palace holding five centuries of masterworks. For ancient art treasures, head for Palazzo Massimo, famed for the fabulously frescoed rooms of the Empress Livia's summer villa, colorful and vibrant with birds.\n\nMercifully situated away from traffic is the lofty Quirinale hill. Crowning the piazza is the enormous Palazzo del Quirinale, built in the 16th century as a summer residence for the popes. It became the presidential palace in 1946; today you can tour its reception rooms, which are as splendid as you might imagine. The changing of the guard (daily at 4), outside on the piazza with its oversize stairway, is an old-fashioned exercise in pomp and circumstance.\n\nWhile Bernini's work feels omnipresent in much of the city center, the Renaissance-man range of his work is particularly notable here. The artist as architect considered the church of Sant'Andrea al Quirinale one of his best; Bernini the urban designer and waterworker wrought the muscle-bound sea gods who wrestle so provocatively in the fountain at the center of whirling Piazza Barberini. And Bernini the master gives religious passion a joltingly corporeal treatment in what is perhaps his greatest work, the Ecstasy of St. Theresa, in the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria. Along with Bernini, this area has big boulevards, big buildings, and big delights.\n\n##  Getting Oriented\n\n### Getting Here\n\nBetween Termini station and the Spanish Steps, this area is about a 15-minute walk from either. Bus No. 40 will get you from Termini to the Quirinale in two stops; from the Vatican take Bus No. 64. The very busy and convenient Repubblica Metro stop is on the piazza of the same name.\n\n### OK, Where Do I Start?\n\nComing up from the Metro stop at Piazza della Repubblica, beyond the circular Fountain of the Naiads, you can see the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, once part of Roman baths. Some of ancient Rome's best art is at the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme at the corner of nearby Piazza Cinquecento, while off another side of the same square stretches its sister museum, Museo di Terme di Diocleziano. To the northwest of Piazza Repubblica, Via Vittorio Emanuele Orlando leads to Piazza San Bernardo, where Santa Maria della Vittoria holds Bernini's famed Ecstasy of St. Theresa. Follow Via XX Settembre to Borromini's noted church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane\u2014or take Via di Quattro Fontane down the hill to the magnificent Palazzo Barberini.\n\n### Best Time-Outs\n\nColline Emiliane.   \nAround the corner from Piazza Barberini, this tiny, family-run trattoria serves up something different: excellent dishes from Emilia-Romagna, which some say is the best food region in Italy. It's a favorite with locals, so make a reservation for dinner. | Via degli Avignonesi 22, Barberini | 00187 | 06\/4817538 | Station: Barberini.\n\nCremeria Bar Dagnino.   \nWith a wide enough assortment of creamy Sicilian pastries and ice-cream flavors to satisfy a mouthful of sweet tooths, the historic Cremeria Bar Dagnino in the Galleria Esedra on Piazza della Repubblica is the place to go. Enjoy the 1950s feel and the solid selection of dishes for lunch. | Via Vittorio Emanuele Orlando 75, Repubblica | 00185 | 06\/4818660.\n\n### Top 5 Reasons to Go\n\nBernini's Ecstasy of St. Theresa: Admire, or just blush at, the worldly realism of Theresa's allegedly spiritual rapture. Star of the Cappella Cornaro, this sculpture is a climax of Bernini's audacious fusion of architecture, painting, and sculpture.\n\nPalazzo Barberini: Take in five centuries of art at one of Rome's greatest family palaces, where you can gape at Rome's biggest 18th-century ballroom and Raphael's La Fornarina.\n\nChanging of the Guard: Snap photos of stony-faced guards as they march in formation at the Quirinale presidential palace, which perches atop the highest of ancient Rome's seven hills.\n\nSanta Maria della Concezione: Contemplate eternity in a creepy, creative, and bizarre crypt \"decorated\" with the skeletons of 4,000 monks, replete with fluted arches made of collarbones and arabesques of shoulder blades.\n\nOn a Clear Day You Can See Forever: Crowning the Quirinale Hill\u2014the loftiest of Rome's seven hills\u2014is the Piazza del Quirinale, offering a spectacular view over the city, with the horizon marked by \"Il Cupolino,\" the dome of St. Peter's. Framing the vista are the enormous ancient statues of Castor and Pollux\u2014the \"Discouri\" (or Horse-Tamers)\u2014which still give the Quirinale its nickname of Monte Cavallo (\"Horse Hill\").\n\n##  Repubblica\n\nClimbing the stairs out of the Metro at Piazza della Repubblica feels like stepping into a tornado. The clanging of sirens and car horns, the squeal of brakes, and the roar of mopeds, not to mention the smell of the fast-food joints, may make you want to duck back down underground and get out at another stop. But to do so would be to miss out on a district featuring an array of fascinating attractions. The streets here may not be conducive to wandering but the ancient treasures at Palazzo Massimo, Bernini's spectacular Cornaro Chapel, and, farther afield, the modern MACRO museum will always be vying for your attention.\n\n### Top Attractions\n\nMuseo delle Terme di Diocleziano (Baths of Diocletian).  \nThough part of the ancient structure is now the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, and other parts were transformed into a Carthusian monastery or razed to make room for later urban development, a visit gives you an idea of the scale and grandeur of this ancient bathing establishment. Upon entering the church you see the major structures of the baths, partly covered by 16th- and 17th-century overlay, some of which is by Michelangelo. The monastery cloister is filled with the lapidary collection of the Museo Nazionale Romano while other rooms have archaeological works, along with a virtual representation of Livia's villa, which you can tour with the help of a joystick. | Viale E. De Nicola 79, Repubblica | 00185 | 06\/39967700 | \u20ac10, includes entrance to Palazzo Massimo, Palazzo Altemps, and Crypta Balbi | Tues.\u2013Sun. 9\u20137:45 (ticket office closes at 6:45) | Station: Repubblica.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Palazzo Massimo alle Terme.   \nTo get a real feel for ancient Roman art, don't miss the Palazzo Massimo, whose collection rivals even the Vatican's. The Roman National Museum\u2014with a collection ranging from striking classical Roman paintings to marble bric-a-brac\u2014has been organized in four locations: Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Palazzo Altemps, Crypta Balbi, and the Museo delle Terme di Diocleziano. The vast structure of the Palazzo Massimo holds the great ancient treasures of the archaeological collection and also the coin collection. Highlights include the Niobid, the famous bronze Boxer, and the Discobolus Lancelloti. Pride of place goes, however, to the great ancient frescoes on view, stunningly set up to \"re-create\" the look of the homes they once decorated. These include stuccos and wall paintings found in the area of the Villa della Farnesina (in Trastevere) and the legendary frescoes from Empress Livia's villa at Prima Porta, delightful depictions of a garden in bloom and an orchard alive with birds. Their colors are remarkably well preserved. These delicate decorations covered the walls of cool, sunken rooms in Livia's summer house outside the city. TIP Admission includes entrance to all four national museums, good for three days. | Largo Villa Peretti 1, Repubblica | 00185 | 06\/39967700 | www.pierreci.it | \u20ac10 | Tues.\u2013Sun. 9\u20137:45 | Station: Repubblica.\n\nPiazza della Repubblica.   \nOften the first view that spells \"Rome\" to weary travelers walking from the Stazione Termini, this broad square was laid out in the late 1800s and includes the exuberant Fontana delle Naiadi (Fountain of the Naiads). This pi\u00e8ce de r\u00e9sistance is draped with voluptuous bronze ladies wrestling happily with marine monsters. The nudes weren't there when the pope unveiled the fountain in 1870, sparing him any embarrassment. But when the figures were added in 1901, they caused a scandal: It's said that the sculptor, Rutelli, modeled them on the ample figures of two musical comedy stars of the day. The piazza owes its curved lines to the structures of the Terme di Diocleziano; the curving, colonnaded Neoclassical buildings on the southwest side trace the underlying form of the ancient baths. Today, one of them is occupied by the superdeluxe Hotel Exedra\u2014which shows you how much the fortunes of the formerly tatterdemalion part of the city have changed. | Junction of Via Nazionale, Via Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, and Via delle Terme di Diocleziano, Repubblica | 00185 | Station: Repubblica.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Santa Maria della Vittoria.   \nLike the church of Santa Susanna across Piazza San Bernardo, this church was designed by Carlo Maderno, but this one is best known for Bernini's sumptuous Baroque decoration of the Cappella Cornaro (Cornaro Chapel), on the left as you face the altar, where you'll find his interpretation of heavenly ecstasy in his statue of the Ecstasy of St. Theresa. Your eye is drawn effortlessly from the frescoes on the ceiling down to the marble figures of the angel and the swooning saint, to the earthly figures of the Cornaro family (who commissioned the chapel), to the two inlays of marble skeletons in the pavement, representing the hope and despair of souls in purgatory.\n\nAs evidenced in other works of the period, the theatricality of the chapel is the result of Bernini's masterly fusion of elements. This is one of the key examples of the mature Roman High Baroque. Bernini's audacious conceit was to model the chapel as a theater: Members of the Cornaro family\u2014sculpted in colored marbles\u2014watch from theater boxes as, center stage, the great moment of divine love is played out before them. The swooning saint's robes appear to be on fire, quivering with life, and the white marble group seems suspended in the heavens as golden rays illuminate the scene. An angel assists at the mystical moment of Theresa's vision as the saint abandons herself to the joys of heavenly love. Bernini represented this mystical experience in what, to modern eyes, may seem very earthly terms. Or, as the visiting dignitary President de Brosses put it in the 19th century, \"If this is divine love, I know what it is.\" No matter what your reaction, you'll have to admit it's great theater. | Via XX Settembre 17 , Largo Santa Susanna, Repubblica | 00187 | 06\/42740571 | www.chiesasmariavittoria.191.it | Daily 7\u2013noon and 3:30\u20137 | Station: Repubblica.\n\nVilla Torlonia.   \nBuilt for aristocrats-come-lately, the Torlonia family\u2014the Italian Rockefellers of the 19th century\u2014this villa became Mussolini's residence as prime minister under Italy's king and is now a public park. Long neglected, the park's vegetation and buildings are gradually being refurbished. Newly restored is the Casina Nobile, the main palace designed by the great architect Giuseppe Valadier. A grand, Neoclassical edifice, it comes replete with a gigantic ballroom, frescoed salons, and soaring templelike facade. While denuded of nearly all their furnishings and art treasures, some salons have important remnants of decor, including the reliefs once fashioned by the father of Italian Neoclassical sculpture, Antonio Canova. In the park, a complete contrast is offered by the Casina delle Civette (Little House of Owls), a hypercharming example of the Liberty (Art Nouveau) style of the early 1900s: the gabled, fairy-tale-like cottage-palace now displays majolica and stained-glass decorations, including windows with owl motifs, and is a stunning, overlooked find for lovers of 19th-century decorative arts. Temporary exhibits are held in the small and elegant Il Casino dei Principi (The House of Princes), designed in part by Valadier. | Villa Torlonia, Via Nomentana 70, Piazza Bologna | 00161 | 06\/0608 | www.museivillatorlonia.it | Entrance to Casina delle Civette, Casino Nobile, and Casino dei Principi with temporary exhibit, \u20ac10; only Casino Nobile and Casino dei Principi with exhibit, \u20ac8 | Tues.\u2013Sun. 9\u20137 | Station: Repubblica, Bus 36 or 84.\n\n### Worth Noting\n\nFontanone dell'Acqua Felice (Fountain of Happy Water). When Pope Sixtus V completed the restoration of the Acqua Felice aqueduct toward the end of the 16th century, Domenico Fontana was commissioned to design this commemorative fountain. As the story goes, a sculptor named Prospero da Brescia had the unhappy task of executing the central figure, which was to represent Moses (Sixtus liked to think of himself as, like Moses, having provided water for his thirsting population). The comparison with Michelangelo's magnificent Moses in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli was inevitable, and the largely disparaging criticism of Prospero's work is said to have driven him to his grave. A full cleaning, however, has left the fountain, whose Moses in recent years had looked as if he were dipped in soot, sparkling white\u2014and uncovered a great deal of its charm. | Piazza San Bernardo, Repubblica | 00187 | Station: Repubblica.\n\nMACRO.   \nFormerly known as Rome's Modern and Contemporary Art Gallery, and before that formerly known as the Peroni beer factory, this redesigned industrial space has brought new life to the gallery and museum scene of a city formerly known for its then, not its now. The collection here covers Italian contemporary artists from the 1960s through today. Its sister museum, MACRO Testaccio (Piazza O. Giustiniani) is housed in a renovated slaughterhouse in Testaccio district, Rome's \"Left Bank,\" and features temporary exhibits and installations by current artists. The goal of both spaces is to bring current art to the public in innovative spaces, and, not incidentally, to give support and recognition to Rome's contemporary art scene, which labors in the shadow of the city's artistic heritage. After a few days\u2014or millennia\u2014of dusty marble, it's a breath of fresh air. | Via Nizza 138 , intersection with Via Cagliari, Repubblica | 00198 | 06\/671070400 | www.macro.roma.museum | \u20ac11 combined entrance to MACRO and MACRO Testaccio (good for 7 days) | Tues.\u2013Sun. 11\u201310 (ticket office closes at 9); MACRO Testaccio Tues.\u2013Sun. 4\u201310 (when there's an exhibition) | Station: Repubblica; Bus 719 or 38.\n\nSanta Maria degli Angeli.   \nThe curving brick facade on the northeast side of Piazza della Repubblica is one small remaining part of the colossal Terme di Diocleziano, the largest and most impressive of the baths of ancient Rome. A gift to the city from Emperor Diocletian, it was erected about AD 300 with the forced labor of 40,000 Christians. In 1561 Michelangelo was commissioned to convert the vast tepidarium, the central hall of the baths, into a church. His work was altered by Vanvitelli in the 18th century, but the huge transept, which formed the nave in Michelangelo's plan, has remained as he adapted it. The eight enormous monolithic columns of red granite that support the great beams are the original columns of the tepidarium, 45 feet high and more than 5 feet in diameter. The great hall is 92 feet high. | Via Cernaia 9, Repubblica | 00185 | 06\/4880812 | www.santamariadegliangeliroma.it | Daily 7\u20137 | Station: Repubblica.\n\n##  Quirinale\n\nRome's highest hill, the Quirinale has hosted ancient Roman senators, Renaissance popes (it was breezier here than at the Vatican) and, with the end of papal rule, Italy's kings. The latter took up residence in the palace that still diadems the hill, looking down the slope to where lordly families (the Colonna, for one) built palaces to be near all that power. In this district, the triumvirate of Rome's Baroque\u2014Bernini, Borromini, and Pietro di Cortona\u2014vie, even after four centuries, to amaze the visitor. As if Bernini and Borromini could not get away from each other, some of their greatest works are within blocks of each other.\n\n### Top Attractions\n\nCapuchin Crypt.   \nNot for the easily spooked, the crypt under the Church of Santa Maria della Concezione holds the bones of some 4,000 dead Capuchin monks. Arranged in odd decorative designs around the shriveled and decayed skeletons of their kinsmen, a macabre reminder of the impermanence of earthly life, the crypt is strangely touching and beautiful. As one sign proclaims: \"What you are, we once were. What we are, you someday will be.\" Upstairs in the church, the first chapel on the right contains Guido Reni's mid-17th-century St. Michael Trampling the Devil. The painting caused great scandal after an astute contemporary observer remarked that the face of the devil bore a surprising resemblance to the Pamphili Pope Innocent X, archenemy of Reni's Barberini patrons. Compare the devil with the bust of the pope that you saw in the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj and judge for yourself. | Via Veneto 27, Quirinale | 00187 | 06\/4871185 | www.cappucciniviaveneto.it | Donation of at least \u20ac1 for crypt | Fri.\u2013Wed. 9\u2013noon and 3\u20136 | Station: Barberini.\n\nPalazzo Barberini.   \nOne of Rome's most splendid 17th-century palaces, the newly renovated Palazzo Barberini is a landmark of the Roman Baroque style. Pope Urban VIII had acquired the property and given it to a nephew, who was determined to build an edifice worthy of his generous uncle and the ever-more-powerful Barberini clan. The result was, architecturally, a precedent-shattering affair: a \"villa suburbana\" set right in the heart of the urban city and designed to be strikingly open to the outdoors. Note how Carlo Maderno's grand facade seems almost entirely composed of window tiers rising up in proto-20th-century fashion.\n\nAscend Bernini's staircase to the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, hung with famed paintings including Raphael's La Fornarina, a luminous portrait of the artist's lover (a resident of Trastevere, she was reputedly a baker's daughter)\u2014study the bracelet on her upper arm bearing Raphael's name. Also noteworthy are Guido Reni's portrait of the doomed Beatrice Cenci (beheaded in Rome for parricide in 1599)\u2014Hawthorne called it \"the saddest picture ever painted\" in his Rome-based novel, The Marble Faun\u2014and Caravaggio's Judith and Holofernes.\n\nBut the showstopper here is the palace's Gran Salone, a vast ballroom with a ceiling painted in 1630 by the third (and too-often neglected) master of the Roman Baroque, Pietro da Cortona. It depicts the Glorification of Urban VIII's Reign and has the spectacular conceit of glorifying Urban VIII as the agent of Divine Providence and escorted by a \"bomber squadron\" (to quote art historian Sir Michael Levey) of some huge, mutantlike Barberini bees, the heraldic symbol of the family.\n\nPalazzo Barberini Tips\n\nPart of the family of museums that includes the Galleria Borghese, Palazzo Spada, Palazzo Venezia, and Palazzo Corsini, the Palazzo Barberini has gone into marketing in a big way\u2014visit the shop here for some distinctive gifts for Aunt Ethel back home, including tote bags bearing the beloved visage of Raphael's La Fornarina, bookmarks with Caravaggio's Judith slicing off Holofernes's head, and coffee mugs bearing the famous Barberini heraldic bees.\n\nVia Barberini 18 , Quirinale, Barberini | 00187 | 06\/32810 | www.galleriaborghese.it | \u20ac6 | Tues.\u2013Sun. 8:30\u20137 (ticket office closes at 6) | Station: Barberini, Buses 52, 56, 60, 95, 116, 175, 492.\n\nPalazzo del Quirinale.   \nPope Gregory XIII started building this spectacular palace, now the official residence of Italy's president, in 1574. He planned to use it as a summer home. But less than 20 years later, Pope Clement VIII decided to make the palace\u2014safely elevated above the malarial miasmas shrouding the low-lying location of the Vatican\u2014the permanent residence of the papacy. It remained the official papal residence until 1870, in the process undergoing a series of enlargements and alterations. When Italian troops under Garibaldi stormed Rome in 1870, making it the capital of the newly united Italy, the popes moved back to the Vatican; the Quirinale became the official residence of the kings of Italy. After the Italian people voted out the monarchy in 1946, the Quirinal Palace passed to the presidency of the Italian Republic. Visitable only on Sundays, with sometimes a noon concert in the chapel included, the state reception rooms are some of Italy's most majestic. You already get a fair idea of the palace's splendor from the size of the building, especially the interminable flank of the palace on Via del Quirinale. Behind this wall are the palace gardens, which, like the gardens of Villa d'Este in Tivoli, were laid out by Cardinal Ippolito d'Este when he summered here. Unfortunately, they are open to the public only once a year on Republic Day (June 2). | Piazza del Quirinale, Quirinale | 00187 | 06\/46991 | www.quirinale.it | \u20ac5 | Sept.\u2013June, Sun. 8:30\u2013noon | Station: Barberini.\n\nPiazza del Quirinale.   \nThis strategic location atop the Quirinal Hill has long been of great importance. It served as home of the Sabines in the 7th century BC, then deadly enemies of the Romans, who lived on the Capitoline and Palatine Hills (all of 1 km [\u00bd mi] away). Today it's the foreground for the presidential residence, Palazzo del Quirinale, and home to the Palazzo della Consulta, where Italy's Constitutional Court sits. The open side of the piazza has an impressive vista of the rooftops and domes of central Rome and St. Peter's. The Fontana di Montecavallo, or Fontana dei Dioscuri, is composed of a huge Roman statuary group and an obelisk from the tomb of the emperor Augustus. The group of the Dioscuri trying to tame two massive marble steeds was found in the Baths of Constantine, which occupied part of the summit of the Quirinal Hill. Unlike just about every other ancient statue in Rome, this group survived the Dark Ages intact and accordingly became one of the city's great sights, especially during the Middle Ages. Next to the figures, the ancient obelisk from the Mausoleo di Augusto (Tomb of Augustus) was put here by Pope Pius VI at the end of the 18th century. | Junction of Via del Quirinale and Via XXIV Aprile, Quirinale | 00187 | Station: Barberini.\n\nQuattro Fontane (Four Fountains). The intersection takes its name from its four Baroque fountains, representing the Tiber (on the San Carlo corner), the Arno, Juno, and Diana. Despite the traffic, it's worthwhile taking in the views from this point in all four directions: to the southwest as far as the obelisk in Piazza del Quirinale; to the northeast along Via XX Settembre to the Porta Pia; to the northwest across Piazza Barberini to the obelisk of Trinit\u00e0 dei Monti; and to the southeast as far as the obelisk and apse of Santa Maria Maggiore. The prospect is a highlight of Pope Sixtus V's campaign of urban beautification and an example of the Baroque influence on city planning. | At intersection of Via Quattro Fontane, Via XX Settembre, and Via del Quirinale, Quirinale | 00187 | Station: Barberini.\n\nSan Carlo alle Quattro Fontane.   \nSan Carlo (sometimes identified by the diminutive San Carlino because of its tiny size) is one of Borromini's masterpieces. In a space no larger than the base of one of the piers of St. Peter's Basilica, he created a church that is an intricate exercise in geometric perfection, with a coffered dome that seems to float above the curves of the walls. Borromini's work is often bizarre, definitely intellectual, and intensely concerned with pure form. In San Carlo, he invented an original treatment of space that creates an effect of rippling movement, especially evident in the double-S curves of the facade. Characteristically, the interior decoration is subdued, in white stucco with no more than a few touches of gilding, so as not to distract from the form. Don't miss the cloister, a tiny, understated Baroque jewel, with a graceful portico and loggia above, echoing the lines of the church. | Via del Quirinale 23, Quirinale | 00187 | 06\/4883261 | www.sancarlino-borromini.it | Weekdays 10\u20131 and 3\u20136, Sat. 10\u20131, Sun. noon\u20131 | Station: Barberini.\n\nSant'Andrea al Quirinale.   \nDesigned by Bernini, this is an architectural gem of the Baroque. His son wrote that Bernini considered it one of his best works and that he used to come here occasionally just to sit and enjoy it. Bernini's simple oval plan, a classic of Baroque architecture, is given drama and movement by the church's decoration, which carries the story of St. Andrew's martyrdom and ascension into heaven, starting with the painting over the high altar, up past the figure of the saint over the chancel door, to the angels at the base of the lantern and the dove of the Holy Spirit that awaits on high. | Via del Quirinale 29, Quirinale | 00187 | 06\/4740807 | Mon.\u2013Sat., 8:30\u2013noon and 2:30\u20136; Sun., 8:30\u2013noon and 3\u20137 | Station: Barberini.\n\n### Worth Noting\n\nFontana delle Api (Fountain of the Bees). Decorated with the famous heraldic bees of the Barberini family, the upper shell and the inscription are from a fountain that Bernini designed for Pope Urban VIII; the rest was lost when the fountain had to be moved to make way for a new street. This inscription was the cause of a considerable scandal when the fountain was first put up in 1644. It said that the fountain had been erected in the 22nd year of the pontiff's reign, although in fact the 21st anniversary of Urban's election to the papacy was still some weeks away. The last numeral was hurriedly erased, but to no avail\u2014Urban died eight days before the beginning of his 22nd year as pope. The superstitious Romans, who had immediately recognized the inscription as a foolhardy tempting of fate, were vindicated. | Via Veneto at Piazza Barberini, Quirinale | 00187 | Station: Barberini.\n\nScuderie del Quirinale (Quirinal Stables). Directly opposite the main entrance of the Palazzo del Quirinale sits the Scuderie Papale, a grand 18th-century stable strikingly remodeled in the late 1990s by architect Gae Aulenti and now host to big temporary art shows. | Via XXIV Maggio 16, Quirinale | 00187 | 06\/39967500 | www.scuderiequirinale.it | \u20ac10 | Sun.\u2013Thurs. 10\u20138, Fri. and Sat. 10 am\u201310:30 pm | Station: Barberini. Buses 16, 36, 60, 62, 136, 175.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nGetting Oriented | Villa Borghese | Piazza del Popolo\n\nIf beautiful masterpieces are as common as bricks in Rome, parks are far rarer. Happily, although you'll find few ilex and poplars dotting piazzas and streets, a verdant hoard can be found to the north of central Rome's cobblestoned chaos. Here breathes the city's giant green lung: the Villa Borghese park, where residents love to escape for some serious R&R. But don't think you can completely prevent gallery gout: Three of Rome's most important museums are inside the park, and Piazza del Popolo (which has some art-crammed churches) is close by.\n\nThe city's second-largest park started life as a \"pleasure garden\" for Cardinal Scipione Borghese in the 17th century, but it now serves the democratic pleasure of Rome and its hot and weary visitors. Stretch out under umbrella pines and watch horses trot their riders past, or take in the view from the Pincio, a quiet and shady overlook that's been enchanting visitors since Lucullus hosted his fabulous banquets here back in the days of the Caesars. The heart-shaped park encompasses 19 acres of landscaped plains and formal gardens, adorned with the noseless busts of famous Italians lining paths at the park's southern end. But encircling the park are Renaissance and Baroque palaces, many of which are now museums. The Galleria Borghese, built as an art gallery by Cardinal Borghese, has long been home to the family's great art treasures, with a seemingly endless array of Bernini statuary and paintings by Raphael and Caravaggio to rival the Vatican Museums. (Although one work that belongs squarely in the secular world is Canova's seductive sculptural portrait of Napol\u00e9on's sister, the undraped Principessa Pauline Borghese.) A pleasant and green 20-minute walk away on the opposite side of the park, the Museo Etrusco at Villa Giulia offers the world's most comprehensive collection of Etruscan art and artifacts, and next door, the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna provides a welcome link to the \"modern\" Italian art of the 19th and 20th centuries.\n\nPrevious Map | Next Map | Rome Maps\n\nThe formal garden terraces of the Pincio, on the southwestern side of Villa Borghese, give way to a stone staircase down to Piazza del Popolo, a mercifully traffic-free piazza that is one of Rome's best people-watching spots. If you must rest your feet, there are caff\u00e8 and restaurant tables aplenty\u2014but be warned that some would consider the cost of a coffee highway robbery. More improving (and free!) amusement is to be found in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, on the north side of the square, whose chapels decorated by Raphael and Caravaggio are justly celebrated.\n\nTo the southeast of the park is the famed Via Veneto, which, after its 1950s and early '60s heyday as the focus of dolce vita excitement, fell out of fashion as the in-crowd headed elsewhere. Basically unchanging, the Via Veneto neighborhood has preserved its solid, bourgeois palaces\u2014many of them now elegant hotels\u2014and enormous ministries. The Romans mostly gone, its caff\u00e8 still try to woo back tourists, at least, from their counterparts at the Pantheon and Piazza Navona, but with varied success.\n\n##  Getting Oriented\n\n### Getting Here\n\nElectric Bus No. 119 does a loop that connects Piazza del Popolo to Piazza Venezia. If you're coming from the Colosseum or San Giovanni, take No. 117, which goes to Piazza del Popolo. No. 116, starting near the Museo Borghese, is the only bus that motors through the park and also stops throughout the historic center. The Metro stop for Piazza del Popolo is Line A's Flaminio. The Villa Giulia, the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, and Villa Borghese's Biopark are easily accessible from Via Flaminia, 1 km (\u00bd mile) from Piazza del Popolo. Tram 19 and bus No. 3 stop at each.\n\n### OK, Where Do I Start?\n\nAt the head of famed Via Veneto, the Porta Pinciana is one of the historic city gates in the Aurelian walls, built by Emperor Aurelianus late in the 3rd century AD. Take care\u2014the traffic comes hurtling in here from all directions. Once inside the verdant Villa Borghese park, head north on Viale del Museo Borghese to reach the art-filled Galleria Borghese, probably Rome's most stupendous villa (albeit one that never served as a residence).\n\nCome back to earth with a park stroll along Viale dell'Uccelliera to Rome's once-forlorn zoo, now a \"biopark,\" or alternatively turn left (south) on Viale dei Pupazzi to Piazza dei Cavalli Marini's sea-horse fountain. Continue on Viale dei Pupazzi to Piazza di Siena, then turn left onto Viale Canonica and you'll come to the Giardino del Lago (Lake Garden)\u2014the park's prettiest set piece, replete with lake and a faux \"Grecian\" temple. Continue south to the famed Pincian gardens, which overlook Rome's vast Piazza del Popolo, home to treasure-filled Santa Maria del Popolo.\n\n### Best Time-Outs\n\nStravinskij Bar.   \nThe Hotel de Russie's luxurious Stravinskij Bar may not be cheap, but it offers a leafy courtyard refuge from Rome's cacophony. This is where visiting Hollywood stars sip martinis and international political movers and shakers clinch deals. Worth the splurge for a vicarious thrill. | Hotel de la Russie, Via del Babuino 9, Piazza di Spagna | 00187 | 06\/328881 | www.hotelderussie.it.\n\nCaff\u00e8 delle Arti.   \nAttached to the Galleria d'Arte Moderna, this spot has a pretty terrace. This is the place to break up your walk with a gelato or lunch. | Via Gramsci 73, Villa Borghese | 06\/32651236 | www.caffedelleartiroma.it.\n\nIl Margutta.   \nFor a meal on the lighter side, head to one of Rome's only vegetarian restaurants (it's also probably the best). A chic, elegant spot\u2014the restaurant is also an art gallery\u2014the food is top-quality and mostly organic. | Via Margutta 118, Piazza del Popolo | 00187 | 06\/32650577 | www.ilmarguttavegetariano.it | Station: Flaminio.\n\n### Top 5 Reasons to Go\n\nPiazza del Popolo: At the end of three of the centro storico's most important streets\u2014Via del Babuino, Via del Corso, and Via di Ripetta\u2014the People's Square, as the name translates, offers a ringside seat for some of Rome's best people-watching.\n\nVilla Borghese: Drink in the oxygen in central Rome's largest park\u2014stretches of green and plenty of leafy pathways encourage wandering, biking, or just chilling out.\n\nThe Pincio: Stroll through formal gardens in the footsteps of 19th-century fashion plates, aristocrats, and even popes\n\nSanta Maria del Popolo: Marvel at the incredible realism of Caravaggio's gritty paintings in the Cerasi Chapel, then savor Raphael's Chigi Chapel.\n\nGalleria Borghese: Wink at Canova's sexy statue of Pauline Borghese in one of Rome's most spectacularly opulent\u2014and pleasant\u2014museums.\n\n##  Villa Borghese\n\nCentral Rome's largest open space is filled with playful fountains, sculptured gardens, and picturesque forests of shady pine trees. But that's not the park's only purpose, for on the perimeter lie three of Rome's most important museums: the Galleria Borghese, for the very best of ancient, Renaissance and Baroque art; th e Villa Giulia, for the world's ultimate collection of Etruscan remains; and the Galleria d'Arte Moderna, a reminder that the Italians had their Impressionists, too. For theatergoers, there are summer performances of Shakespeare in a replica of London's Globe. All in all, there's enough here to satisfy the most avid culture vulture. For real vultures, and an excellent day out with the children, head for the new Biopark, Rome's former zoo recently given an ecologically friendly makeover.\n\n### Top Attractions\n\nFodor's Choice |  Galleria Borghese.   \nIt's a real toss-up as to which is more magnificent: the villa built for Cardinal Scipione Borghese in 1612, or the art that lies within. Despite its beauty, the villa never was used as a residence. Instead, the luxury-loving cardinal built it as a showcase for his fabulous collection of both antiquities and more \"modern\" works, including those he commissioned from the masters Caravaggio and Bernini. Today, it's a monument to Roman interior decoration at its most extravagant. With the passage of time, however, the building has become less celebrated than the collections housed within, including one of the finest collections of Baroque sculpture anywhere in the world.\n\nLike the gardens, the casino and its collections have undergone many changes since the 17th century. Much of the building was redecorated in the late 18th century, when the villa received many of its eye-popping ceiling frescoes (although some original decorations also survive). The biggest change to the collection, however, came thanks to Camillo Borghese. After marrying Napol\u00e9on's sister Pauline, he sold 154 statues, 170 bas-reliefs, 160 busts, 30 columns, and a number of vases, all ancient pieces, to his new brother-in-law. Today, those sculptures, including the so-called Borghese Gladiator and Borghese Hermaphrodite, are in the Louvre in Paris. At the end of the 19th century, a later member of the family, Francesco Borghese, attempted damage control with his fellow Romans (outraged that many of their art treasures had been shipped off to Paris) with some new acquisitions; he also transferred to the casino the remaining works of art then housed in Palazzo Borghese. In 1902 the casino, its contents, and the estate were sold to the Italian government.\n\nOne of the most famous works in the collection is Canova's Neoclassical sculpture of Pauline Borghese as Venus Victrix. Scandalously, Pauline reclines on a Roman sofa, bare-bosomed, her hips swathed in classical drapery, the very model of haughty detachment and sly come-hither. You can imagine what the 19th-century gossips were saying!\n\nThe next three rooms hold three key early Baroque sculptures: Bernini's David, Apollo and Daphne, and Rape of Proserpina. All were done when the artist was in his 20s, and all illustrate Bernini's extraordinary skill. They also demonstrate the Baroque desire to invest sculpture with a living quality, to imbue inert marble with a sense of real flesh. Whereas Renaissance sculptors wanted to capture the idealized beauty of the human form that they had admired in ancient Greek and Roman sculptures, later sculptors like Bernini wanted movement and drama as well, capturing not an essence but an instant, infused with theatricality and emotion. The Apollo and Daphne shows the moment when, to escape the pursuing Apollo, Daphne is turned into a laurel tree. Leaves and twigs sprout from her fingertips as she stretches agonizingly away from Apollo. In the Rape of Proserpina, Pluto has just plucked Persephone (or Proserpina) from her flower-picking\u2014or perhaps he's returning to Hades with his prize. (Don't miss the realistic way his grip causes dimples in Proserpina's flesh.) This is the stuff that makes the Baroque exciting\u2014and moving. Other Berninis on view in the collection include a large, unfinished figure called Verit\u00e0, or Truth. Bernini began work on this brooding figure after the death of his principal patron, Pope Urban VIII. It was meant to form part of a work titled Truth Revealed by Time. The next pope, Innocent X, had little love for the ebullient Urban, and, as was the way in Rome, this meant that Bernini would be excluded from the new pope's favors. However, Bernini's towering genius was such that the new pope came around with his patronage with almost indecent haste.\n\nThe Caravaggio room holds works by this hotheaded genius, who died of malaria at age 37. All of his paintings, even the charming Boy with a Basket of Fruit, seethe with an undercurrent of darkness. The disquieting Sick Bacchus is a self-portrait of the artist who, like the god, had a penchant for wine. David and Goliath, painted in the last year of Caravaggio's life\u2014while he was on the lam for murder\u2014includes his self-portrait . . . in the head of Goliath. Upstairs, the Pinacoteca (Picture Gallery) boasts paintings by Raphael (including his moving Deposition), Pinturicchio, Perugino, Bellini, and Rubens. Probably the gallery's most famous painting is Titian's allegorical Sacred and Profane Love, a mysterious and yet-unsolved image with two female figures, one nude, one clothed.\n\nAdmission to the Museo is by reservation only. Visitors are admitted in two-hour shifts 9 am to 5 pm. Prime-time slots can sell out days in advance, so in high season reserve by phone or through www.ticketeria.it. You need to collect your reserved ticket at the museum ticket office a half hour before your entrance. However, when it's not busy you can purchase your ticket at the museum for the next entrance appointment. | Piazza Scipione Borghese 5, off Via Pinciana, Villa Borghese | 00197 | 06\/32810 information and reservations | www.galleriaborghese.it | \u20ac10.50, including \u20ac2 reservation fee; audio guide \u20ac5, English tour \u20ac6 | Tues.\u2013Sun. 9\u20137, with sessions on hr every 2 hrs (9, 11, 1, 3, 5). | Station: Bus 910 from Piazza della Repubblica, or Tram 19 or Bus 3 from Policlinico.\n\nPincio.   \nRedolent of the yesteryears of Henry James and Edith Wharton, the Pincian gardens always have been a favorite spot for strolling. Grand Tourists, and even a pope or two, would head here to see and be seen among the beau monde of Rome. Today, the Pincian terrace remains a favorite spot to cool off overheated locals. The rather formal, early-19th-century style contrasts with the far more elaborate terraced gardens of Lucullus, the Roman gourmand who held legendary banquets here. Today, off-white marble busts of Italian heroes and artists line the pathways. Along with similar busts on the Gianicolo (Janiculum Hill), their noses have been victims of vandalism, perhaps as an attempt to fight ghosts: A belief going back to ancient times held that the nose was the source of breath and therefore of life itself, even after death. By depriving a bust of the same organ, its accompanying spirit would be deprived of oxygen, which evidently spirits need to walk the night.\n\nA stretch of ancient walls separates the Pincio from the southwest corner of Villa Borghese. From the balustraded terrace, you can look down at Piazza del Popolo and beyond, surveying much of Rome. Southeast of the Pincian terrace is the Casina Valadier, a magnificently decorated Neoclassical building that was reopened to the public in 2007 after a decade-long renovation. It remains one of Rome's most historic restaurants (06\/69922090 | casinavaladier.it). | Piazzale Napoleone I and Viale dell'Obelisco, Villa Borghese | 00187 | Station: Flaminio (Piazza del Popolo).\n\nVilla Borghese.   \nRome's \"Central Park,\" the Villa Borghese was originally laid out as a pleasure garden in the early 17th century by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, a worldly and cultivated cleric and nephew of Pope Paul V. The word \"villa\" was used to mean suburban estate, of the type developed by the ancient Romans and adopted by Renaissance nobles. Today's gardens bear little resemblance to the originals. Not only do they cover a much smaller area\u2014by 1630, the perimeter wall was almost 5 km (3 miles) long\u2014but they also have been almost entirely remodeled. This occurred at the end of the 18th century, when a Scottish painter, Jacob More, was employed to transform them into the style of the \"cunningly natural\" park so popular in 18th-century England. Until then, the park was probably the finest example of an Italian-style garden in the entire country.\n\nIn addition to the gloriously restored Galleria Borghese, the highlights of the park are Piazza di Siena, a graceful amphitheater, and the botanical garden on Via Canonica, where there is a pretty little lake, a Neoclassical faux-Temple of Aesculapius (a favorite photo op), the newly designed Biopark zoo, Rome's own replica of London's Globe Theatre, and the Villa Giulia museum.\n\nThe recently opened Carlo Bilotti museum is particularly visitable for De Chirico fans, although there is more modern art in the nearby Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna. The park is dotted with bike, in-line skating, and electric scooter rental concessions and has a children's movie theater (showing films for adults in the evening), as well as a cinema center, Casa del Cinema, where film buffs can screen films or sit at the slick, cherry red, indoor-outdoor caff\u00e8 (you can find a schedule of events at www.casadelcinema.it). | Main entrances at Porta Pinciana, the Pincio, Piazzale Flaminio (Piazza del Popolo), Viale delle Belle Arti, and Via Mercadante, Villa Borghese | 00187 | Station: Flaminio (Piazza del Popolo).\n\nVilla Medici.   \nPurchased by Napol\u00e9on to create an academy where artists could hone their knowledge of Italian art and so put it to the (French) national good, the villa originally belonged to Cardinal Ferdinando Medici, who also laid out the immaculate Renaissance garden to set off his sculpture collection. Garden tours in English are offered, allowing you to walk in the footsteps of Vel\u00e1zquez, Fragonard, and Ingres, who all worked here (at what is now officially called the French Academy in Rome). The \u20ac9 guided tour is also the only way you can see not only the gardens, but the incredibly picturesque garden facade, which is studded with Mannerist and Rococo sculpted reliefs and overlooks a loggia with a beautiful fountain devoted to Mercury. | Viale Trinit\u00e0 dei Monti 1, Villa Borghese | 00187 | 06\/67611 | www.villamedici.it | Entrance including garden tour and exhibit, \u20ac9; garden tour when there is no exhibit, \u20ac7; exhibit only, \u20ac6 | Tues.\u2013Sun. 10:45\u20131 and 2\u20137. Tours of the gardens in English at noon. | Station: Spagna.\n\n### Worth Noting\n\nBiopark.   \nEspecially good for a day out with the children, this zoo has been remodeled under eco-friendly lines\u2014more space for the animals, most brought from other zoos or born from animals already in captivity rather than snatched from the wild. There aren't any rhinos, koalas, pandas, or polar bears, but there are local brown bears from Abruzzo and a Reptilarium. Other features are the Biopark train (\u20ac1), a picnic area next to the flamingos, and a farm. | Piazzale del Giardino Zoologico 1, Villa Borghese | 00197 | 06\/3608211 | www.bioparco.it | \u20ac12.50 adults (\u20ac10.50 children) | Jan. 1\u2013Mar. 25 and Oct. 24\u2013Dec. 31, daily 9:30\u20135; Mar. 26\u2013Apr. 1 and Sept. 26\u2013Oct. 23, daily 9:30\u20136; Apr. 2\u2013Sept. 25, weekdays 9:30\u20136, weekends 9:30\u20137. Last admission 1 hr before closing. | Station: Tram 19 or Bus 3, 88, 95, 490, 495.\n\nGalleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna (National Gallery of Modern Art). This massive white Beaux Arts building, built for the 1911 World Exposition in Rome, contains one of Italy's leading collections of 19th- and 20th-century works. It's primarily dedicated to the history of Italian modernism, examining the movement's development over the last two centuries, but crowd pleasers Degas, Monet, Courbet, Van Gogh, and C\u00e9zanne put in appearances along with an outstanding Dadaist collection. | Via delle Belle Arti 131, Villa Borghese | 00197 | 06\/322981, 06\/39967051 guided tours in English | www.gnam.beniculturali.it | Museum only, \u20ac8; exhibition only, \u20ac10; museum and exhibition, \u20ac12 | Tues.\u2013Sun. 8:30\u20137:30 (last entrance 45 mins before closing) | Station: Tram 19, Bus 3, 88, 95, 490, 495.\n\nGlobe Theater.   \nDirected by prolific Roman actor Gigi Proietti, this theater replicates the London original inaugurated in 1576. Rome's homage to Shakespeare is built entirely of wood and seats 1,250 with standing room for 420 groundlings (following Elizabethan custom). Performances are from July to September, generally in Italian. Set in the Villa Borghese park, it is roughly between the Biopark and the Carlo Bilotti museum. | Silvani Toti Globe Theater, Largo Aqua Felix on the Viale Pietro Canonica, Villa Borghese | 00197 | 06\/0608 | www.globetheatreroma.com.\n\nMuseo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia.   \nThe world's most outstanding collection of Etruscan art is housed in a grand villa built around 1551 for Pope Julius III (hence its name). Mostly designed by Vignola and Ammannati, the villa has a notable nymphaeum (sculpted fountain garden), a superb example of a refined late-Renaissance setting for princely pleasures. The Etruscans are a fascinating civilization, appearing in Italy about 2000 BC as a dazzling prelude to the ancient Romans. But you've never know from this museum, packed with endless rooms stuffed with dusty glass vitrines of objects. Keep your eyes peeled for the masterpieces, such as the serenely beautiful Sarcophagus of the Wedded Couple (their Mona Lisa smiles may have influenced Leonardo) and the fabulous Etruscan jewelry, which makes Bulgari look like your village blacksmith. | Piazzale Villa Giulia 9, Villa Borghese | 00196 | 06\/3226571 | villagiulia.beniculturali.it | \u20ac8 | Tues.\u2013Sun. 8:30\u20137:30 (ticket office closes 1 hr earlier) | Station: Tram 19, Bus 3.\n\nPorta Pinciana (Pincian Gate). Framed by two squat, circular towers, the gate was constructed in the 6th century. Here you can see just how well the Aurelian walls have been preserved and imagine hordes of Visigoths trying to break through them. Sturdy as the walls look, they couldn't always keep out the barbarians: Rome was sacked three times during the 5th century alone. | Piazzale Basile, junction Via Veneto and Corso d'Italia, Villa Borghese | 00196.\n\n##  Piazza del Popolo\n\nVery round, very explicitly defined, and very photogenic, the Piazza del Popolo\u2014the People's Square\u2014is one of Rome's biggest. With twin churches (and two adjacent ritzy caff\u00e8) at one end and the Porta del Popolo\u2014Rome's northern city gate\u2014at the other, this square was laid out in its present form by papal architect Giuseppe Valadier (1762\u20131839). Part of an earlier urban plan, the three streets to the south radiate straight as spokes to other parts of the city, forming the famed \"tridente\" that nicknames this neighborhood. The center is marked with an obelisk taken from Egypt, one so old it makes the Pantheon look like the Sears Tower: it was carved for Ramses II in the 13th century BC. Today, it is guarded by four water-gushing lions and steps that mark the end of many a sunset passeggiata. The most fascinating pieces of art, however, hide within the northeast corner's often-overlooked church of Santa Maria del Popolo, snuggled against the 400-year-old Porta del Popolo). Here you'll find masterpieces by Raphael and Caravaggio.\n\n### Top Attractions\n\nMAXXI\u2014Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo (National Museum of 21st-Century Arts). It took 10 years and cost some \u20ac150 million, but for lovers of contemporary art and architecture, the MAXXI\u2014Italy's first national museum devoted to contemporary creativity\u2014was worth it. The building alone impresses, as it should: the design, by Anglo-Iraqi starchitect Zaha Hadid, won over 272 other contest entries. The building plays with lots of natural light, curving and angular lines, and big open spaces, all meant to question the division between \"within\" and \"without\" (think glass ceilings and steel staircases that twist through the air). While not every critic adored it in its 2010 unveiling, more and more Romans are becoming delighted by this surprisingly playful space. The museum hosts temporary exhibits on art, architecture, film, and more; past shows have showcased Michelangelo Pistoletto and Pietro Nervi. From the permanent collection, rotated through the museum, more than 350 works represent artists including Andy Warhol, Francesco Clemente, and Gerhard Richter. Get to the MAXXI by taking the Metro to Flaminio (near Piazza del Popolo) and then Tram No. 2 two stops to Apollodoro. | Via Guido Reni 4, Flaminio | 00196 | 06\/39967350 | www.fondazionemaxxi.it | \u20ac11 | Tues.\u2013Fri. and Sun. 11\u20137, Sat. 11\u201310 | Station: Tram 2 or Bus 53, 217, 280, 910.\n\nPiazza del Popolo.   \nWith its obelisk and twin churches, this immense square is a famed Rome landmark. It owes its current appearance to architect Giuseppe Valadier, who designed it about 1820, also laying out the terraced approach to the Pincio and the Pincio's gardens. It marks what was for centuries the northern entrance to the city, where all roads from the north converge and where visitors, many of them pilgrims, would get their first impression of the Eternal City. The desire to make this entrance to Rome something special had been a pet project of popes and their architects for over three centuries. The piazza takes its name from the 15th-century church of Santa Maria del Popolo, huddled on the right side of the Porta del Popolo, or city gate. In the late 17th century, the twin churches of Santa Maria in Montesanto (on the left as you face them) and Santa Maria dei Miracoli (on the right) were added to the piazza at the point where Via del Babuino, Via del Corso, and Via di Ripetta converge. The piazza, crowded with fashionable carriages and carnival revelers in the past, is a pedestrian zone today. At election time, it's the scene of huge political rallies, and on New Year's Eve Rome stages a mammoth alfresco party in the piazza. | Junction of Via del Babuino, Via del Corso, and Via di Ripetta, Piazza del Popolo | 00186 | Station: Flaminio.\n\nQuick Bites: Buccone. A wineshop serving light snacks at lunchtime, this also offers a handy selection of wine by the glass all day long. | Via di Ripetta 19, Piazza del Popolo | 00186 | 06\/3612154.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Santa Maria del Popolo.   \nStanding inconspicuously in a corner of the vast Piazza del Popolo, this church often goes unnoticed, but the treasures inside make it a must for art lovers, as they include an entire chapel designed by Raphael and one adorned with striking Caravaggio masterpieces. Bramante enlarged the apse of the church, which had been rebuilt in the 15th century on the site of a much older place of worship. Inside, in the first chapel on the right, you'll see some frescoes by Pinturicchio from the mid-15th century; the adjacent Cybo Chapel is a 17th-century exercise in marble decoration. Raphael's famous Chigi Chapel, the second on the left, was built around 1513 and commissioned by the banker Agostino Chigi (who also had the artist decorate his home across the Tiber, the Villa Farnesina). Raphael provided the cartoons for the vault mosaic\u2014showing God the Father in benediction\u2014and the designs for the statues of Jonah and Elijah. More than a century later, Bernini added the oval medallions on the tombs and the statues of Daniel and Habakkuk, when, in the mid-17th century another Chigi, Pope Alexander VII, commissioned him to restore and decorate the building.\n\nThe organ case of Bernini in the right transept bears the Della Rovere family oak tree, part of the Chigi family's coat of arms. The choir, with vault frescoes by Pinturicchio, contains the handsome tombs of Ascanio Sforza and Girolamo delle Rovere, both designed by Andrea Sansovino. The best is for last: The Cerasi Chapel, to the left of the high altar, holds two Caravaggios, the Crucifixion of St. Peter and Conversion of St. Paul. Exuding drama and realism, both are key early Baroque works that show how \"modern\" 17th-century art can appear. Compare their style with the much more restrained and classically \"pure\" Assumption of the Virgin by Caravaggio's contemporary and rival, Annibale Carracci; it hangs over the altar of the chapel. | Piazza del Popolo 12 , near Porta Pinciana, Piazza del Popolo | 00186 | 06\/3610836 | Mon.\u2013Sat. 7:30\u2013noon and 4\u20136:30, Sun. 7:30\u20131:30 and 4:30\u20137 | Station: Flaminio.\n\n### Worth Noting\n\nPorta del Popolo (City Gate). The medieval gate in the Aurelian walls was replaced in 1561 by the current one. Bernini further embellished it in 1655 for the much-heralded arrival of Queen Christina of Sweden, who had abdicated her throne to become a Roman Catholic. | Piazza del Popolo and Piazzale Flaminio, Piazza del Popolo | 00187 | Station: Flaminio.\n\nSanta Maria dei Miracoli.   \nA twin to Santa Maria in Montesanto, this church was built in the 1670s by Carlo Fontana as an elegant frame for the entrance to Via del Corso from Piazza del Popolo. | Via del Corso 528, Piazza del Popolo | 00187 | 06\/3610250 | Daily 6:45\u201312:30 and 4\u20137:30 | Station: Flaminio.\n\nSanta Maria in Montesanto.   \nOne of the two bookend churches on the eastern side of Piazza del Popolo, this edifice was built by Carlo Fontana, supervised by his brilliant teacher, Bernini (whose other pupils are responsible for the saints topping the facade). | Via del Babuino 197, Piazza del Popolo | 00187 | 06\/3610594 | www.chiesadegliartisti.it | Weekdays 4:30\u20138, Sun. 11:15\u2013noon | Station: Flaminio.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nGetting Oriented | Trastevere | The Ghetto\n\nNew York has its Greenwich Village, and Rome has its Trastevere. In Trastevere's case, however, the sense of being a world apart goes back more than two millennia. The inhabitants don't even call themselves Romans but Trasteverini, going on to claim that they, not the citizens north of the river, are the true remaining Romans. No matter: A trip to Trastevere (literally, \"across the Tiber\") still feels a bit like entering a different time and place. Some call it the world's third-smallest nation (after the Vatican, No. 2). A living chronology, the district remains an enchanting confusion of past and present. With its charming, crumbling streets lined with medieval bell towers and chic osterie, this is one big little town where strangers don't remain strangers too long.\n\nPrevious Map | Next Map | Rome Maps\n\nThough in the geographic heart of the city, Trastevere and the Ghetto have always been considered outsiders. Trastevere began as a farming settlement for immigrants from the East; until the 14th century, it wasn't even considered part of Rome. Since then, locals regard them as a breed apart, with their own dialect and traditions. The Ghetto\u2014historically known as the Ghetto Ebraico (Jewish Ghetto)\u2014was established by papal decree in the 16th century. It was by definition a closed community, where Roman Jews lived under lock and key until Italian unification in 1870. In 1943\u201344, the already small Jewish population there was decimated by deportations.\n\nIn a city where the past counts at least as much as the present, this history of exclusion endures, and has shaped the present-day neighborhoods in some unexpected ways. Today, Trastevere and the Ghetto are two of the city's hottest real-estate markets, sought after by Italian lefties and bohemian expats, who value their history as much as their earthy, old-fashioned atmosphere. True Trasteverini are now few and far between, most of the older generation having sold their now valuable family apartments, and most of Rome's Jews live outside the Ghetto. But something of them remains. Trastevere's new residents promote a new kind of outsider identity, embodied variously in yoga centers, social outreach programs, and innumerable funky bars. The Ghetto, while undergoing some of the same changes, remains the spiritual and cultural home of Rome's Jews, and that proud heritage permeates its small commercial area of Judaica shops, kosher bakeries, and restaurants.\n\nThe heart of Trastevere is the lovely Piazza Santa Maria, presided over by the gilded and floodlit church of the same name. Nearby are a variety of historic churches, set in alleys and sunny piazzas, but the greatest artistic treasures are to be found a short walk to the north, in Raphael's frescoes at the Villa Farnesina, and the Baroque paintings, including a Caravaggio, in the collection at the Palazzo Corsini. The neighborhood's greatest attraction, however, is simply its atmosphere\u2014traditional shops set along crooked streets, peaceful during the day, and alive with throngs of restaurant- and partygoers at night. From here, a steep hike up stairs and the road to the Gianicolo earns you a panoramic view over the whole city.\n\nPrevious Map | Next Map | Rome Maps\n\nThe turn-of-the-20th-century synagogue, with its museum dedicated to the history of Jewish Rome, is a must for understanding the Ghetto. Tight, teeming alleys lead from there up to Giacomo della Porta's unmistakable Turtle Fountain; nearby is the picture-perfect Palazzo Mattei. Via Portico d'Ottavia is a walk through the olden days. Most businesses in the Ghetto observe the Jewish Sabbath, so it's a ghost town on Saturdays. At its east end, the street leads down to a path past the 1st-century Teatro di Marcello. Separating the Ghetto and Trastevere is the Tiber River, but they are connected by one of the world's prettiest \"bridges\"\u2014the Isola Tiberina (Tiber Island). Cross over the rushing river by using the Ponte Fabricio, the oldest bridge in Rome.\n\n##  Getting Oriented\n\n### Getting Here\n\nFrom the Vatican or Spanish Steps, expect a 20- to 30-minute walk to reach either the Ghetto or Trastevere.\n\nFrom Termini, nab the No. 40 Express or the No. 64 bus to Largo Torre Argentina, where you can get off to visit the Ghetto area.\n\nSwitch to Tram 8 to get to Trastevere.\n\nAs for ascending the very steep Janiculum Hill, take the No. 41 bus from Ponte Sant'Angelo, then enjoy the stately walk down to the northern reaches of Trastevere.\n\n### OK, Where Do I Start?\n\nPiazza Venezia is the starting point for touring the ancient Ghetto quarter of the city. From the piazza, walk to the base of the Campidoglio, take Via del Teatro Marcello, and turn right across the street onto Via Montanara and enter Piazza Campitelli, with its Baroque church and fountain. Take Via dei Funari at the northwest end of the piazza and follow it into Piazza Mattei, where one of Rome's loveliest fountains, the 16th-century Fontana delle Tartarughe (Fountain of the Turtles), is tucked away. A few steps down Via Caetani, off the north side of Piazza Mattei, you'll find a doorway into the courtyard of the venerable Palazzo Mattei\u2014festooned with Baroque sculpture busts, it's a stunner. From Piazza Mattei go south on Via della Reginella onto Via Portico d'Ottavia, heart of the Jewish Ghetto and home to the ancient Portico d'Ottavia (not far away is the even older Teatro di Marcello). Cross Ponte Fabricio over the Isola Tiberina (Tiber Island) to Trastevere. Begin with the medieval little streets around picturesque Piazza in Piscinula. Then make for Bernini's San Francesco a Ripa at the Villa Farnesina.\n\n### Best Time-Outs\n\nCaff\u00e8 di Marzio.   \nOver a coffee or a cocktail, sit and gaze upon Santa Maria in Trastevere's glistening golden facade at Caff\u00e8 di Marzio. Although the outdoor seating is lovely, the interior is warm and welcoming, too. Expect a mix of local regulars and tourists. | Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere 15, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/5816095.\n\nLa Renella.   \nThis no-frills pizzeria and bakery, hidden just off Piazza Trilussa, is a big favorite with the locals. Enough said. | Via del Moro 15, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/5817265.\n\nRivendita.   \nThe full name is Rivendita: Libri Cioccolata e Vino, and that's exactly what you'll find in this charming, trendy Trastevere hole-in-the-wall: books, chocolate, and wine. With options like Barolo, a fruity cocktail, or coffee served in cups of pure chocolate, this is a place those with a sweet tooth won't want to miss. | Vicolo del Cinque 11\/a, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/58301868.\n\n### Top 5 Reasons to Go\n\nSanta Maria in Trastevere: Tear yourself away from the piazza scene outside to take in the gilded glory of one of the city's oldest and most beautiful churches, fabled for its medieval mosaics.\n\n\"Tiber, Father Tiber\": Cross over the river on the Ponte Fabricio\u2014the city's oldest bridge\u2014for a stroll on the paved shores of the adorable Isola Tiberina (and don't forget to detour for the lemon ices at La Gratachecca).\n\nPortico d'Ottavia: This famed ancient Roman landmark casts a spell over Rome's time-stained Ghetto Ebraico, now getting more gentrified by the minute.\n\nI Love the Nightlife: Trastevere has become one of Rome's hottest nighttime scene-arenas, with hipsterious clubs at nearly every turn.\n\nGet Middle-Aged: With cobblestone alleyways and medieval houses, the area around Trastevere's Piazza di Piscinula offers a magical dip into Rome's Middle Ages.\n\n##  Trastevere\n\nSometimes futilely resisting the tides of change, Rome has several little communities that have staunchly defended their authenticity over the centuries; the Tiber separates two of them\u2014the Ghetto and Trastevere. Just beyond the charming Tiber Island lies Trastevere, which, despite galloping gentrification, remains about the most tightly knit community in Rome. Perfectly picturesque piazzas, tiny winding medieval alleyways, and time-burnished Romanesque houses all cast a frozen-in-amber spell, while grand art awaits at Santa Maria in Trastevere, San Francesco a Ripa, and the Villa Farnesina. On the northern border of the district looms the Janiculum, Rome's highest hill, with views to prove it.\n\n### Top Attractions\n\nGianicolo (Janiculum Hill). The Gianicolo is famous for offering panoramic views of the city, a noontime cannon, and statues of Giuseppe and Anita Garibaldi (Garibaldi was the guiding spirit behind the unification of Italy in the 19th century; Anita was his long-suffering wife). The view, backdropped by the first slopes of the Appennine Mountains, attracts Roman lovers, camera-happy tourists, and tchotchke-selling vendors, especially at dusk, although others will point out that Rome's skyline is basically flat and thus the vista singularly undramatic). Small crowd aside, it's fun to pick out Rome's finest buildings, from the Pantheon to St. Peter's\u2014and you'll be surprised at how peaceful and pastel it all looks from up here. At the plaza here there's a free puppet show in Italian on weekends 10:30\u2013noon and 5\u20137. | Via Garibaldi and Passeggiata del Gianicolo, Trastevere | 00149.\n\nIsola Tiberina.   \nIt's easy to overlook this tiny island in the Tiber. Don't. In terms of history and sheer loveliness, the charming Isola Tiberina\u2014shaped like a boat about to set sail\u2014gets high marks.\n\nCross onto the island via Ponte Fabricio, constructed in 62 BC, Rome's oldest remaining bridge; on the north side of the island crumbles the romantic ruin of the Ponte Rotto (Broken Bridge), which dates back to 179 BC. Descend the steps to the lovely river embankment to see the island's claim to fame: a Roman relief of the intertwined-snakes symbol of Aesculapius, the great god of healing. In 291 BC, a temple to Aesculapius was erected on the island. A ship had been sent to Epidaurus in Greece, heart of the cult of Aesculapius, to obtain a statue of the god.\n\nAs the ship sailed back up the Tiber, a great serpent was seen escaping from it and swimming to the island\u2014a sign that a temple to Aesculapius should be built here.\n\nIn imperial times, Romans sheathed the entire island with marble to make it look like Aesculapius's ship, replete with a towering obelisk as a mast. Amazingly, the ancient sculpted ship's prow still exists. You can marvel at it on the downstream end of the embankment.\n\nToday, medicine still reigns here. The island is home to the hospital of Fatebenefratelli (literally, \"Do good, brothers\"). Nearby is San Bartolomeo, built at the end of the 10th century by the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III and restored in the 18th century.\n\nIsola Tiberina Tips\n\nSometimes called the world's most beautiful movie theater, the open-air Cinema d'Isola di Tiberina operates from mid-June to early September as part of Rome's big summer festival, Estate Romana (www.estateromana.comune.roma.it). The 450-seat arena unfolds its silver screen against the backdrop of the ancient Ponte Fabricio, while the 50-seat CineLab is set against Ponte Garibaldi facing Trastevere. Screenings usually start at 9:30 pm; admission is \u20ac6 for the Arena, \u20ac3 CineLab. Call 06\/58333113or go to isoladelcinema.com for more information.\n\nLine up at the kiosk of La Gratachecca del 1915 (near the Ponte Cestio) for the most yumptious frozen ices in Rome.\n\nTiber Island, accessed by the Ponte Fabricio (Lungotevere dei Pierleoni near Via Ponte Quattro Capi) and the Ponte Cestio (Lungotevere degli Anguillara near Piazza San Bartolomeo all'Isola), Trastevere | 00186.\n\nPalazzo Corsini.   \nA brooding example of Baroque style, the palace houses part of the 16th- and 17th-century sections of the collection of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica and is across the road from the Villa Farnesina. Among the most famous paintings in this large, dark collection are Guido Reni's Beatrice Cenci and Caravaggio's St. John the Baptist. Stop in, if only to climb the 17th-century stone staircase, itself a drama of architectural shadows and sculptural voids. Behind, but separate from, the palazzo is the Orto Botanico, Rome's only botanical park, containing 3,500 species of plants. The park is open Monday through Saturday, 9:30 to 6:30 in summer (4:30 in winter); admission is \u20ac6. | Via della Lungara 10, Trastevere | 00165 | 06\/68802323 Galleria Corsini,  06\/32810 Galleria Corsini tickets booking,  06\/49912436 Orto Botanico | www.galleriaborghese.it | \u20ac4 (\u20ac1 reservations fee) | Tues.\u2013Sun. 8:30\u20137:30.\n\nPiazza in Piscinula.   \nOne of Trastevere's most historic and time-burnished squares, this piazza takes its name from some ancient Roman baths on the site (piscina means \"pool\"). The tiny church of San Benedetto on the piazza is the smallest church in the city and, despite its 18th-century facade, dates back to the 4th century AD. Opposite is the medieval Casa dei Mattei (Mattei House). The rich and powerful Mattei family lived here until the 16th century, when, after a series of murders on the premises, they decided to move out of the district entirely, crossing the river to build their magnificent palace in the Ghetto. | Via della Lungaretta, Piazza della Gensola, Via in Piscinula, and Via Lungarina, Trastevere | 00153.\n\nPiazza Santa Maria in Trastevere.   \nAt the very heart of the Trastevere rione (district) lies this beautiful piazza, with its elegant raised fountain and sidewalk caff\u00e8. The showpiece is the 12th-century church of Santa Maria in Trastevere. The striking mosaics on the church's facade\u2014which add light and color to the piazza, particularly when they're spotlighted at night\u2014are believed to represent the Wise and Foolish Virgins. Through innumerable generations, this square has been the center of Trastevere's action, with street festivals, musicians, and gamboling dogs vying for attention from the throngs of people taking the evening air. | Via della Lungaretta, Via della Paglia, and Via San Cosimato, Trastevere | 00153.\n\nSan Francesco a Ripa.   \nSet near Trastevere's southern end, this Baroque church attached to a 13th-century Franciscan monastery holds one of Bernini's last works, a statue of the Blessed Ludovica Albertoni. This is perhaps Bernini's most hallucinatory sculpture, a dramatically lighted figure ecstatic at the prospect of entering heaven as she expires on her deathbed. She clutches her breast as a symbol, art historians say, of the \"milk of human kindness\" and Christian caritas (charity). Gracing the altar is Baciccia's Madonna and St. Anne. St. Francis is supposed to have stayed at this monastery when visiting the city; to see his cell, ask the sacristan. | Piazza San Francesco d'Assisi 88, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/5819020 | Daily 7\u20131 and 2\u20137.\n\nSan Pietro in Montorio.   \nBuilt partly on command of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain in 1481 near the spot where, tradition says (evidently mistakenly), St. Peter was crucified, this church is a handsome and dignified edifice. It contains a number of well-known works, including, in the first chapel on the right, the Flagellation painted by the Venetian Sebastiano del Piombo from a design by Michelangelo, and St. Francis in Ecstasy, in the next-to-last chapel on the left, in which Bernini made one of his earliest experiments with concealed lighting effects.\n\nHowever, the most famous work here is the circular Tempietto (Little Temple) in the monastery cloister next door. This sober little building\u2014though tiny, holding only 10 people, it's actually a church in its own right\u2014marks the spot where, legend has it, St. Peter's cross once stood. It remains one of the key Renaissance buildings in Rome. Designed by Bramante (the original architect of the new St. Peter's Basilica) in 1502, it represents one of the earliest and most successful attempts to reproduce an entirely classical building. | Piazza San Pietro in Montorio 2 (Via Garibaldi) , entrance to cloister and Tempietto at portal next to church, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/5813940 San Pietro in Montorio,  06\/5812806 Tempietto (Accademia di Spagna) | www.sanpietroinmontorio.it | Church daily 8:30\u2013noon, also weekdays 3\u20134; Tempietto Tues.\u2013Sat. 9:30\u201312:30 and 2\u20134.\n\nSanta Cecilia in Trastevere.   \nThe basilica commemorates the aristocratic St. Cecilia, patron saint of music. One of ancient Rome's most celebrated Early Christian martyrs, she was put to a supernaturally long death by the emperor Diocletian around the year AD 300. After an abortive attempt to suffocate her in the baths of her own house (a favorite means of quietly disposing of aristocrats in Roman days), she was brought before the executioner. But not even three blows of the executioner's sword could dispatch the young girl. She lingered for several days, converting others to the Christian cause, before finally dying. In 1595, her body was exhumed. It was said to look as fresh as if she still breathed\u2014and the heart-wrenching sculpture by eyewitness Stefano Maderno that lies below the main altar was, the sculptor insisted, exactly how she looked. Time your visit to enter the cloistered convent to see what remains of Pietro Cavallini's Last Judgment, dating from 1293. It's the only major fresco in existence known to have been painted by Cavallini, a forerunner of Giotto. | Piazza Santa Cecilia in Trastevere 22, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/5899289 | Church free; frescoes \u20ac2.50; underground \u20ac2.50 | Basilica and underground, weekdays 9:30\u201312:30 and 4\u20136:30, Sun. 4\u20136:30; frescoes, weekdays 10 am\u201312:30 pm.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Santa Maria in Trastevere.   \nOriginally built sometime before the 4th century, this spectacular church conjures up the splendor of ancient Rome better than any other in the city. Supposedly Rome's first church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, it was rebuilt in the 12th century by Pope Innocent II (who hailed from Trastevere) with a nave framed by a processional of two rows of 22 gigantic columns taken from ancient Roman temples along with an altar studded with gilded mosaics. Larger Roman naves exist, but none seem as majestic as this one, bathed in a sublime glow from the 12th- and 13th-century mosaics and Domenichino's gilded ceiling (1617). Outside, the 19th-century portico draws attention to the facade's 800-year-old mosaics, which represent the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins\u2014magnificent at night when they are illuminated. Back inside, the church's most important mosaics, Pietro Cavallini's six panels of the Life of the Virgin, cover the semicircular apse. Their new sense of realism is said to have inspired the great Giotto. Note the little building labeled \"Taberna Meritoria\" just under the figure of the Virgin in the Nativity scene, with a stream of oil flowing from it. It recalls the legend that on the day Christ was born, a stream of pure oil flowed on the site of the piazza, signifying the coming of the grace of God. Inside, before leaving the nave, take a seat at the back and let the gilded centuries of this place wash over you\u2014unforgettable! | Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/5814802 | Daily 7:30 am\u20139 pm.\n\nQuick Bites: Trattoria Da Augusto. You can find any kind of eatery in Trastevere, from pubs to pizzerias. But for good, honest cucina romana at good, honest prices you can't do better than Trattoria Da Augusto, off to the right before you reach Santa Maria in Trastevere. | Piazza de Renzi 15, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/5803798.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Villa Farnesina.   \nMoney was no object to the extravagant Agostino Chigi, a banker from Siena who financed many a papal project. His munificence is evident in this elegant villa, built for him about 1511. He was especially proud of the delicate fresco decorations in the airy loggias (now glassed in to protect their artistic treasures), for when Raphael could steal a little time from his work on the Vatican Stanze, he came over to execute some of the frescoes himself, notably a luminous Galatea. Here, Agostino entertained the popes and princes of 16th-century Rome, delighting in impressing his guests at alfresco suppers held in riverside pavilions by having his servants clear the table by casting the precious silver and gold dinnerware into the Tiber. His extravagance was not quite so boundless as he wished to make it appear, however: he had nets unfurled a foot or two under the water's surface to catch the valuable ware.\n\nIn the magnificent Loggia of Psyche on the ground floor, Giulio Romano and others worked from Raphael's designs. Raphael's lovely Galatea is in the adjacent room. On the floor above you can see the trompe l'oeil effects in the aptly named Hall of Perspectives by Peruzzi. Agostino Chigi's bedroom, next door, was frescoed by Sodoma with scenes from the life of Alexander the Great, notably the Wedding of Alexander and Roxanne, which is considered to be the artist's best work. The palace also houses the Gabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe, a treasure house of old prints and drawings. | Via della Lungara 230, Trastevere | 00165 | 06\/68027268, 06\/68027397 to book guided tours | www.villafarnesina.it | \u20ac5 | Mon.\u2013Sat. 9\u20131.\n\n##  The Ghetto\n\nThe downside of spiritual revival can be religious intolerance. With the Counter-Reformation and its new religious orders also came a papal decree that Trastevere's longstanding Jewish community should be moved north of the river to the so-called Ghetto. A community going back to 180 BC suddenly found itself walled in and subjected to a nightly curfew. With the Italian Unification of 1870 the Ghetto walls were demolished, but less than a century later Vittorio Emanuele III, King of Italy and Emperor of Abyssinia, signed into effect the Race Laws, depriving the Jewish community of the right to education, jobs, and then property. With the coming of the Nazis, worse was to follow, as a visit to this district's synagogue will show. More recently, in 1967, Jewish refugees from Libya found a welcome here. The area now abounds with kosher restaurants\u2014its picturesque atmosphere once more prevailing over the frequent ugliness of history.\n\n### Top Attractions\n\nCrypta Balbi.   \nThe fourth component of the magnificent collections of the Museo Nazionale Romano and visitable on the same ticket, this museum is unusual in its equitable apportioning of Rome's archaeological cake: a slice of Roman history\u2014the crypt being part of the Balbus Theater complex (13 BC)\u2014but also a slice of the largely vanished medieval Rome that once stood on top. The written explanations accompanying the well-lit exhibits are also excellent, making this museum much visited by teachers and schools. | Via delle Botteghe Oscure 31, Largo Argentina | 00186 | 06\/39967700 | \u20ac7 (including 3-day access to 3 sister museums) | Station: Buses 64 and 40, and Tram 8 from Trastevere.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Palazzo Mattei di Giove.   \nGraceful and opulent, the arcaded, multistory courtyard of this palazzo is a masterpiece of turn-of-the-17th-century style. Designed by Carlo Maderno, it is a veritable panoply of sculpted busts, heroic statues, sculpted reliefs, and Paleo-Christian epigrams, all collected by Marchese Asdrubale Mattei. Have your Nikon ready as Roman and Renaissance heads cross glances across the ages. Inside are various scholarly institutes, including the Centro Studi Americani (Center for American Studies | centrostudiamericani.org), which also contains a library of American books. Various salons are decorated with frescoes by Cortona, Lanfranco, and Domenichino. | Via Michelangelo Caetani 32 , other entrance in Via dei Funari, Ghetto | 00186 | 06\/68801613 Centro Studi Americani.\n\nPortico d'Ottavia.   \nThe Portico d'Ottavia looms over the Ghetto district and comprises one of its most picturesque set pieces, with the time-stained church of Sant'Angelo in Pescheria built right into its ruins. With a few surviving columns, the Portico d'Ottavia is a huge porticoed enclosure, named by Augustus in honor of his sister Octavia. Originally 390 feet wide and 433 feet long, it encompassed two temples, a meeting hall, and a library, and served as a kind of grandiose entrance foyer for the adjacent Teatro di Marcello. The ruins of the portico became Rome's pescheria (fish market) during the Middle Ages. A stone plaque on a pillar, a relic of that time, admonishes in Latin that the head of any fish surpassing the length of the plaque was to be cut off \"up to the first fin\" and given to the city fathers or else the vendor was to pay a fine of 10 gold florins. The heads were used to make fish soup and were considered a great delicacy. After restoration, the lovely medieval church of Sant'Angelo in Pescheria has reopened to the public. It's open 2\u20135 Wednesday, Saturday, and the first Monday of the month. | Via Tribuna di Campitelli 6, Ghetto | 00186 | 06\/68801819 Church of Sant'Angelo in Pescheria.\n\nQuick Bites:\n\nDolceroma. Stop in at this bakery to indulge in American and Austrian treats. | Via Portico d'Ottavia 20\/b, Ghetto | 00186 | 06\/6892196 | www.ladolceroma.com.\n\nFranco e Cristina. Franco e Cristina is a stand-up pizza joint with some of the thinnest, crispiest pizza in town. | Via Portico d'Ottavia 5, Ghetto | 00186.\n\nTeatro di Marcello.   \nThis theater was begun by Julius Caesar and completed by the emperor Augustus in AD 13. Rome's first permanent building dedicated to drama, it held 20,000 spectators. Like other Roman monuments, it was transformed into a fortress during the Middle Ages. During the Renaissance, it was converted into a residence by the Savelli, one of the city's noble families. The small archaeological zone is used as a summer venue for open-air classical music and lyrical concerts. | Via del Teatro di Marcello, Ghetto | 00186 | 06\/87131590 for concert information | www.tempietto.it.\n\n### Worth Noting\n\nFontana delle Tartarughe.   \nDesigned by Giacomo della Porta in 1581 and sculpted by Taddeo Landini, this 16th-century fountain, set in venerable Piazza Mattei, is Rome's most charming. The focus of the fountain is four bronze boys, each grasping a dolphin spouting water into a marble shell. Bronze turtles held in the boys' hands drink from the upper basin. | Piazza Mattei, Ghetto | 00186.\n\nSinagoga.   \nThis aluminum-roof synagogue has been the city's largest Jewish temple and a Roman landmark since its 1904 construction. At the back the Jewish Museum, with its precious ritual objects and other exhibits, documents the uninterrupted presence of a Jewish community for nearly 22 centuries. Until the 13th century the Jews were esteemed citizens of Rome. Among them were the bankers and physicians to the popes, who had themselves given permission for the construction of synagogues. But later, popes of the Counter-Reformation revoked this tolerance, confining the Jews to the Ghetto and imposing a series of restrictions, some of which were enforced as late as 1870. For security reasons, guided visits are mandatory; entrance to the synagogue is through the museum located in Via Catalana (Largo 16 Ottobre 1943). | Lungotevere Cenci 15, Ghetto | 00186 | 06\/68400661 | www.museoebraico.roma.it | \u20ac10 | Mid-Sept.\u2013mid-June, Sun.\u2013Thurs. 10\u20134:15, Fri. 9\u20131:15; mid-June\u2013mid-Sept., Sun.\u2013Thurs. 10\u20136:15, Fri. 10\u20133:15 | Station: Bus 46, 64, 87; Tram 8.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nGetting Oriented | Aventino | Testaccio\n\nRising like a massive headland above the Tiber, the Aventine Hill is the one area in Rome where trills of birdsong win out over the din of traffic. That's highly appropriate, as the hill's name derives from the Latin avis, the swallows here having once featured in the bird-watching contest whereby Romulus and Remus decided the best site on which to build their city. As it happened, the Aventine lost out to the Palatine. Still, to Romans, the Aventine is known as the most \"poetic\" of the city's seven hills, D'Annunzio and other poets long having sung its praises. Scented here with roses (from the Roseto Comunale), there with orange blossom (from the Giardino dei Aranci), and everywhere with pines, it seems the opposite of urban: Rome's most idyllic oasis of calm.\n\nPrevious Map | Next Map | Rome Maps\n\nThis is a rarefied district, where some houses still have their own bell towers and private gardens are called \"parks,\" without exaggeration. Like the emperors of old on the Palatine, the fortunate residents here look out over the Circus Maximus and the river, winding its way far below. And today's travelers still enjoy the great views, including the famous one spotted through the peculiar keyhole at the gates to the headquarters of the Knights of Malta, which may be the most peered-through in the world\u2014take a look and see why.\n\nAt the foot of the Aventine hill to the north, the 1st-century temples to Vesta and Hercules are two of the most complete ancient monuments in the city. They remind us that, under the Republic, this area was home to the \"plebs,\" becoming under the Gracchi a populist stronghold. By Imperial times, however, its tradesman and merchants were displaced by patricians seeking fresh air and space, with grandstand views over the Vallis Murcia, the arena-shaped dip dividing this hill from the Palatine. Sumptuous villas and gardens sprang up, giving Alaric, when the Goths visited the city in 410 AD, a ready supply of plunder. The Aventine never quite recovered from such depredations.\n\nPrevious Map | Next Map | Rome Maps\n\nSouth of the Aventine, there's an entirely different flavor. Blue-collar Testaccio is flat and homely but as lively as it gets; ancient Rome's dockyard has, in the modern age, an up-and-coming arts scene with music and dance clubs that go all night. You'll know you've reached Testaccio when you see its most incongruous landmark, the Piramide, a large marble pyramid built as a nod to the pharaohs in 12 BC as a tomb for a rich merchant. Behind the monument lie the remains of some of the English poets who put the Rome in romantic in the 19th century, in the aptly named, and appropriately scenic, Cimitero degli Inglesi (English Cemetery).\n\n##  Getting Oriented\n\n### Getting Here\n\nReaching the Aventine hill on foot from either the Roman Forum or the Campidoglio makes for a spectacular 20-minute walk through ancient ruins like the Circo Massimo. Happily, the subway stop of the same name sits at the foot of the Aventino. Coming from the Colosseum or Trastevere, hop on Bus No. 3. From the Spanish Steps, take Bus No. 160; from Termini, Bus No. 175. For the Testaccio section, use the Piramide (Ostiense) Metro stop. On the Aventine hill, Fodor's Talk Forum poster tomassocroccante notes: \"Not far from the famous Priorato di Malta keyhole, walk down the street to the lovely Parco Savelli (great views), near Santa Sabina. At the park's far end is a stone gate leading to a path that descends to the Lungotavere Aventino, not far from famed Piazza Bocca Della Verit\u00e0.\"\n\n### OK, Where do I Start?\n\nAfter first exploring the two ancient Roman temples and Santa Maria in Cosmedin on Piazza Bocca della Verit\u00e0, head up the Aventine hill by crossing broad Via della Greca and walk along the street, turning into the first street on the right, Clivo dei Publici. This skirts Valle Murcia, the city's rose garden, open in May and June. Where Clivo dei Publici veers off to the left, continue on Via di Santa Sabina. You'll see Santa Sabina ahead, but just before you reach it, you can take a turn around the delightful walled park, known as the Giardino degli Aranci, famous for its orange trees and wonderful view of the Tiber and St. Peter's Basilica. On the right side of Via di Santa Sabina are two Aventine main attractions: the Early Christian landmark of Santa Sabina and the famous keyhole on Piazza Cavalieri di Malta. Via di Sant'Anselmo winds through quiet residential streets. Cross busy Viale Aventino at Piazza Albania and climb the so-called Piccolo Aventino on Via di San Saba to the medieval church of San Saba. Or from Piazza Cavalieri, head directly down the hill to hip and happening Testaccio.\n\n### Best Time-Outs\n\nCristalli di Zucchero.   \nThis chic, Parisian-influenced bakery offers delicious macaroons and cakes so pretty you'll feel bad digging in. Almost. | Via di San Teodoro 88, Circo Massimo | 00186 | 06\/69920945.\n\nSicilia e Duci.   \nIn the heart of Testaccio, this new Sicilian bakery boasts mouthwatering\u2014and gorgeous\u2014pastries and cannoli. | Via Marmorata 87\/89, Testaccio | 00153 | 06\/5743766.\n\n### Top 5 Reasons to Go\n\nSanta Maria in Cosmedin: Test your truthfulness (or someone else's) at the yawning mouth of the Bocca della Verit\u00e0.\n\nCimitero degli Inglesi: Swoon over Keats's body and Shelley's heart in this romantic graveyard.\n\nPiazza Cavalieri di Malta: Peek through the keyhole of the Priorato di Malta for a privileged view\u2014one of Rome's most surprising delights.\n\nTempting Testaccio: Like New York City's Meatpacking District, this new \"It\" neighborhood is a sizzling combo of factories and nightclubs.\n\nRoseto Comunale: Overlooking the Circo Massimo (where speeds the ghost of Ben Hur), this rose garden offers a fitting and fragrant vestibule to Rome's most poetic hill.\n\n##  Aventino\n\nOne of the seven hills on which the city was founded, the Aventine hill enjoys a serenity hard to find elsewhere in Rome. Approach from the Circus Maximus; at the hill's foot, you'll find Piazza Bocca della Verit\u00e0\u2014the ancient Foro Boario (cattle market)\u2014which is set with both ancient temples and Romanesque churches, making the area one of the most camera-ready in Rome.\n\n### Top Attractions\n\nPiazza dei Cavalieri di Malta.   \nPeek through the keyhole of the Priorato di Malta, the walled compound of the Knights of Malta, and you'll get a surprising eyeful: a picture-perfect view of the dome of St. Peter's Basilica, far across the city. This priory landmarks the Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta. Piranesi\u201418th-century Rome's foremost engraver\u2014is more famous for drawing architecture than creating it, yet the square is his work along with the priory (1765) within. Stone insignia of the knights notwithstanding, the square's most famed feature is that initially nondescript keyhole in the dark green door of Number 3. Bend slightly and surprise your eyes with a view that is worth walking miles for. As for the Order of the Knights of Malta, it is the world's oldest order of chivalry, founded in the Holy Land during the Crusades, with current headquarters on Rome's Via Condotti. | Via Santa Sabina and Via Porta Lavernale, Aventino | 00153 | 06\/67581234 to book group tours | Mon.\u2013Sat. 9\u2013noon | Station: Circo Massimo. Buses 3, 60, 81, 118, 175, 271, 715.\n\nRoseto Comunale.   \nAs signified by the paths shaped like a menorah, this was once a Jewish cemetery (a tombstone is still visible on the side of the garden across from Valle Murcia). The garden is laid out to reflect the history of roses from antiquity to the present day. | Viale di Valle Murcia, Aventino | 00153 | 06\/5746810 | May\u2013June, daily 8\u20137:30 | Station: Circo Massimo. Buses 3, 60, 81, 118, 160, 271, 628, 715.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Santa Maria in Cosmedin.   \nThough this is one of Rome's oldest churches, with a magical, haunting, almost exotic interior, it plays second fiddle to the renowned artifact installed in the church portico. The Bocca della Verit\u00e0 (Mouth of Truth) is in reality nothing more than an ancient drain cover, unearthed during the Middle Ages. Legend has it, however, that the teeth will clamp down on a liar's hand . . . and to tell a lie with your hand in the fearsome mouth is to risk losing it. Hordes of tourists line up to take the test every day, with kids especially getting a kick out of it. Few churches, inside or out, are as picturesque as this one. The church was built in the 6th century for the city's burgeoning Greek population. Heavily restored at the end of the 19th century, it has the typical basilica form, and stands across from the Piazza della Bocca della Verit\u00e0, originally the location of the Forum Boarium, ancient Rome's cattle market. | Piazza Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Aventino | 00153 | 06\/6781419 | May\u2013Sept., daily 9:30\u20135:50; Oct.\u2013Apr., daily 9:30\u20134:30 | Station: Circo Massimo. Buses 3, 60, 75, 81, 118, 160, 175, 271, 628.\n\nSanta Sabina.   \nThis Early Christian basilica demonstrates the severe\u2014but lovely\u2014simplicity common to churches of its era. Although some of the side chapels were added in the 16th and 17th centuries, the essential form is as Rome's Christians knew it in the 5th century. Once bright with mosaics, today the church only has one: that above the entrance door (its gold letters announce how the church was founded by Peter of Illyria, \"rich for the poor,\" under Pope Celestine I). Meanwhile, the mosaics have been partially reproduced in Taddeo Zuccari's Renaissance fresco of Christ and his apostles. Note the beautifully carved, 5th-century cedar doors to the left of the outside entrance: they are the oldest of their kind in existence. | Piazza Pietro d'Illiria 1 , Via di Santa Sabina, Aventino | 00153 | 06\/579401 | Daily 8:30\u2013noon and 3:30\u20136:30 | Station: Circo Massimo. Buses 3, 60, 75, 81, 118, 160, 175, 715.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Tempio della Fortuna Virilis.   \nA picture-perfect, if \"dollhouse\"-size, Roman temple, this rectangular edifice from the 2nd century BC is built in the Greek style, as was the norm in Rome's early years. It owes its fine state of preservation to the fact that it was consecrated as a Christian church. It was originally built when this giant square was known as the Forum Boarium, ancient Rome's cattle market. | Piazza Bocca della Verit\u00e0, Aventino | 00186 | Station: Circo Massimo. Buses 3, 60, 75, 81, 118, 160, 175, 271.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Tempio di Vesta.   \nLong called the Temple of Vesta because of its similarity in shape to the building of that name in the Roman Forum, it's now recognized as a temple to Hercules Victor. All but one of the 20 Corinthian columns of this circular temple remain intact. Like its next-door neighbor, the Tempio della Fortuna Virilis, it was built in the 2nd century BC. | Piazza Bocca della Verit\u00e0, Aventino | 00186 | Station: Circo Massimo. Buses 3, 60, 75, 81, 118, 160, 175, 271.\n\n### Worth Noting\n\nCentrale Montemartini.   \nAfter visiting Rome's many old, art-cluttered palaces, the Centrale Montemartini feels like a breath of fresh air. Rome's first electricity plant, repurposed as a museum in 2005, houses the overflow of fabled ancient art from the Capitoline Museum's collection. With Roman sculptures and mosaics set against industrial machinery and pipes, nowhere else in Rome is the contrast between ancient and modern more stark\u2014or enjoyable. A pleasure, too, is the sheer space of the building (and the fact that you're likely to be one of the only visitors here). Unusually, the collection is organized by the district where the ancient pieces were found. Standout pieces include the 4th-century AD mosaic of a hunting scene and two portrait-heads so well preserved that they still retain flakes of the gold that once gilded them. | Via Ostiense 106, Aventino | 00154 | 06\/0608 | centralemontemartini.org | \u20ac5.50 | Tues.\u2013Sun. 9\u20137 | Station: Garbatella. Bus 23, 271, 769, 770.\n\nSan Saba.   \nFormerly a monastery founded by monks of the order of San Saba after they had fled from Jerusalem following the Arab invasion, this is a major monument of Romanesque Rome. Inside, an almost rustic interior harbors a famed Cosmatesque mosaic pavement. | Piazza Gianlorenzo Bernini 20 , Via San Saba, Aventino | 00153 | 06\/64580140 | www.sansaba.it | Weekdays and Sat. 8\u2013noon and 4\u20137:30, Sun. 9:30\u20131 | Station: Circo Massimo.\n\n##  Testaccio\n\nTestaccio is perhaps the world's only district built on broken pots: the hill of the same name was born from discarded pottery used to store oil, wine, and other goods loaded from the nearby Ripa, when Rome had a port and the Tiber was once a mighty river to an empire. Quiet during the day, but on Saturday buzzing with the very loud music from rows of discos and clubs (this is sometimes hailed as Rome's new \"Left Bank\" neighborhood), the area is also a must for those seeking authentic and comparatively cheap Roman cuisine.\n\n### Top Attractions\n\nCimitero degli Inglesi (Non-Catholic or English Cemetery). Final resting place of Keats, Shelley's heart, and Goethe's son, this is one of Rome's most picturesque corners. Reminiscent of a country churchyard, this famed cemetery was intended for the interment of non-Catholics. The tomb of John Keats (who tragically died in Rome after succumbing to consumption at age 25 in 1821) is famously inscribed with \"Here lies one whose name was writ in water\" (the poet said no dates or name should appear). Nearby is the place where Shelley's heart was buried, as well the tombs of Goethe's son, Italian anarchist Antonio Gramsci, and America's famed beat poet Gregory Corso. It is about a 20-minute walk south from the Arch of Constantine along Via San Gregorio and Viale Aventino but the easiest way to get here is to catch the Metro B line from Termini, which deposits you almost directly outside the cemetery. | Via Caio Cestio 6, Testaccio | 00153 | 06\/5741900 | www.protestantcemetery.it | Mon.\u2013Sat. 9\u20135, Sun. 9\u20131; ring bell for cemetery custodian | Station: Piramide. Buses 3, 23, 30, 60, 75, 95, 118, 715.\n\n* * *\n\nRome's New \"Left Bank\"\n\nAfter taking in the historic peace and quiet of the Aventine hill, switch lanes and head for the hip-hopping 'hood of Testaccio, especially on Saturday night, when a panoply of clubs and discos rends the air (but is one person's music another's noise pollution?). From the Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta, take Via di Porta and the Lavernale to Via Marmorata. Testaccio has plain early-1900s housing, a down-to-earth working-class atmosphere, and plenty of good trattorias. And, of course, Monte Testaccio, a grassy knoll about 150 feet high. What makes this otherwise unremarkable-looking hill special is the fact that it's made from pottery shards\u2014pieces of amphorae, large jars used in ancient times to transport oil, wheat, wine, and other goods. Make your way to Piazza Testaccio, dominated by the covered market where you can sample everything from wild strawberries to horsemeat sausage. Move on to the prettier Piazza di Santa Maria Liberatrice. There are some quintessential Roman trattorias along Via Marmorata and near the Mattatoio, the former slaughterhouse. The area sights\u2014the ancient city gate Porta San Paolo, the big white Piramide di Caio Cestio, and the Cimiterio degli Inglesi\u2014are found several blocks to the south around Piazzale Ostiense.\n\n* * *\n\nPiramide di Caio Cestio.   \nThis monumental tomb was designed in 12 BC for the immensely wealthy praetor Gaius Cestius in the form of a 120-foot-tall pyramid. Though little else is known about him, he clearly had a taste for grandeur\u2014and the then-trendy Egyptian style. On the site of the pyramid is a cat colony run by the famous Roman gattare (cat ladies). They look after and try to find homes for some 300 of Rome's thousands of strays (www.igattidellapiramide.it). The pyramid is open to guided tours only (one-hour and in Italian only). | Piazzale Ostiense, Testaccio | 00154 | 06\/39967700 Tour booking and information | www.pierreci.it | \u20ac5.50 for tour and visit (in Italian) | Station: Piramide. Buses 3, 30, 60, 75, 95, 118, 130, 175, 719.\n\nSan Paolo fuori le Mura (St. Paul's Outside the Walls). For all its dreary location and dull exterior (19th-century British writer Augustus Hare said the church resembled \"a very ugly railway station\"), St. Paul's is one of Rome's most important churches. Its size, second only to St. Peter's Basilica, allows ample space for the 272 roundels depicting every pope from St. Peter to Benedict XVI. Built in the 4th century AD by Constantine over the site where St. Paul had been buried, St. Paul's was then destroyed by fire in July 1823. Inside, two great treasures survived: the famous baldacchino created by Giotto's contemporary, sculptor Arnolfo di Cambio, along with the Romanesque cloisters. | Piazzale San Paolo, Via Ostiense 190, Testaccio | 00146 | 06\/69880800 | \u20ac4 for guided tours | www.basilicasanpaolo.org | Daily 8\u20136 | Station: Piramide.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nGetting Oriented | Monti and Esquilino | Celio | The Catacombs and Via Appia Antica\n\nRome's most sprawling hill\u2014the Esquiline\u2014lies at the edge of the tourist maps, another Rome. Even Imperial Rome could not have matched this minicosmopolis for sheer internationalism. Right around Termini, sons of the soil, the so-called \"romani romani,\" mingle with Chinese, Sri Lankans, Sikhs, and a hundred nationalities in-between. But not all of this area has the same gritty, graffiti-filled atmosphere you find near the station. Closer to the Colosseum, the Celian Hill area, called \"Celio\" by locals, is a tranquil, lovely residential area replete with medieval churches and ruins. On the other hand, Monti, a quarter stretching from the Forum to the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, is a rione (district) dating back to ancient times, when gladiators, prostitutes, and even Caesar made their homes here. Today, Monti is one of the best-loved neighborhoods in Rome, known for its appealing mix of medieval streets, old-school trattorias, and hip boutiques.\n\nPrevious Map | Next Map | Rome Maps\n\nThe Esqueline and Celian hills take in some of the city's best sights, including Michelangelo's Moses, the Baths of Caracalla, and dazzling Early Christian mosaics at San Clemente and San Pudenziana. Historically speaking, it also took in some of the worst, including the Suburra, Rome's most notorious slum\u2014today, Monti. A dark, warrenlike sector of multistory dwellings populated in part by gladiators from the nearby Colosseum, it lived by its own rules, or lack of them. The empress Messalina would often venture here for illicit pleasures. So mean were the Suburra's streets that it's thought that the great fire of AD 64, which all but destroyed the neighborhood, may have been ordered by Nero as a public-order measure. But elsewhere on the Esquilino and Celio, Augustus built impressive public markets and the area became the \"in\" place to be. Palaces of ancient Rome's who's who sprang up with sumptuous gardens to match.\n\nSigns of this remote past are everywhere. The Colosseum's marble-clad walls loom at the end of narrow, shadowy streets with Latin-sounding names: Panisperna, Baccina, Fagutale. Other walls, built for the Caesars, shore up medieval towers. Amid the hints of antiquity, several great churches of the Christian era stand out like islands, connected by broad avenues. The newer streets\u2014laid out by the popes and, later, by city planners at the time of Italy's unification\u2014slice through the meandering byways, providing more direct and navigable routes for pilgrims heading to majestic Santa Maria Maggiore, its interior gleaming with gold from the New World, and San Giovanni in Laterano, with its grand, echoing vastness.\n\nVia Cavour, the area's main drag, extends through the old Suburra to the rough and ready quarter around Termini, Rome's central train station. Predictably gritty, although not unsafe, this area is undergoing a steady transformation as immigration diversifies the face of the city. North of the station, Ethiopian and Eritrean restaurants abound, while just south of the station, Piazza Vittorio and its surrounding streets are an ethnic kaleidoscope, full of Asian and Middle Eastern shops and restaurants. A highlight is the Nuovo Mercato Esquilino, a covered market hall where goods from the four corners of the earth are sold in a multitude of languages. A walk south on Via Merulana leads to San Giovanni, a working-class neighborhood, of late colonized by trendy students, which surrounds Rome's cathedral, San Giovanni in Laterano.\n\nPrevious Map | Next Map | Rome Maps\n\nFarther south lies a lovely contrast to the bustle of the Esquiline and San Giovanni quarters: the quiet and green Celio (Celian Hill). Like the Aventino, the Celio seems aloof from the bustle of central Rome. On the slopes of the hill, paths and narrow streets wind through a public park and past walled gardens and some of Rome's earliest churches, such as San Clemente and Santi Quattro Coronati, whose medieval poetry is almost palpable.\n\nFar south of the Celio lies catacomb country\u2014the haunts of the fabled underground graves of Rome's earliest Christians, arrayed to either side of the Queen of Roads, the Appian Way. The gateway to this timeless realm is one of the largest relics of ancient Rome, the Baths of Caracalla. Farther on, the church of Domine Quo Vadis announces you are entering sacred turf, as this is the spot where Jesus is said to have appeared to Peter, causing Peter to ask, Domine quo vadis? (\"Lord, where are you going?\"). As you venture to the catacombs, the countryside is dotted with landmarks like the Tomb of Cecilia Metella that make you feel that the days of the Caesars were not that long ago. Look down from your bus window and you will see chariot ruts.\n\n##  Getting Oriented\n\n### Getting Here\n\nThe Esquilino hill can be handily reached with the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele subway stop, about a 10-minute walk from Termini station. The Monti area (running down one side of the Esquilino to the Roman Forum) can be reached by the Cavour Metro stop on Line B. Bus No. 117 runs from Piazza del Popolo and the Corso to both Celio and Monti districts on the Esquilino. Bus No. 3 from Trastevere and Bus No. 75 from Termini reach Celio, about a 5-minute walk from the Colosseo stop.\n\n### OK, Where Do I Start?\n\nIf you're tackling the Celian Hill area first, head out from the Arch of Constantine\u2014right by the Colosseum\u2014and walk south along the left side of Via di San Gregorio to the Clivo di Scauro. Ascend this magically picturesque lane to Santi Giovanni e Paolo. Follow the wall lining peaceful Villa Celimontana park and turn right on Via Celimontana to Santo Stefano Rotondo (beware its hyper-gory frescoes).\n\nBacktrack to Piazza Celimontana and head uphill on Via Capo di Africa to the hauntingly medieval church of Santi Quattro Coronati. On the other side of the hill, on Via San Giovanni in Laterano, waits that time machine of a church, San Clemente.\n\nHead back to the Colosseum area and then toward the Esquiline neighborhood by using the Colosseo Metro steps to reach the grandly scenic Largo Agnesi overlook. On the north side of the Colosseum, in the quarter known as Monti, you'll find San Pietro in Vincoli, home to Michelangelo's Moses. Walk down Salita dei Borgia, passing under the haunted Torre Borgia palace, to Via Cavour. Cross the street and follow the stairs down to explore Monti, which rivals Trastevere in both age and spirit. Or turn right and head northeast to gigantic Santa Maria Maggiore; nearby are wonderful mosaics in San Prassede and Santa Pudenziana.\n\n### Best Time-Out\n\nEnoteca Il Pentagrappolo.   \nWith its exposed-brick arches and soft lighting, Il Pentagrappolo offers an ample spread of cheeses and salamis as well as more than 250 wines. On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, there's live jazz, blues, and bossanova. | Via Celimontana 21\/B, Celio | 00184 | 06\/7096301 | www.ilpentagrappolo.com.\n\n### Top 5 Reasons to Go\n\nSan Pietro in Vincoli: Hike uphill past Lucrezia Borgia's palace to visit Michelangelo's magisterial Moses.\n\nSan Clemente: Hurtle back through three eras\u2014ancient Roman, Early Christian, and medieval\u2014by descending through four excavated levels of this venerated church.\n\nBaths of Caracalla: South of the lovely Villa Celimontana parks tower the Terme di Caracalla, ruins of one of the most spectacular bathing complexes in ancient Rome.\n\nMagnificent Mosaics: In a neighborhood once home to the first Christians, Santa Pudenziana gleams with a stunning 4th-century mosaic of Christ while Santa Prassede shimmers with Byzantine beauty nearby.\n\nCatacomb Country: Be careful exploring the underground graves of the earliest Christians\u2014one wrong turn and you may only surface days later.\n\n##  Monti and Esquilino\n\nThe valley between the Esquiline Hill and the Celian Hill underscores the area's nickname\u2014Monti (\"Mounts\"). The Esquiline stretches down a hurly-burly slide of the city, from the frantic Termini train station to San Giovanni, a neighborhood long known for its working-class vibe. But if you manage to successfully dodge all the scooters and trucks, you'll find a staggering array of historic churches here, from great pilgrimage basilicas to chapels aglitter with Early Christian mosaics.\n\n### Top Attractions\n\nFodor's Choice |  San Clemente.   \nOne of the most impressive archaeological sites in Rome, San Clemente is a historical triple-decker. A 12th-century church was built on top of a 4th-century church, which in turn was built over a 2nd-century pagan temple to the god Mithras and 1st-century Roman apartments. The layers were rediscovered in 1857, when a curious prior, Friar Joseph Mullooly, started excavations beneath the present basilica. Today, you can descend down to explore all three.\n\nThe upper church (located at street level) is a gem even on its own. In the apse, a glittering 12th-century mosaic shows Jesus on a cross that turns into a living tree. Green acanthus leaves swirl and teem with small scenes of everyday life. Early Christian symbols, including doves, vines, and fish, decorate the 4th-century marble choir screens. In the left nave, the Castiglioni chapel holds frescoes painted around 1400 by the Florentine artist Masolino da Panicale (1383\u20131440), a key figure in the introduction of realism and one-point perspective into Renaissance painting. Note the large Crucifixion and scenes from the lives of Sts. Catherine, Ambrose, and Christopher, plus an Annunciation (over the entrance).\n\nTo the right of the sacristy (and bookshop), descend the stairs to the 4th-century church, used until 1084, when it was damaged beyond repair during a siege of the area by the Norman prince Robert Guiscard. Still intact are some vibrant 11th-century frescoes depicting stories from the life of St. Clement. Don't miss the last fresco on the left, in what used to be the central nave. It includes a particularly colorful quote\u2014including \"Go on, you sons of harlots, pull!\"\u2014that's not only unusual for a religious painting, but one of the earliest examples of written vernacular Italian.\n\nDescend an additional set of stairs to the mithraeum, a shrine dedicated to the god Mithras. His cult spread from Persia and gained a hold in Rome during the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. Mithras was believed to have been born in a cave and was thus worshipped in underground, cavernous chambers, where initiates into the all-male cult would share a meal while reclining on stone couches, some visible here along with the altar block. Most such pagan shrines in Rome were destroyed by Christians, who often built churches over their remains, as happened here. | Via San Giovanni in Laterano 108, Monti and Esquilino | 00184 | 06\/7740021 | www.basilicasanclemente.com | Archaeological area \u20ac5 | Mon.\u2013Sat. 9\u201312:30 and 3\u20136; Sun. noon\u20136 | Station: Colosseo.\n\nSan Giovanni in Laterano.   \nThe official cathedral of Rome, it's actually San Giovanni in Laterano, not St. Peter's, that serves as the ecclesiastical seat of the bishop of Rome\u2014also known as the pope. San Giovanni dates back to the 4th century, when Emperor Constantine obtained the land from the wealthy Laterani family and donated it to the Church. But thanks to vandals, earthquakes, and fires, today's building owes most of its form to 16th- and 17th-century restorations, including an interior designed by Baroque genius Borromini. Before you go inside, look up: At the top of the towering facade, done for Pope Clement X in 1736, 15 colossal statues (the 12 apostles plus Christ, John the Baptist, and John the Evangelist) stand watch over the suburbs spreading from Porta San Giovanni.\n\nDespite the church's Baroque design, some earlier fragments do remain. Under the portico on the left stands an ancient statue of Constantine, while the central portal's ancient bronze doors were brought here from the Forum's Curia. Inside, the fragment of a fresco on the first pillar is attributed to the 14th-century Florentine painter Giotto; it depicts Pope Boniface VIII proclaiming the first Holy Year in 1300. The altar's rich Gothic tabernacle\u2014holding what the faithful believe are the heads of Sts. Peter and Paul\u2014dates from 1367. Head to the last chapel at the end of the left aisle to check out the cloister. Encrusted with 12th-century Cosmatesque mosaics by father-and-son team the Vassallettos, it's a break from Baroque . . . and from the big tour groups that tend to fill the church's interior. Around the corner, meanwhile, stands one of the oldest Christian structures in Rome. Emperor Constantine built the Baptistery in AD 315. While it's certainly changed over time, thanks to several restorations, a 17th-century interior redecoration, and even a Mafia-related car bombing in 1993, the Baptistery remains much like it would have been in ancient times. | Piazza di Porta San Giovanni, Monti and Esquilino | 00185 | 06\/69886433 | Church free, cloister \u20ac3, museum \u20ac4 | Church daily 7\u20136:30. Vassalletto Cloister daily 9\u20136. Museum daily 9\u20131. Baptistery daily 7:30\u201312:30 and 4\u20136:30. | Station: San Giovanni.\n\nSan Pietro in Vincoli.   \nMichelangelo's Moses, carved in the early 16th century for the never-completed tomb of Pope Julius II, has put this church on the map. The tomb was to include dozens of statues and stand nearly 40 feet tall when installed in St. Peter's Basilica. But only three statues\u2014Moses and the two that flank it here, Leah and Rachel\u2014had been completed when Julius died. Julius' successor as pope, from a rival family, had other plans for Michelangelo, and the tomb was abandoned unfinished. The fierce power of this remarkable sculpture dominates its setting. People say that you can see the sculptor's profile in the lock of Moses's beard right under his lip, and that the pope's profile is also there somewhere. As for the rest of the church, St. Peter takes second billing to Moses. The reputed chains (vincoli) that bound St. Peter during his imprisonment by the Romans in Jerusalem are in a bronze and crystal urn under the main altar. Other treasures in the church include a 7th-century mosaic of St. Sebastian, in front of the second altar to the left of the main altar, and, by the door, the tomb of the Pollaiuolo brothers, two important 15th-century Florentine artists. | Piazza San Pietro in Vincoli, Monti and Esquilino | 00184 | 06\/97844952 | Daily 8\u201312:30 and 3\u20136 | Station: Cavour.\n\nSanta Maria Maggiore.   \nThe exterior of the church, from the broad sweep of steps on Via Cavour to the more elaborate facade on Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore, is that of a gracefully curving 18th-century building, a fine example of the Baroque architecture of the period. But Santa Maria Maggiore is one of the oldest churches in Rome, built around 440 by Pope Sixtus III. One of the four great pilgrimage churches of Rome, it's also the city center's best example of an Early Christian basilica\u2014one of the immense, hall-like structures derived from ancient Roman civic buildings and divided into thirds by two great rows of columns marching up the nave. The other six major basilicas in Rome (San Giovanni in Laterano and St. Peter's Basilica are the most famous) have been entirely transformed, or even rebuilt. Paradoxically, the major reason why this church is such a striking example of Early Christian design is that the same man who built the incongruous exteriors about 1740, Ferdinando Fuga, also conscientiously restored the interior, throwing out later additions and, crucially, replacing a number of the great columns.\n\nPrecious 5th-century mosaics high on the nave walls and on the triumphal arch in front of the main altar are splendid testimony to the basilica's venerable age. Those along the nave show 36 scenes from the Old Testament (unfortunately, tough to see clearly without binoculars), and those on the arch illustrate the Annunciation and the Youth of Christ. The resplendent carved wood ceiling dates from the early 16th century; it's supposed to have been gilded with the first gold brought from the New World. The inlaid marble pavement (called Cosmatesque after the family of master artisans who developed the technique) in the central nave is even older, dating from the 12th century.\n\nThe Cappella Sistina (Sistine Chapel), which opens onto the right-hand nave, was created by architect Domenico Fontana for Pope Sixtus V in 1585. Elaborately decorated with precious marbles \"liberated\" from the monuments of ancient Rome, the chapel includes a lower-level museum in which some 13th-century sculptures by Arnolfo da Cambio are all that's left of what was the once richly endowed chapel of the presepio (Christmas cr\u00e8che), looted during the Sack of Rome in 1527.\n\nDirectly opposite, on the church's other side, stands the Cappella Paolina (Pauline Chapel), a rich Baroque setting for the tombs of the Borghese popes Paul V\u2014who commissioned the chapel in 1611 with the declared intention of outdoing Sixtus's chapel across the nave\u2014and Clement VIII. The Cappella Sforza (Sforza Chapel) next door was designed by Michelangelo and completed by della Porta. Just right of the altar, next to his father, lies Gian Lorenzo Bernini; his monument is an engraved slab, as humble as the tombs of his patrons are grand. Above the loggia, the outside mosaic of Christ raising his hand in blessing is, when lit up at night, one of Rome's most beautiful sights. | Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore, Monti and Esquilino | 00185 | 06\/69886802 | Free; museum \u20ac4 | Daily 7\u20137; museum 9\u20136 | Station: Termini.\n\nSanta Prassede.   \nThis small, inconspicuous 9th-century church is known above all for the exquisite Cappella di San Zenone, just to the left of the entrance. It gleams with vivid mosaics that reflect their Byzantine inspiration. Though much less classical and naturalistic than the earlier mosaics of Santa Pudenziana, they are no less splendid, and the composition of four angels hovering on the sky-blue vault is one of the masterstrokes of Byzantine art. Note the square halo over the head of Theodora, mother of St. Pasquale I, the pope who built this church. It indicates that she was still alive when she was depicted by the artist. The chapel also contains one curious relic: a miniature pillar, supposedly part of the column at which Christ was flogged during the Passion. It was brought to Rome in the 13th century. Over the main altar, the magnificent mosaics on the arch and apse are also in rigid Byzantine style. In them, Pope Pasquale I wears the square halo of the living and holds a model of his church. | Via di Santa Prassede 9\/a, Monti and Esquilino | 00184 | 06\/4882456 | Daily 7\u2013noon and 4\u20136:30 | Station: Cavour.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Santa Pudenziana.   \nOutside of Ravenna, Rome has some of the most opulent mosaics in Italy and this church has one of the most striking examples. Commissioned during the papacy of Innocent I, its late 4th-century apse mosaic represents \"Christ Teaching the Apostles\" and sits high on the wall perched above a Baroque altarpiece surrounded by a bevy of florid 18th-century paintings. Not only is it the largest Early Christian apse mosaic extant, it is remarkable for its iconography. At the center sits Christ Enthroned, looking a bit like a Roman emperor, presiding over his apostles. Each apostle faces the spectator, literally rubs shoulders with his companion (unlike earlier hieratic styles where each figure is isolated), and bears an individualized expression. Above the figures and a landscape that symbolizes the Heavenly Jerusalem float the signs of the four evangelists in a blue sky flecked with an orange sunset, all done in thousands of tesserae. This extraordinary composition seems a sort of paleo-Christian forerunner of Raphael's School of Athens in the Vatican.\n\nTo either side of Christ, Sts. Praxedes and Pudentia hold wreaths over the heads of Sts. Peter and Paul. These two women were actually daughters of the Roman senator Pudens (probably the one mentioned in 2 Timothy 4:21), whose family befriended both apostles. During the persecutions of Nero, both sisters collected the blood of many martyrs and then suffered the same fate. Pudentia transformed her house into a church, but this namesake church was constructed over a 2nd-century bathhouse. Beyond the sheer beauty of the mosaic work, the size, rich detail, and number of figures make this both the last gasp of ancient Roman art and one of the first monuments of early Christianity. | Via Urbana 160, Monti and Esquilino | 00184 | 06\/4814622 | Daily 9\u2013noon and 3\u20136 | Station: Termini.\n\n### Worth Noting\n\nPorta Maggiore (Main Gate). The massive 1st-century AD monument is not only a porta (city gate) but part of the Acqua Claudia aqueduct. It gives you an idea of the grand scale of ancient Roman public works. On the Piazzale Labicano side of the portal, to the east, is the curious Baker's Tomb, erected in the 1st century BC by a prosperous baker, shaped like an oven to signal the deceased's trade. | Junction of Via Eleniana, Via di Porta Maggiore, and Via Casilina, Monti and Esquilino | 00184 | Station: Tram 5, 14, or 19, Bus 3.\n\nScala Santa.   \nAccording to tradition, the Scala Santa was the staircase from Pilate's palace in Jerusalem\u2014and, therefore, one trodden by Christ himself. St. Helena, Emperor Constantine's mother, brought the 28 marble steps to Rome in 326. As they have for centuries, pilgrims still come to climb the steps on their knees. At the top, they can get a glimpse of the Sancta Sanctorum (Holy of Holies), the richly decorated private chapel of the popes containing an image of Christ \"not made by human hands.\" You can sneak a peek, too, by taking one of the (nonsanctified) staircases on either side. | Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano, Monti and Esquilino | 00184 | 06\/69886433 | Oct.\u2013Mar., weekdays and Sat. 6\u2013noon and 3\u20136:15, Sun. 7\u201312:30 and 3\u20136:30. Apr.\u2013Sept., weekdays and Sat. 6\u2013noon and 3:30\u20136:45, Sun. 7\u201312:30 and 3:30\u20137 | Station: San Giovanni.\n\n##  Celio\n\nAs quiet and bucolic as the Esquilino is bustling, the Celian Hill lies across the valley to the south. Celio is like a dip into the Middle Ages. Just off massive Via di S. Gregorio, the most magical gateway to the quarter is the Clivo di Scauro, practically unchanged since medieval times. Picturesquely passing under the Romanesque arches of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, the Clivo was described by author Georgina Masson\u2014in her classic Companion Guide to Rome\u2014as one of the few spots in Rome that a medieval pilgrim would easily recognize. And if you continue up the lane to the Villa Celimontana park, you'll find more churches and saintly peace gracing the Celian Hill.\n\n### Top Attractions\n\nCase Romane del Celio.   \nFormerly accessible only through the church of San Giovanni e Paolo, this important ancient Roman excavation was opened in 2002 as a full-fledged museum. An underground honeycomb of rooms, this comprises the lower levels of a so-called insula, or apartment tower, the heights of which were a wonder to ancient Roman contemporaries. Through the door on the left of the Clivo di Scauro lane a portico leads to the Room of the Genie, where painted figures grace the walls as if untouched by two millennia. Farther on is the Confessio altar of Sts. John and Paul, officials at Constantine's court who were executed under Julian the Apostate. Still lower is the Antiquarium, where state-of-the-art lighting showcases amphorae, pots, and stamped ancient Roman bricks, the stamps so fresh they might've been imprinted yesterday. | Clivus Scauri, Celio | 00184 | 06\/70454544 | www.caseromane.it | \u20ac6 | Daily 10\u20131, Tues. and Wed. also 3\u20136 | Station: Colosseo. Buses 60, 75, 81, 117, 118, 175, Tram 3.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Santi Giovanni e Paolo.   \nPerched up the incline of the Clivus di Scauro\u2014a magical time machine of a street where the dial seems to be (still!) stuck somewhere in the 13th century\u2014Santi Giovanni e Paolo is an image that would tempt most landscape painters. Landmarked by one of Rome's finest Romanesque bell towers, it looms over a poetic piazza. Underneath, however, are other treasures, whose excavations can be seen in the new Case Romane del Celio museum (). A basilica erected on the spot was, like San Clemente, destroyed in 1084 by attacking Normans. Its half-buried columns, near the current church entrance, are visible through misty glass. The current church has its origins at the start of the 12th century, but the interior dates mostly from the 17th century and later. The lovely, incongruous chandeliers are a hand-me-down from New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel, a gift arranged by the late Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York, whose titular church this was. Spellman also initiated the excavations here in 1949. | Piazza Santi Giovanni e Paolo 13, Celio | 00184 | 06\/772711 | Oct.\u2013Apr., 8:30\u2013noon and 3:30\u20136; May\u2013Sept., 8:30\u201312:30 and 3:30\u20136:30 | Station: Colosseo.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Santi Quattro Coronati.   \nOne of those evocative cul-de-sacs in Rome where history seems to be holding its breath, this church is strongly imbued with the sanctity of the Romanesque era. Marvelously redolent of the Middle Ages, this is one of the most unusual and unexpected corners of Rome, a quiet citadel that has resisted the tides of time and traffic. The church, which dates back to the 4th century, honors the Four Crowned Saints\u2014the four brothers Seveus, Severinus, Carpophorus, and Victorius, all Roman officials who were whipped to death for their faith by Emperor Diocletian (284\u2013305). After its 9th century reconstruction, the church was twice as large as it is now. The abbey was partially destroyed during the Normans' sack of Rome in 1084, but reconstructed about 30 years later. This explains the inordinate size of the apse in relation to the small nave. Don't miss the cloister, with its well-tended gardens and 12th-century fountain. The entrance is the door in the left nave; ring the bell if it's not open.\n\nThere's another medieval gem hidden away off the courtyard at the church entrance: the Chapel of San Silvestro. (Enter the door marked \"Monache Agostiniane\" and ring the bell at the left for the nun; give her the appropriate donation through a grate, and she will press a button to open the chapel door automatically.) The chapel has remained, for the most part, as it was when consecrated in 1246. Some of the best-preserved medieval frescoes in Rome decorate the walls, telling the story of the Christian emperor Constantine's recovery from leprosy thanks to Pope Sylvester I. Note, too, the delightful Last Judgment fresco above the door, in which the angel on the left neatly rolls up sky and stars like a backdrop, signaling the end of the world. | Via Santi Quattro Coronati 20, Celio | 00184 | 06\/70475427 | Church and cloister free; Chapel of St. Sylvester \u20ac1 donation | Basilica, Mon.\u2013Sat. 6:15am\u20138pm, Sun. 6:45\u201312:30 and 3\u20137:30. Cloister and San Silvestro Chapel, Mon.\u2013Sat. 9:30\u2013noon and 4:30\u20136, Sun. 9\u201310:40 and 4\u20135:45 | Station: Colosseo.\n\nSanto Stefano Rotondo.   \nThis 5th-century church likely was inspired by the design of the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Its unusual round plan and timbered ceiling set it apart from most other Roman churches. So do the frescoes, which lovingly depict the goriest martyrdoms of 34 different Catholic saints. You've been warned: these are not for the fainthearted, cataloging, above the names of different emperors, every type of violent death conceivable. | Via Santo Stefano Rotondo 7, Celio | 00184 | 06\/421199 | End of Oct. to Mar., Tues.\u2013Sat. 9:30\u201312:30 and 3\u20136, Sun. 9:30\u201312:30; Apr.\u2013Oct., Tues.\u2013Sat. 9:30\u201312:30 and 2\u20135, Sun. 9:30\u201312:30 | Station: Colosseo.\n\nTerme di Caracalla (Baths of Caracalla). The Terme di Caracalla are some of Rome's most massive\u2014yet least-visited\u2014ruins. They're also a peek into how Romans turned \"bathing\" into one of the most lavish leisure activities imaginable.\n\nBegun in AD 206 by the emperor Septimius Severus and completed by his son, Caracalla, the 28-acre complex could accommodate 1,600 bathers at a time. Along with an Olympic-size swimming pool and baths, the complex also boasted two different gymnasiums for weightlifting, boxing, and wrestling, a library with both Latin and Greek texts, and shops, restaurants, and gardens. All the services depended on slaves, who checked clients' robes, rubbed them down, stoked the fires in the basements, and saw to all of their needs.\n\nTaking a bath was a long and complex process\u2014something that makes more sense if you see it, first and foremost, as a social activity. You began in the sudatoria, a series of small rooms resembling saunas. Here you sat and sweated. From these you moved to the caldarium, a large, circular room that was humid rather than simply hot. This was where the actual business of washing went on. You used a strigil, or scraper, to get the dirt off; if you were rich, your slave did this for you. Next stop: the warm(-ish) tepidarium, which helped you start cooling down. Finally, you splashed around in the frigidarium, a swimming pool filled with cold water.\n\nToday, the complex is a shell of its former self. While some black-and-white mosaic fragments remain, you have to use your imagination to see the interior as it would have been, filled with opulent mosaics, frescoes, and sculptures, including the famous Farnese Bull. But for getting a sense of the sheer size of ancient Rome's ambitions, few places are better. The walls still tower, the spaces still dwarf, and\u2014if you try\u2014you almost can hear the laughs of long-gone bathers, splashing in the pools. If you're here in the summer, don't miss the chance to catch an open-air opera or ballet in the baths, put on by the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma (\u20ac25\u2013\u20ac110; 06\/48078400). | Via delle Terme di Caracalla 52, Aventino | 00153 | 06\/39967700 | www.pierreci.it | \u20ac6 (includes Villa dei Quintili and Mausoleo di Cecilia Metella) | Mon. 9\u20132, Tues.\u2013Sun. 9 until one hr before sunset | Station: Circo Massimo.\n\n### Worth Noting\n\nSan Gregorio Magno.   \nSet amid the greenery of the Celian Hill, this church wears its Baroque facade proudly. Dedicated to St. Gregory the Great (who served as pope 590\u2013604), it was built about 750 by Pope Gregory II to commemorate his predecessor and namesake. The church of San Gregorio itself has the appearance of a typical Baroque structure, the result of remodeling in the 17th and 18th centuries. But you can still see what's said to be the stone slab on which the pious Gregory the Great slept; it's in the far right-hand chapel. Outside are three chapels. The right chapel is dedicated to Gregory's mother, St. Sylvia, and contains a Guido Reni fresco of the Concert of Angels. The chapel in the center, dedicated to St. Andrew, contains two monumental frescoes showing scenes from the saint's life. They were painted at the beginning of the 17th century by Domenichino (The Flagellation of St. Andrew) and Guido Reni (The Execution of St. Andrew). It's a striking juxtaposition of the sturdy, if sometimes stiff, classicism of Domenichino with the more flamboyant and heroic Baroque manner of Guido Reni. After being closed for safety reasons, the church has been restored and reopened to the public. | Piazza San Gregorio, Celio | 00184 | 06\/7008227 | Daily 8:30\u201312:30 and 3\u20136 | Station: Colosseo.\n\n##  The Catacombs and Via Appia Antica\n\nStrewn with classical ruins and dotted with grazing sheep, the Via Appia Antica (Appian Way) stirs images of chariots and legionnaires returning from imperial conquests. It was completed in 312 BC by Appius Claudius, who laid it out to connect Rome with settlements in the south, in the direction of Naples. Here Peter is said to have been stopped by Christ, as commemorated by the Domine Quo Vadis church. Though time and vandals have taken their toll on the ancient relics along the road, the catacombs remain to cast their spirit-warm spell. Although catacombs were used by both Jews and pagans, the Christians expanded the idea of underground burials to a massive scale. Persecution of Christians under pagan emperors made martyrs of many, whose bones, once interred underground, became objects of veneration. Today, the dark, gloomy catacombs contrast strongly with the fresh air, verdant meadows, and evocative classical ruins along the ancient Via Appia Antica, one of Rome's most magical places for a picnic.\n\nPrevious Map | Next Map | Rome Maps\n\nThe initial stretch of the Via Appia Antica is not pedestrian-friendly\u2014there is fast, heavy traffic and no sidewalk all the way from Porta San Sebastiano to the Catacombe di San Callisto. To reach the catacombs, one route is Bus No. 218 from San Giovanni in Laterano. Alternatively, take Metro line A to Colli Albani and Bus No. 660 to the Tomb of Cecilia Metella. A more expensive option is No. 110 Archeobus from Piazza Venezia; with an open-top deck the big green buses allow you to hop on and off as you please at a price of \u20ac12 for two days. An attractive alternative is to hire a bike.\n\n### Top Attractions\n\nCatacombe di San Callisto (Catacombs of St. Calixtus). Burial place of many popes of the 3rd century, this is the oldest and best-preserved underground cemetery. One of the (English-speaking) friars who act as custodians of the catacomb will guide you through its crypts and galleries, some adorned with Early Christian frescoes. Watch out for wrong turns: this is a five-story-high catacomb! | Via Appia Antica 110\/126, Via Appia Antica | 00178 | 06\/5310151 | www.catacombe.roma.it | \u20ac8 | Thurs.\u2013Tues. 9\u2013noon and 2\u20135. Closed Feb. | Station: Bus 118, 218.\n\nCatacombe di San Sebastiano (Catacombs of St. Sebastian). The 4th-century church was named after the saint who was buried in the catacomb, which burrows underground on four different levels. This was the only Early Christian cemetery to remain accessible during the Middle Ages, and it was from here that the term catacomb is derived\u2014it's in a spot where the road dips into a hollow, known to the Romans as catacumbas (Greek for \"near the hollow\"). The Romans used the name to refer to the cemetery that had existed here since the 2nd century BC, and it came to be applied to all the underground cemeteries discovered in Rome in later centuries. | Via Appia Antica 136, Via Appia Antica | 00179 | 06\/7850350 | www.catacombe.org | \u20ac8 | Mon.\u2013Sat. 10\u20134:30, closed the 3rd wk of Nov. and 3rd wk of Dec. | Station: Bus 118, 218, 660.\n\nDomine Quo Vadis? (Church of Lord, Where Goest Thou?). This church was built on the spot where tradition says Christ appeared to St. Peter as the apostle was fleeing Rome and persuaded him to return and face martyrdom. A paving stone in the church bears an imprint said to have been made by the feet of Christ. | Via Appia Antica at Via Ardeatina, Via Appia Antica | 00183 | 06\/5120441 | Daily 8\u20136.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Tomba di Cecilia Metella.   \nFor centuries, sightseers have flocked to this famous landmark, one of the most complete surviving tombs of ancient Rome. One of the many round mausoleums that once lined the Appian Way, this tumulus-shape tomb is a smaller version of the Mausoleum of Augustus, but impressive nonetheless. It was the burial place of a Roman noblewoman, wife of the son of Crassus, one of Julius Caesar's rivals and known as the richest man in the Roman Empire (infamously entering the English language as \"crass\"). The original decoration includes a frieze of bulls' skulls near the top. The travertine stone walls were made higher and the medieval-style crenellations added when the tomb was transformed into a fortress by the Caetani family in the 14th century. An adjacent chamber houses a small museum of the area's geological phases. | Via Appia Antica 162, Via Appia Antica | 00179 | 06\/39967700 | \u20ac6 (also includes entry to Terme di Caracalla and Villa dei Quintili) | Tues.\u2013Sun. 9\u20131 hr before sunset.\n\nQuick Bites: Appia Antica Caff\u00e8. Placed strategically at the bus stop, the Appia Antica Caff\u00e8 is a bar rare for its sound of birdsong. It also offers lunch and hires out bikes, which is an economical way of exploring the catacombs and other monuments to the right, spread as they are over several miles (if you're heading leftward, opt for the bus as those bike routes can be blocked off). | Via Appia Antica 175, Via Appia Antica | 00186 | 3383465440.\n\n### Worth Noting\n\nFodor's Choice |  Cinecitt\u00e0 Studios.   \nFilm lovers will want to make the trip out to Cinecitt\u00e0 Studios, stomping ground of Fellini, Audrey Hepburn, and Elizabeth Taylor and home to such classics as Roman Holiday, Cleopatra, and La Dolce Vita. Another draw is the set built for the recent BBC\/HBO series Rome, which includes movie versions of ancient homes, temples, and streets. You can take a guided tour of the sets. It also seems likely that the very popular 2011\u20132012 exhibition Cinecitt\u00e0 Shows Off, with its displays of memorabilia like Elizabeth Taylor's Cleopatra gown and the dolphin-shaped statue that marked the chariot laps in Ben-Hur, may be made permanent (although this had not been announced at press time). Check www.cinecittastudios.it for more information. Cinecitt\u00e0 is located about 20 minutes southeast on Line B from the Colosseo stop. | Via Tuscolana 1055, Cinecitt\u00e0 | 00173 | 06\/722931 | www.cinecittastudios.it | \u20ac10 exhibition, \u20ac20 exhibition and tour | Guided tours Mon. and Wed.\u2013Fri. 10:30\u20132, weekends 10:30\u20134:30 | Station: Cinecitt\u00e0.\n\nCirco di Massenzio.   \nOf the Circus of Maxentius, built in AD 309, remain the towers at the entrance; the spina, the wall that divided it down the center; and the vaults that supported the tiers of seating for the spectators. The obelisk now in Piazza Navona was found here. The adjacent Mausoleo di Romolo is a huge tomb built by the emperor for his son Romulus, who died young. The tomb and circus were on the grounds of the emperor's villa. | Via Appia Antica 153, Via Appia Antica | 00179 | 06\/0608 | www.villadimassenzio.it | \u20ac4 | Tues.\u2013Sun. 9\u20131:30 | Station: Bus: 118.\n\nVilla dei Quintili.   \nEven in ruins, this splendid, 52-room villa gives a real sense of ancient Rome's opulence. Even today, two millennia later, it remains clear why Emperor Commodus\u2014the villain in The Fall of the Roman Empire and Gladiator\u2014coveted the sumptuous property. To get the villa from its owners, the Quintili, he accused the family of plotting against him\u2014and had them executed before moving in himself. He may have used the exedra for training for his fights with ostriches back in the Colosseum. (Note that the villa is best included in a separate itinerary from the catacombs, being 5 km [3 miles] away and accessible by a different route.) | Via Appia Nuova 1092, Via Appia Antica | 00178 | 06\/39967700 | \u20ac6 (includes entrance to Terme di Caracalla and Mausoleo di Cecilia Metella) | Tues.\u2013Sun. 9\u20131 hr before sunset (last entrance 1 hr before closing time) | Station: Bus 664 from Colli Albani Metro A.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\n_Main Table of Contents _\n\nThe Scene\n\nRestaurants By Neighborhood\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPlanning | Pantheon, Navona, Trevi, and Quirinale | Campo de' Fiori and Ghetto | Monti, Esquilino, Repubblica, and San Lorenzo | Veneto, Borghese, and Spagna | Vatican, Borgo, and Prati | Trastevere and Gianicolo | Colosseo, Aventino, and Testaccio\n\nUpdated by Dana Klitzberg\n\nIn Rome, the Eternal(ly culinarily conservative) City, simple yet joyously traditional cuisine reigns supreme. Most chefs prefer to follow the mantra of freshness over fuss, simplicity of flavor and preparation over complex cooking methods. Here, it's always the old reliables everyone falls back on, the recipes time-tested by centuries of mammas that still manage to put meat on your bones and smiles on your faces.\n\nRome has been known since ancient times for its grand feasts and banquets, and though the days of the emperor's triclinium and the Saturnalia feasts are long past, dining out is still the Roman's favorite pastime. But even the city's buongustaii (gourmands) will be the first to tell you Rome is distinguished more by its good attitude toward eating out than by a multitude of world-class restaurants; simple, traditional cuisine reigns supreme.\n\nIt has been this way ever since the days of the Caesars. Today, you can still dine on a beef-and-citron stew that comes from an ancient recipe of Apicius, probably the first celebrity chef (to Emperor Tiberius) and cookbook author of the Western World. For the most part, today's chefs cling to the traditional and excel at what has taken hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years to perfect. This is why the basic trattoria menu is more or less the same wherever you go. And it's why even the top Roman chefs feature their versions of simple trattoria classics like pasta all'amatriciana (pasta with a tomato, Roman bacon, chili pepper, and pecorino cheese sauce\u2014sometimes with onion, although that's an issue of debate). To a great extent, Rome deliciously is still a town where the Italian equivalent of \"what are you in the mood to eat?\" translates to \"pizza or pasta?\"\n\n###  La Cucina Romana\n\nHearty, unflinching, and proud, la cucina romana originates from all of the various geographic and cultural influences on the city over more than 2,000 years. This has led to an emphasis on meat, since Rome's Testaccio area was once a central zone for the butcher trade in this part of the country, resulting in some tongue-tingling \"soul food\"\u2014the ubiquity of guanciale (cured pork jowl) in Roman pastas, as well as meat dishes like abacchio (baby lamb) and porchetta (roast pork).\n\nFrom this grew the famed (or notorious) old-school Roman dishes of the quinto quarto, or \"fifth quarter\": offal and throw-away parts that were left after the butchers had sold the best cuts to paying customers. This gave birth to coda alla vaccinara (oxtail stewed with celery and tomatoes), pasta with pajata (baby lamb or calf intestines with the mother's milk still inside), coratella (a mix of lamb innards including heart), and trippa alla romana (tripe boiled in a savory tomato sauce).\n\nBut Roman cuisine takes as much from the sea as it does from land, as the Mediterranean\u2014Ostia and Fiumicino being the closest towns\u2014is only 25 kilometers (15 mi) from the city center. A variety of fish, including seabass, turbot, and gilthead bream, is served in local restaurants, cooked simply in the oven, on the grill, or baked in a salt crust. And crustaceans, from gamberetti (baby shrimp) to scampi (langoustines) to spiny lobster are served alongside a family of calamari, cuttlefish, octopus, and small and large versions of everything in between.\n\nAnd the produce! Heading to an outdoor market anywhere in the city will educate you on exactly what is in season at the moment, and what the bounties of Italy, and particularly the Lazio region (where Rome is located) have to offer. Rome has always loved its greens, whether it's chicory or spinach or arugula, or dandelion, beet or broccoli greens. Not to mention beans (string, fava, and broad, to name a few), as well as squash, zucchini, pumpkins, broccoli, and agretti, a staunchly Roman green that resemble sturdy chives and taste more like spinach\u2014if you ask for it outside of Rome, vendors will look at you as if you come from another planet.\n\nSpeaking of outside of Rome, the most delicious strawberries (and teeny, fragrant wild strawberries) of the region come from Nemi, a hill town in the Castelli Romani outside of the city. Rome in the summer has an abundance of stone fruits and seasonal treats (fresh plums, apricots, and figs are nothing like their dried counterparts and should be tasted to be believed), and great citrus in cooler months, like the sweet-tasting, beautiful blood oranges arriving daily from Sicily, which are often fresh-squeezed and served in tall glasses at Roman caff\u00e8.\n\n### Eating Local\n\nLike the Florentines with their cuisine and the Milanese with theirs, Romans go out to eat expecting to \"eat local.\" Forget about Thai stir-frys or Brazilian-style steaks, even the bollito (boiled meats) from Bologna or the cuttlefish risotto from Venice are regarded as \"foreign\" food. But Rome is the capital city, and the influx of immigrants from other regions of the country is enough to insure there are more variations on the Italian theme in Rome than you'd find anywhere else in the country: Sicilian, Tuscan, Pugliese, Bolognese, Marchegiano, Sardinian, and northern Italian regional cuisines are all represented. And, reflecting the increasingly cosmopolitan nature of the city, you'll find a growing number of good-quality international food here as well, particularly Japanese, Indian, and Ethiopian.\n\n### Delicious D\u00e9cor?\n\nOddly enough for a nation that prides itself on bella figura (\"looking good\"), most Romans don't care about the background music, other people's personal space, the lighting, or the fanfare of d\u00e9cor. After all, dining al fresco in Rome can place you smack dab in the middle of a glorious Baroque painting.\n\nWhile the city has some pretty restaurants, and legendary ones that are noted for their historic surrounds\u2014Romolo's, Osteria del Orso, and the Casino Valadier pavilion in the Pincio park\u2014you'll lose count of the osterias that have walls lined with cheap reproductions of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling or Raphael's cherubic angels. You'll have to overlook the garish lighting that illuminates pallid skin and every wrinkle and blemish you never knew you had.\n\nThe best, most legendary places are almost always overstuffed, with uncomfortable seating and harried service\u2014and there are never enough menus to go around.\n\nBut if you can get past this, if you can look beyond the trappings as Romans do, you can eat like an emperor\u2014or at least a well-fed member of the Roman working class\u2014for very little money. Then, the comraderie and friendships and conversations that arise are just a bonus; it's not unusual to share wine with neighbors, or have a forkful of pasta offered to you by the old man sitting on his own at the next table (he probably eats here three times a week). You'll discover there is unmeasurable joy in allowing someone to fare una scarpetta (literally \"make a little shoe,\" meaning to sop up sauce with a piece of bread) in your pasta bowl, if only for the satisfied grin on the person's face afterward.\n\n##  Planning\n\n### Eating Out Strategy\n\nWhere should we eat? With hundreds of eateries competing for your attention, it may seem like a daunting question. But fret not\u2014our expert writers and editors have done the legwork. The 100-plus selections here represent the best the city has to offer, from caff\u00e8 and gelaterias to formal alta cucina restaurants.\n\nSearch our Best Bets feature for top recommendations by price, cuisine, and experience. Sample local flavor in the neighborhood features, or find a review quickly in the listings. They're organized alphabetically within each neighborhood. Delve in and enjoy! Buon Appetito!\n\n### Restaurant Types\n\nUntil relatively recently, there was a distinct hierarchy delineated by the names of Rome's eating places. A ristorante was typically elegant and expensive; a trattoria served more traditional, home-style fare in a relaxed atmosphere; an osteria was even more casual, essentially a wine bar and gathering spot that also served food, although the latest species of hip wine bars is now called an enoteca. The terms still exist but the distinction has blurred considerably. Now, an osteria in the center of town may be pricier than a ristorante across the street.\n\n### How to Order: From Primo to Dolce\n\nIn a Roman sit-down restaurant, whether a ristorante, trattoria, or osteria, you're expected to order at least a two-course meal. It could be a primo (first course, usually pasta or an appetizer) with a secondo (second course, which is really a \"main course\" in English parlance, usually meat or fish); an antipasto (starter) followed by a primo or secondo; or a secondo and a dolce (dessert). Many people consider a full-rounded meal to consist of a primo, a secondo, and a dolce. If you're in a rush, however, many people only order two of these three courses.\n\nIn a pizzeria, it's common to order just one dish. The handiest places for a snack between sights are bars, caff\u00e8, and pizza al taglio (by the slice) shops. Bars are places for a quick coffee and a sandwich, rather than drinking establishments.\n\nA caff\u00e8 (caf\u00e9) is a bar but usually with more seating. If you place your order at the counter, ask if you can sit down: some places charge more for table service. Often you'll pay a cashier first, then give your scontrino (receipt) to the person at the counter who fills your order.\n\nIt was not so long ago that the wine you could get in Rome was strictly local; you didn't have to walk far to find a restaurant where you could buy wine straight from the barrel then sit down to drink and nibble a bit. The tradition continues today, as many Roman wine shops also serve food, and are called enotecas (wine bars). Behind the bar you'll find serious wine enthusiasts\u2014maybe even a sommelier\u2014with several bottles open to be tasted by the glass. There are often carefully selected cheeses and cured meats, and a short menu of simple dishes and desserts, making a stop in an enoteca an appealing alternative to a three-course restaurant meal.\n\n### Meal Times and Closures\n\nBreakfast (la colazione) is usually served from 7 am to 10:30 am, lunch (il pranzo) from 12:30 pm to 2:30 pm, dinner (la cena) from 7:30 pm to 11 pm. Peak times are around 1:30 pm for lunch and 9 pm for dinner.\n\nEnotecas (wine bars) are sometimes open in the morning and late afternoon for snacks. Most pizzerias open at 8 pm and close around midnight\u20131 am. Most bars and caff\u00e8 are open from 7 am to 8 or 9 pm.\n\nAlmost all restaurants close one day a week (in most cases Sunday or Monday) and for at least two weeks in August. The city is zoned, however, so that there are always some restaurants in each zone that remain open, to avoid tourists (and residents) getting stuck without any options whatsoever.\n\nAlso keep in mind that the laws are in the process of changing in Rome, giving proprietors more leeway in their opening and closing hours. The law is meant to enable places to stay open later, to make more money in a down economy and to offer patrons longer hours and more time to eat, drink, and be merry. It has yet to be seen whether or not Italians will find the law \"flexible\" and use it as an excuse to also close early when they feel like it. E' tutto possible: anything's possible in Rome.\n\n### Prices\n\nMost restaurants have a \"cover\" charge, usually listed on the menu as pane e coperto. It should be modest (\u20ac1\u2013\u20ac2.50 per person) except at the most expensive restaurants. Some restaurants instead charge for bread, which should be brought to you (and paid for) only if you order it. When in doubt, ask about the cover policy before ordering. Note that the price of fish dishes is often given by weight (before cooking); the price on the menu will be for 100 grams, not for the whole fish. An average fish portion is about 300 grams.\n\n### Tipping and Taxes\n\nAll prices include tax. Restaurant menu prices include servizio (service) unless indicated otherwise. It's customary to leave a small tip (from a euro to 10% of the bill) in appreciation of good service. Tips are always given in cash, and cannot be added to a bill paid for by credit card, as is standard in the United States.\n\n### With Kids\n\nIn restaurants and trattorias you may find a high chair or a cushion for the child to sit on, but there's rarely a children's menu. Order a mezza porzione (half portion) of any dish, or ask the waiter for a porzione da bambino (child's portion).\n\n### What to Wear\n\nWe mention dress only when men are required to wear a jacket or a jacket and tie. Keep in mind that Italian men never wear shorts in a restaurant or enoteca (wine bar) and infrequently wear sneakers or running shoes, no matter how humble the establishment. The same \"rules\" apply to ladies' casual shorts, running shoes, and flip-flop sandals. Shorts are acceptable in pizzerias and caff\u00e9.\n\n##  Pantheon, Navona, Trevi, and Quirinale\n\nThese central areas see as many tourists as they do locals, but the heart of the centro storico (historic center) beats here in these narrow vicoli (side streets) and grand piazze.\n\nBetween the piazzas and cobblestone back streets leading to and from these public gathering spots, you have the widest range of culinary offerings. Here one finds some of Rome's best pizza, in no-frills pizza joints where the waiters scribble the bill on your paper tablecloth. Yet here you also find some of the city's most revered gourmet temples, featuring star chefs, inventive cuisine, and decidedly higher bills placed on the finest high-thread-count damask tablecloths. Quite a range, and yet this coexistence of high- and lowbrow is decidedly Roman.\n\nThe Troiani brothers at Il Convivio (Vicolo dei Soldati 31 | 06\/6869432) have been running what is essentially a high altar to alta cucina (haute cuisine) for many years, where revering top-notch ingredients is an art form. Pizzas are the thing at the famed Da Baffetto (Via Governo Vecchio 114 | 06\/6861617), where there's always a line.\n\n### Roman Pizza 101\n\nThe concept is simple: Naples may lay claim to the invention of pizza, but to many pizza purists, Rome perfected the dish. Roman pizza has a thin crust, which makes it important that the crust has the right ratio of crisp-to-chewy. Toppings are spare and of high quality. And, of course, the wood-burning ovens that reach extremely high temperatures are of the utmost importance (look for a sign stating they use wood-burning ovens: forno a legno). Since they're so hot, they're usually fired up only in the evenings, which is why Roman pizzerias serving pizza tonda (whole rounds) are open exclusively for dinner.\n\nAs a dominant force in the capital city's dining scene for two decades, chef and restaurateur Angelo Troiani speaks to us about his cooking style, his adopted home city, and pleasing even the toughest food lovers.\n\nQ: Can you tell us a bit about your cooking style?\n\nA: My cooking is healthy, above all else. It's not about being organic, which it often is, but that's not the focus. Primary materials are paramount, but it's also about letting the food be what it is, and tweaking it as little as possible.\n\nQ: Why did you decide to set up shop in Rome?\n\nA: Though I grew up in Le Marche, my mother's family is from Rome, so it was like coming home in a way. I opened the restaurant with my two brothers, 20 years ago. Back then, Rome was just a beautiful place, a sleeping giant, with so much history. I felt there was a lot of opportunity and potential, and still do.\n\nQ: What was your impetus for opening a second restaurant in Rome?\n\nA: I wanted to create a different dining experience, and to compete with myself, in a way, as a challenge. Acquolina (Via Antonio Serra 60 | 06\/3337629) specializes in seafood, so it's very different from Convivio (Vicolo dei Soldati 31 | 06\/6869432). Restaurants are like children: having two is more challenging than having one, but it's also more rewarding. As for Rome, the city has \"woken up\" and so many entities are reinvesting in Rome; everyone wants to be here.\n\nQ: Who dines at Convivio and Acquolina?\n\nA: Of course we have an international clientele whose first priority is great food. At the same time, we have a very loyal Roman and Italian customer base that we turn to as a measure of our success. If the Italians, who can be tough critics, are happy, we know we're doing something right.\n\n### Aperitivo Time\n\nHead to Via Governo Vecchio, a narrow, medieval street off Piazza Navona, to find charming spots for a pre-dinner aperitivo or an after-dinner cocktail. Cul de Sac (Piazza di Pasquino 73 | 06\/68801094) serves tasty nibbles\u2014from an enormous cheese and salumi selection to baba ghanouj and pat\u00e9s\u2014with its extensive wine list, which is why its deservedly famous all over Rome. Il Piccolo (Via Governo Vecchio 74 | 06\/68801746 ), a diminutive wine bar, named for its teeny space, seats groups of people around tiny marble-topped tables. The Abbey Theatre Pub (Via Governo Vecchio 51 | 06\/6861341) screens top sports events. Fluid (Via Governo Vecchio 46\/47 | 06\/6832361) is a great spot for an aperitivo, like the classic Italian negroni or a glass of prosecco, or a late night mojito or caipiroska. Sitting on glowing glass \"ice cubes\" ups the kitsch fun factor.\n\n##  Campo de' Fiori and Ghetto\n\nRoman cuisine meets Jewish cuisine at the historical crossroads between Campo de' Fiori and the Ghetto.\n\nThese two adjacent neighborhoods represent the coming-together of a raucous carnevale-like people parade, and the reverential preservation of tradition. Campo de' Fiori has always been the secular crossroads of the city: even in ancient Rome, pilgrims would gather here to eat, drink, and be merry. Across Via Arenula, the Ghetto is home to Europe's oldest Jewish population, living in Rome uninterrupted for more than 2,000 years and, along the way, Jewish cooks helped to create staple dishes that became part of the Roman culinary canon. After centuries, both neighborhoods still define Roman cooking. Campo de' Fiori has always been one of the city's biggest open-air produce markets, and today's shoppers include local chefs who head here to concoct menus based on what looks good at the market that day. The Ghetto, on the other hand, has some great restaurants not just along its main drag, Via del Portico d'Ottavia, but also hidden in the narrow backstreets that wind between the river, Via Arenula, and Piazza Venezia.\n\n### Guanciale and Anchovies\n\nVariations on cured pork, such as guanciale (pig's cheek), prosciutto (smoked ham), and pancetta (bacon), are signature flavorings for Roman dishes, found at butchers like Viola (Campo de' Fiori 43, Campo de' Fiori | 06\/68806114) and food shops like Roscioli (Via del Giubbonari 21-22\/A, Campo de' Fiori | 06\/6875287). When Jewish culinary culture started intermingling with Roman, it was discovered that Jewish cooks used alici (anchovies) to flavor dishes the way Romans used cured pork. For great-quality anchovies, check out the Jewish alimentari (food shops) in the Ghetto.\n\n### It's the Little Things\n\n#### On the Go: At the Forno\n\nSometimes the most satisfying meal you can grab on the go\u2014and on the cheap\u2014is from the forno, or bakery.\n\nIl Forno di Campo de' Fiori (Campo de' Fiori 22, Campo de' Fiori | 06\/68806662) is easily the most popular bakery in the area, and their outstanding pizzas\u2014bianca (white) and rossa (red)\u2014leave you happily wondering how something so simple can be so flavorful. For kosher, the 100-year-old Antico Forno del Ghetto (Piazza Costaguti 30, Ghetto | 06\/68803012) offers tasty bianca and rossa pizzas, as well as a crusty bread that they refer to as ossi (\"bones\").\n\n#### Artichokes: alla Romana and alla Giudia\n\nIf there's one vegetable Rome is known for, it's the artichoke, or carciofo. The artichoke itself is a globe artichoke that's larger and leafier than most other, tulip-shaped varieties. In Rome, two preparations are prized. The classic carciofo alla Romana is stuffed with wild mint, garlic, and pecorino and then braised in olive oil, white wine, and water. The carciofo alla Giudia is deep-fried twice, so it opens like a flower, the outer leaves crisp and golden brown in color, while the thistle's heart remains tender. Either option is unforgettable.\n\nWhen artichokes are \"in season\" they're served everywhere. For a good traditional Roman artichoke, go to Ar Galletto (Piazza Farnese 102, Campo de' Fiori | 06\/6861714) or Da Sergio (Vicolo delle Grotte 27 | 06\/6864293). For the best Giudia, you'll have to try Da Giggetto (Via Portico d'Ottavia 21A-22, Ghetto | 06\/6861105) or Piperno (Monte Cenci 9, Ghetto | 06\/6833606) and decide on a winner for yourself, or head to Sora Margherita (Piazza delle Cinque Scole 30, Ghetto | 06\/6874216), a delicious little hole-in-the-wall, to try them side by side.\n\n### Forno vs. Pasticceria\n\nForno means \"oven\" in Italian, but it's also the word for a bakery that specializes in bread and simple baked goods, like biscotti and pine nut tarts. The pasticceria, on the other hand, specializes in more complicated Italian sweets, like fruit tarts, montebianco (a chestnut-cream creation resembling an alpine mountain), and millefoglie (puff pastry layered with pastry cream). Straddling the line between the forno and the pasticceria, on the \"main drag\" of the Ghetto, Pasticceria Boccioni (Via del Portico d'Ottavia 1 | 06\/6878637)\u2014commonly known as Forno del Ghetto (aka \"The Burnt Bakery,\" for the dark brown crust most everything here seems to have\u2014is famed for being the only establishment that makes some Roman Jewish specialties. One delight is Rome's most delicious ricotta cheesecake, filled with cherries or chocolate, baked in an almondy crust. (Try to get there early on Friday as they sell out before closing for the Sabbath.)\n\n##  Monti, Esquilino, Repubblica, and San Lorenzo\n\nThese distinctly different neighborhoods encompass the best mischia, or mix, of traditional Italian and ethnic cuisines in all of Rome.\n\nMonti is a chic, slightly bohemian, boutique-clad neighborhood with the best offerings of ethnic restaurants in the centro\u2014from the Pan-Asian-Mediterranean seafood at F.I.S.H. (Via dei Serpenti 16 | 06\/47824962) to Punjab Indian at Maharajah (Via dei Serpenti 124 | 06\/4747144).\n\nEsquilino is Rome's main ethnic artery, containing many tourist traps, but also some real gems, like the Italian Bistr\u00f2 (Via Palestro 40 | 06\/44702868) and the Mercato Esquilino (Via Principe Amedeo), a market for Italian, Asian, and African specialties.\n\nYou'll find a lot of hotels (and unremarkable food) in Repubblica, just north of Termini station. Head east of the station, to San Lorenzo, to sample Rome's university quarter and hipster 'hood. It is worth an evening trip for the burrata (a creamier mozzarella-like cheese) and puff pastry at the sophisticated Uno e Bino (Via degli Equi 58 | 06\/4466702) and the orrechiette (ear-shaped pasta) with clams and broccoli at Tram Tram (Via dei Reti 44 | 06\/490416).\n\n### Perfect Pizza\n\nPizza is sold on practically every block in Rome, and while hardly any of it is bad, you might be wondering: Where's the best stuff? Here's where: La Gallina Bianca (Via A. Rosmini 5, Esquilino | 06\/4743777) for classic thin-crust Roman pizza; La Soffitta (Via dei Villini 1\/e, Esquilino | 06\/4404642 ) for Neapolitan-certified thick, crispy-crust pizza; Formula Uno (Via degli Equi 13, San Lorenzo | 06\/4453866) for thin crusts and a feeding frenzy; Panella bakery (Via Merulana 54, Esquilino | 06\/4872435) for delicious slices to go; Pizzeria Il Veliero (Via Emanuele Filiberto 199 | 06\/77209570) specializes in Sicilian pizza.\n\n### Vini, Formaggi, and Antipasti\n\nWine, cheese, and assorted cured meats are the star items on the best of the district's enoteche (wineshops) menus. Enoteca Trimani (Via Goito 20, San Lorenzo | 06\/4469661), the oldest wine shop in Rome, dates back to 1821 and stocks more than 4,000 labels from around the world. The Trimani family also owns the highly regarded Trimani Il Wine Bar (Via Cernia 37B, San Lorenzo | 06\/4469630) around the corner where you can wine and dine with the best selections in town. Closer to the centro, Cavour 313 (Via Cavour 313, Monti | 06\/678 5496) offers more than 25 wines by the glass, plus an array of gourmet cheese and meat plates.\n\n### To Market, To Market\n\nLong known as the people's market of Rome, the Mercato Esquilino (Via Principe Amedeo) has, in recent years, become even more eclectic and egalitarian. This is not your mamma's market, where you see the same Italian ingredients as everywhere else (as beautiful and high-quality as they may be). Here, African vegetable vendors sell yams and okra; Asian vendors sell rice noodles and miso paste, vinegars and lemongrass. Halal butchers abut macellerie specializing in pig parts. The seafood hall teems with vendors\u2014Bangladeshi, Chinese, Italian\u2014hawking fish and shellfish; some live, and some already filleted, some gorgeous and some...not so gorgeous. And yes, Italian vendors still sell their many varieties of tomato, eggplant, zucchini, pizza and bread, and lots of specialties. A trip to this market is an incredibly energizing experience, allowing shoppers a window onto the daily life of the many diverse locals that make up the Eternal City.\n\n##  Veneto, Borghese, and Spagna\n\nThe exclusive neighborhoods of Via Veneto, Villa Borghese, and the Tridente encompass an area of Rome densely populated by deluxe hotels and Rome's upscale shopping district.\n\nThe area around Via Veneto, the Villa Borghese Park, and Spagna (from Piazza del Popolo down the length of Via di Ripetta, over to Via del Tritone and up to the Spanish Steps) could be considered Rome's downtown, for its business district, though its feeling is much more uptown. It's also the city's fashion epicenter, housing the likes of the Valentino and Fendi headquarters.\n\nWorkday lunchtime offerings include classic trattorias and chic caff\u00e8 like Caf\u00e9 Canova-Tadolini (Via del Babuino 150A | 06\/32110702), where you can get a nibble, salad, or plate of pasta in a gorgeous sculpture atelier setting. Come sundown, the options increase as modern trattoria-pizzerias like 'Gusto and ReCaf\u00e9 throng with tastemakers and young professionals. Perennial hot spots include Nino and Dal Bolognese. And the upscale hotels in the area\u2014the Hassler, Hotel Eden, and Hotel de Russie\u2014offer great aperitivi in their distinguished bars.\n\n### Empire of \"Taste\"\n\nWhen 'Gusto (Piazza Agusto Imperatore 9 | 06\/3226273) opened in the late '90s, the concept was new to Rome: a sprawling ground-floor pizzeria, a wine bar with nibbles, and an upstairs upscale restaurant, all in one space. It caught on quickly, and they added on a store selling cookware, cookbooks, and a variety of kitchen tools. The pizzeria offers a popular buffet-style lunch popular with nearby office workers. Or try the always-packed Gusto\u2013Osteria (Via della Frezza 16 | 06\/32111482), around the corner, which offers plenty of snack-size tasting portions, even for pastas and secondi.\n\n### Sweet and Sour\n\nAs Rome claims the oldest continuous Jewish population in Europe, so Roman cuisine has been influenced by this 2,000-year-old legacy. Keeping the Sabbath and not being able to work (which includes cooking) from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday gave rise to many of the dishes in the Roman Jewish repertoire that are prepared ahead, sometimes marinated, and served at room temperature. Heavily influential on Roman cuisine are the ingredients Jews favored, including eggplant, pumpkin, fennel, and that most Roman of vegetables, carciofi, the big, round bulb artichokes, served up fried, alla giudea (Jewish style) or braised (Roman style). And when you see the pairing of raisins and pine nuts in Roman food, this is a holdover from the love of agrodolce, or sweet-and-sour, brought to the Italian continent from Sicily and originally from the Iberian peninsula by Jews who fled Spain during the Inquisition.\n\n##  Vatican, Borgo, and Prati\n\nThe Vatican is the heart of ecclesiastical Rome, and this part of the city has a more serious, less chaotic feel to it.\n\nThe massive and awe-striking St. Peter's Basilica dominates the landscape; the streets are teeming with clergy; and despite herds of tourists, it's somehow less chaotic, better organized, and maybe even a little more civilized than classical Rome.\n\nOutside the Vatican walls lies the little nabe of Borgo, a residential zona buzzing with typical Roman life, and home to some genuinely good restaurants off the usual tourist radar.\n\nPrati is a little farther up the river, and known as something of a retail-shopping hot zone for both Romans and foreign visitors\u2014clothes, handbags, shoes, perfume, makeup, and more.\n\nPrati is also known\u2014especially among Romans\u2014for a nice handful of interesting foodie spots, from hidden gems of trattorias to high-quality artisanal gelaterie\u2014so don't omit it from your itinerary, just because you may not have heard anything about it.\n\n### Foodie Finds\n\nVia Cola di Rienzo is home to two of Rome's best specialty shops.\n\nFranchi (Via Cola di Rienzo 204, Prati | 06\/6874651) is a gastroshop that sells high-quality cured meats, Italian cheeses, wines, pastas, and fresh truffles.\n\nJust next door, Castroni (Via Cola di Rienzo 196\/198, Prati | 06\/6874383) is well-known among expats for its imported foreign foods from the United States, Great Britain, Asia, India, and Latin America.\n\nIt also well known for its impressive selection of candies, preserves, olive oils, and vinegars.\n\n### Traditional Fare with Flair\n\nMany tourists think the area around the Vatican is rip-off central when it comes to drinking and dining. Despite the overwhelming number of tourist trap-torias, the Borgo and Prati are home to many restaurants revered by Romans in the zona and beyond.\n\nGirarrosto (Via Germanico 56, Prati | 06\/39725717): The Tuscan region is known for its generous cuts of quality meat, and this Prati restaurant is renowned for grilling up the best Tuscan beef in Rome. Treat yourself to the Fiorentina steak.\n\nVelando (Borgo Vittorio 26, Borgo | 06\/68809955): Departing from the usual Roman fare, the owners of this restaurant serve up traditional dishes from their hometown of Val Camonica in northern Italy. Try the pizzocheri, a buckwheat ribbon pasta\u2014you likely won't find it anywhere else in Rome.\n\nSettembrini (Via Luigi Settembrini 25, Prati | 06\/3232617): Chef Mark Poddi uses Moroccan inspiration to give Italian cuisine a new taste. Try his couscous and tajine, his fresh and affordable Friday fish menu, or the plentiful aperitivo, snacks served with an early evening cocktail.\n\n#### The Secret's in the Sauce\n\nWhat may appear to the naked eye of a non-Italian as plain, old spaghetti with red sauce, is actually pasta all'amatriciana or matriciana\u2014a more sophisticated dish with a complexity of flavor owing to an important ingredient: guanciale. The English translation\u2014cured pig jowl\u2014is unappetizing, but once you taste a guanciale-flavored sauce, you'll understand why Romans swear by it. You'll find it used in dishes at virtually every trattoria in Rome, but two of the most savory and delicious versions of it are made in Prati at Dino & Tony (Via Leone IV 60, Prati | 06\/39733284) and the 100-year-old Il Matriciano (Via dei Gracci 55, Prati | 06\/3213040), whose signature dish is\u2014you guessed it\u2014the classic pasta alla Matriciana.\n\n### Artigianale\n\nThe artisanal food movement, which focuses on craftsmanship and often emphasizes local products, has made its way to Rome, and many Roman specialists are in and around Prati. Pizza expert Gabriele Bonci has breathed new life into the same-old storefront pizzeria al taglio (by-the-slice pizza joint) at Pizzarium (3 Via della Meloria | 06\/39745416). Bonci collects yeast from centuries-old sourdough starters from southern Italian villages, and has his flour stone ground by a specialist in Piemonte. The dough is thicker than that of traditional Roman slices, but this Roman rebel thinks the proof is in . . . well, the pizza.\n\nGelateria dei Gracchi (272 Via dei Gracchi | 06\/3216668) is a favorite among Roman foodies. Try the pistachio gelato, which uses Sicilian pistacchi Bronte from Mt. Etna. Seasonal flavors also abound, like wild strawberry in late spring, when the nearby hillside town of Nemi is awash in berry red.\n\n##  Trastevere and Gianicolo\n\nThe new Trastevere is awash in fantastic foodie haunts. After a long lunch, work off the calories by hiking up the Gianicolo hill for the most breathtaking views of the city.\n\nTrastevere means \"across the Tiber river\" and is a neighborhood that's always been known for its \"otherness.\" In recent years, however, it has undergone a transformation, trading in its old-school bohemian roots for something trendier and more upscale. The maze of cobbled streets that was once home to working-class people, artists, and foreigners has experienced a real estate boom, and is now lined with so many trattorias and wine bars that it's starting to feel a bit like a Roman gastro-theme park.\n\nWhile the explosion of hip new places to wine and dine may have had some negative effects on this old village, Trastevere's gritty charm still prevails. The Gianicolo is more subdued, but some of the restaurants at the top are definitely worth hiking all the way up the hill for (of course, you can also go easy on yourself and take a cab or bus).\n\n### Peppery Pasta\n\nCacio e pepe is a simple pasta dish from the cucina povera, or rustic cooking, tradition.\n\nIt's also a favorite Roman primo, usually made with tagliatelle (a long, flat noodle), tonnarelli (a narrower squarish noodle), or spaghetti, which is then coated with pecorino cheese and a generous amount of freshly ground black pepper.\n\nRoma Sparita (Piazza Santa Cecilia 24 | 06\/5800757), on the quiet side of Trastevere beyond Viale di Trastevere, makes one of the city's best cacio e pepes, and they serve it in an edible bowl of paper-thin, baked cheese. Mamma mia!\n\n### Smile and Say \"Formaggio\": The Best Cheeses in Rome\n\nThe \"trinity\" of cheeses most used in cucina romana are mozzarella, ricotta, and pecorino romano. Here's why these varieties can make or break a true Roman dish.\n\n#### Mozzarella\n\nTrue mozzarella di bufala, made from water buffalo milk, comes from the Campania area, between Rome and Naples. You'll know it by its distinctive flavor and its soft consistency. Reverential treatment is given to fresh mozzarella in its many forms at \u014cbik\u0101 (Piazza di Firenze at Via dei Prefetti, Pantheon | 06\/6832630), which is basically a mozzarella bar based on the sushi bar format. Compare and contrast different mozzarella types from different areas paired with delicious accompanying salumi (cured meats) and salads.\n\n#### Ricotta\n\nThis versatile fresh cheese is used in both sweet and savory dishes. As a savory ingredient, it's used as a filling in ravioli and stuffed pastas and as an accompaniment to various vegetable dishes. The taste varies depending upon the kind of milk it's made from. The famed ricotta cheesecake puts Rome's love of ricotta on the dessert table, and the cheese is even sometimes served with little tampering\u2014a touch of golden honey or some fresh Roman mentuccia, wild Roman mint.\n\n#### Pecorino Romano\n\nA pecora is a sheep, so technically any cheese made from sheep's milk is a pecorino cheese, and most other regions have their own version of a local pecorino. But pecorino romano, the hard, aged cheese grated over Roman pasta dishes, is perhaps the most famous of all pecorinos. With a telltale black rind and pale color, it can be found in most food shops in the city. Some say this most Roman of cheeses is much like the Romans themselves: sharp and salty. But it marries beautifully with the gutsy flavors with which it's often paired.\n\n### Bohemian Rhapsody\n\nTrastevere has always been a bohemian bastion, densely packed with inexpensive Roman pizzerias, trattorias, and countless bars filled with artists and local characters.\n\nBar San Calisto (Piazza di San Calisto 3 | 06\/5835869) is the classic bohemian Trastevere bar. The drinks are cheap, the tables difficult to snag, and the piazza in front swollen with local pierced and tattooed fringe types. Surprisingly, the hot chocolate and chocolate gelato here are some of the best in the city.\n\nThe owners of Freni e Frizioni (Via del Politeama 4 | 06\/58334210 | www.freniefrizioni.com) know how to capture a bohemian crowd. The aperitivo here is abuzz most nights of the week, with free nibbles to accompany the mojitos and negronis. The locale's grit remains despite the shabby-chic interior: the space is a converted auto garage.\n\n##  Colosseo, Aventino, and Testaccio\n\nThese neighborhoods are considered the archaeological and the working-class centers of the city, where dining among the ruins takes on a whole new meaning.\n\nPerhaps the most iconic image of Rome since ancient times has been the Colosseum. It's most charming by night. A plate of pasta at Ai Tre Scalini (Via SS. Quattro Coronati 30 | 06\/7096309), just steps from the Colosseum, or a glass of wine and some nibbles at Cavour 313 (Via Cavour 313 | 06\/67855496), will make you feel unabashedly Roman. For a special Roman evening, head to San Teodoro (Via dei Fienili 50 | 06\/6780933), where the food is delicious, and descending from the piazza after dinner, one practically stumbles upon the back side of the Roman Forum and Campidoglio.\n\nIf you go to the Testaccio neighborhood in the south of the city, dine at Checchino dal 1887 (Via di Monte Testaccio 30 | 06\/5746318). It's an only-in-Rome experience, as the restaurant is carved out of Monte Testaccio, a mountain composed of strata of shards of ancient Roman ceramics.\n\n### Taking Home a Taste of Rome\n\nVolpetti (Via Marmorata 153 | 06\/5742352) is probably Rome's most famous and best-loved alimentari, or specialty foods shop. Located on an old passageway between the Tiber River and the Testaccio area, this shop is a family affair. Its jocular owners are highly knowledgeable about their products. They give samples of everything, and will tell you why Sicilian cow's milk cheese is square (round cheeses roll on ships), why aged balsamic vinegar is so delicious, and what makes some chocolates better quality than others. They'll even vacuum-pack and wrap everything you purchase.\n\n### The Ancient Quartiere and its Cuisine\n\nTestaccio, the neighborhood at the southernmost tip of the city, is the place to go for old Roman cuisine. You'll need to take a cab to this out-of-the-way spot, which once was a center of ancient trade along the Tiber River. It is considered one of the most authentically Roman zonas\u2014the Romani di Roma (real Romans) hail from this part of town; to wit, the very popular AS Roma soccer team was founded right in this neighborhood.\n\nHead first to Piazza Testaccio to experience an authentic farmers' market, the Mercato di Testaccio, where Italian housewives haggle over the price of vegetables and butchers cut meat to order. (This market will be moving a few blocks down into a spanking new covered market setup\u2014an improvement, or messing with tradition? We'll wait to see . . . ). Appropriately enough, this area once was a major butchering center: the old slaughterhouse nearby has been converted and now houses modern art galleries and live music venues.\n\nIn keeping with that tradition, Testaccio is the birthplace of some of the most famous\u2014and infamous\u2014dishes in the cucina romana repertoire, those of the quinto quarto, or \"fifth quarter\": offal and throwaway parts.\n\nIn Testaccio restaurants, you'll find dishes like coda alla vaccinara: a sweet-and-sour stew made of oxtail with tomatoes and celery, and seasoned with garlic, pancetta, and a touch of cocoa (all cooked a day in advance so the flavors can marry). Another favorite is rigatoni alla pajata: pasta with baby lamb or calf intestines that still hold the mother's milk. Cooking the intestines coagulates the milk, creating creamy cheese curds, which are then stewed in tomato sauce. Other common dishes are coratella, a mix of lamb innards including heart, with artichokes; and trippa alla romana, tripe stewed in a savory tomato sauce. Just a note: Most of these dishes are rarely translated properly on English menus, so forewarned is forearmed.\n\n### Sushi Spots\n\nThe area in and around Testaccio boasts some particularly popular places for dining with chopsticks and here are just a few of our favorites:\n\nSushisen (Via Giuseppe Giuietti 21 | 06\/5756945) is an authentic Japanese eatery featuring freshly prepared sushi. In the dining room, a conveyor belt carries Asian goodies like tempura shrimp and panko-breaded chicken with a sweet-spicy dipping sauce.\n\nBishoku Kobo (Via Ostiense 110b | 06\/5744190) is a local favorite, which means it's always crowded. Be prepared to wait if you haven't made a reservation. Sushi \"boats\" and noodle dishes are on offer.\n\nTrendy Ketumbar (Via Galvani 24 | 06\/57305338) is many things: bar, restaurant (serving both Italian fare and sushi), and club after dinner hours. Built into Monte Testaccio, the setting is breathtaking.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPantheon, Navona, Trevi, and Quirinale | Campo de' Fiori and Ghetto | Monti, Esquilino, Repubblica, and San Lorenzo | Veneto, Borghese, and Spagna | Vatican, Borgo, and Prati | Trastevere and Gianicolo | Colosseo, Aventino, and Testaccio | Beyond the City Center\n\n##  Pantheon, Navona, Trevi, and Quirinale\n\n### Pantheon\n\nFodor's Choice |  Armando al Pantheon.   \n$$ | ROMAN | Right in the shadow of the Pantheon sits this wonderful trattoria, open since 1961. It gets its fair share of tourists, perhaps more at lunch when groups of sightseers need to take a break, and this spot is conveniently located, and highly recommended. But there's always a buzz here and an air of authenticity, witnessed by Roman antique shop owners who have been coming here to dine once a week for 25 years. You can tell these older gentlemen who come here to enjoy a four-course meal . . . and scold the waitress, by name, when she brings coffee before the profiteroles. This is just the place to try Roman artichokes or vignarola (a fava bean, asparagus, pea, and guanciale stew) in the spring, or the wild boar bruschetta in winter. Pastas are filling and great, and secondi deliver all the Roman staples: oxtail, baby lamb chops, tripe, meatballs, and other hearty fare. If you have room, try the blueberry panna cotta for a sweet ending. | Average cost: \u20ac35 | Salita dei Crescenzi 31, Pantheon | 00186 | 06\/68803034 | www.armandoalpantheon.it | Closed Sun. No dinner Sat.\n\nEnoteca Corsi.   \n$ | ITALIAN | Very convenient to the historic center for lunch or an afternoon break, this little hole-in-the-wall looks like it missed the revolution; renovations were done a few years back but it's hard to imagine unless you knew the place before. Prices and decor are come una volta (like once upon a time) when the shop sold\u2014as the sign says\u2014wine and oil. The genuinely dated feel of the place has its charm: you can still get wine here by the liter, or choose from a good variety of fairly priced alternatives in bottles. The place is packed at lunch, when a few specials\u2014classic pastas and some second dishes like veal roast with peas\u2014are offered. | Average cost: \u20ac28 | Via del Ges\u00f9 88, Pantheon | 00186 | 06\/6790821 | Closed Sun. No dinner.\n\nGrano.   \n$$$ | MODERN ITALIAN | Light, bright, and happy: that's the setting for this restaurant in a pretty piazza down the street from the Pantheon. The outdoor tables are truly pleasant on a sunny day, and inside, the decor\u2014splashy abstract drawings, high-tech lights, and whitewashed bookcases\u2014lends a Milanese sophistication to the dining rooms. A nice wine from the well-stocked cellar, and you're off, with inventive starters like the polpetti di brasato (slow-cooked braised beef made into breaded meatballs topped with a zingy green sauce). And the first courses really shine, mingling meat and seafood and vegetables with aplomb (the gnocchi with clams and sea beans was fresh and delicious). Second courses include tuna steak with caponata and roast chicken, simple and good, but not as interesting as most of the primi. Desserts are tasty and the setting calls for slow sipping of dessert wines and post-prandial digestivi. | Average cost: \u20ac48 | Piazza Rondanini 53, Pantheon | 00186 | 06\/68192096 | www.ristorantegrano.it.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Hostaria dell'Orso.   \n$$$$ | MODERN ITALIAN | Back in the Hollywood-on-the-Tiber 1950s, this was the place to be. Everyone from Sophia Loren to Aristotle Onassis reveled in the historic setting: a 15th century palazzo straight out of a Renaissance painting, replete with dark wood-beam ceilings, Gothic fireplaces, terra-cotta floors, and frescoes restored to their original glory. Today, after several fallow decades, a face-lift has brightened the salons with bright orange leather chairs and blue glass goblets. Even more up-to-the-second is the menu fashioned by Italian superchef Gualtiero Marchese. The alta cucina deftly utilizes many simple ingredients (like top-quality baby pig or black cod) and just a handful of ingredients\u2014some very Italian, others more esoteric\u2014to tease out as much flavor as possible. One artfully presented dinner included a kidney risotto with Provolone cheese fondue and liquorice dust, a pigeon wth peanut sauce and Java black pepper, and a cr\u00e8me br\u00fbl\u00e9e with coffee parfait, chocolate ice cream, and cotton candy. To further shake things up, there's a piano bar and disco on other floors within the building, so why not dance off this once-in-lifetime feast at Cabala, the club upstairs, with a nightcap? | Average cost: \u20ac95 | Via dei Soldati 25c, Piazza Navona | 00186 | 06\/68301192 | www.hdo.it | Reservations essential Jacket required | Closed Sun.\n\nIl Bacaro.   \n$$ | MODERN ITALIAN | With a handful of choice tables set outside against an ivy-draped wall, this tiny candlelit spot not far from the Pantheon makes for an ideal evening, equally suited for a romantic twosome or close friends and convivial conversation. Pastas\u2014like orecchiette (little ear-shaped pasta) with broccoli and sausage, a dish that lip-smacks of Puglia\u2014are star players. As a bonus, the kitchen keeps its clients from picking at each other's plates by offering side dishes of all the pastas ordered among those at the table. The choice main courses are mostly meat\u2014the beef fillet with balsamic vinegar or London broil\u2013style marinated in olive oil and rosemary are winners. | Average cost: \u20ac45 | Via degli Spagnoli 27, Pantheon | 00186 | 06\/6872554 | www.ilbacaro.com | Reservations essential | Closed Sun. and 1 wk in Aug. No lunch Sat.\n\nMaccheroni.   \n$$ | ROMAN | This boisterous, convivial trattoria north of the Pantheon makes for a fun evening out. The decor is basic: white walls with wooden shelves lined with wine bottles, blocky wooden tables covered in white butcher paper\u2014but there's an \"open\" kitchen (with even the dishwashers in plain view of the diners) and an airy feel that attracts a young clientele as well as visiting celebrities. The menu sticks to Roman basics such as simple pasta with fresh tomatoes and basil, or rigatoni alla gricia (with bacon, sheep's-milk cheese, and black pepper). The specialty pasta, trofie (short pasta twists) with a black truffle sauce, inspires you to lick your plate. Probably the best choice on the menu is the tagliata con rughetta, a juicy, two-inch-thick steak sliced thinly and served on arugula. | Average cost: \u20ac45 | Piazza delle Coppelle 44, Pantheon | 00186 | 06\/68307895 | www.ristorantemaccheroni.com | Reservations essential.\n\n### Navona\n\nBirreria Peroni.   \n$ | NORTHERN ITALIAN | With its long wooden tables, hard-back booths, and free-flowing beer, this casual restaurant in a palazzo from the 1500s seems to belong more to the genre of Munich beer hall than popular Roman hangout. But let's remember that far to the north of Rome lies a part of Italy in which the people speak as much German as they do Italian, and the simple food seems more tedesco than italiano. It's from this place that Birreria Peroni draws its inspiration, and the goulash and the many sausage specialties\u2014with sauerkraut and potatoes, of course\u2014certainly provide a nice respite from pasta and tomato sauce. Top tip: this is one of the few places in the historic center where you can eat at very economic prices and fill up on good old-fashioned protein. | Average cost: \u20ac25 | Via di San Marcello 19, Navona | 00187 | 06\/6795310 | www.anticabirreriaperoni.it | Reservations not accepted | Closed Sun. and Aug. No lunch Sat.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Cul de Sac.   \n$$ | WINE BAR | This popular wine bar near Piazza Navona is among the city's oldest enoteche and offers a book-length selection of wines from Italy, France, the Americas, and elsewhere. Food is eclectic, ranging from a huge assortment of Italian meats and cheeses (try the delicious lonza, cured pork loin, or speck, a northern Italian smoked prosciutto) to various Mediterranean dishes, including delicious baba ghanoush, a tasty Greek salad, and a spectacular wild boar p\u00e2t\u00e9. Outside tables get crowded fast, so arrive early, or come late, as they serve until about 1 am. | Average cost: \u20ac35 | Piazza Pasquino 73, Piazza Navona | 00186 | 06\/68801094 | www.enotecaculdesac.com | Reservations not accepted | Closed 2 wks in Aug.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Da Baffetto.   \n$ | PIZZA | Down a cobblestone street not far from Piazza Navona, this is Rome's most popular pizzeria and a summer favorite for street-side dining. The debate is constant whether or not this spot is massively overrated, but as with all the \"great\" pizzerias in Rome, it's hard to argue with the line that forms outside here on weekends. Happily, outdoor tables (enclosed and heated in winter) provide much-needed additional seating and turnover is fast (and lingering not encouraged). Baffetto 2, at Piazza del Teatro di Pompeo 18, is an extension of the pizzeria with the addition of pasta and secondi\u2014and doesn't suffer from the overcrowding of the original location. | Average cost: \u20ac22 | Via del Governo Vecchio 114, Navona | 00186 | 06\/6861617 | No credit cards | Closed Aug. and Tues. No lunch Mon.\u2013Fri.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Etabl\u00ec.   \n$$$ | MEDITERRANEAN | On a narrow vicolo off beloved Piazza del Fico, this multidimensional locale serves as a lounge-bar, and becomes a hot spot by aperitivo hour. Beautifully finished with vaulted wood-beam ceilings, wrought-iron touches, plush leather sofas, and chandeliers, it's all modern Italian farmhouse chic. In the restaurant section (the place is sprawling), it's minimalist Proven\u00e7al hip (etabli is French for the regionally typical tables within). And the food is clean and Mediterranean, with touches of Asia in the raw fish appetizers. Pastas are more traditional Italian, and the secondi run the gamut from land to sea. The place fills up by dopo cena (\"after dinner\") when it becomes a popular spot for sipping and posing. | Average cost: \u20ac55 | Vicolo delle Vacche 9\/a, Navona | 00186 | 06\/6871499 | www.etabli.it | Closed Sun. in summer, Mon. in winter.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Il Convivio.   \n$$$$ | MODERN ITALIAN | In a tiny, nondescript vicolo north of Piazza Navona, the three Troiani brothers\u2014Angelo in the kitchen, and brothers Giuseppe and Massimo presiding over the dining room and wine cellar\u2014have quietly been redefining the experience of Italian eclectic alta cucina (haute cuisine) for many years. Antipasti include a selection of ultra-fresh raw seafood preparations in the mixed crudi, while a \"carbomare\" pasta is a riff on tradition, substituting pancetta with fresh fish roe and house-cured bottarga (salted fish roe). Or opt for one of the famed signature dishes, including a fabulous version of a cold-weather pigeon main course prepared four different ways. Service is attentive without being overbearing, and the wine list is exceptional. It is definitely a splurge spot. | Average cost: \u20ac110 | Vicolo dei Soldati 31, Navona | 00186 | 06\/6869432 | Reservations essential | Closed Sun., 1 wk in Jan., and 2 wks in Aug. No lunch.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Il Pagliaccio.   \n$$$$ | MODERN ITALIAN | To find some of the latest spins on Roman alta cucina (haute cuisine), you might be surprised to head to a hidden back street nestled between the upscale Via Giulia and the popular piazzas of Campo de' Fiori and Navona. But that is where widely traveled chef Anthony Genovese has come to roost, after garnering his first Michelin star at luxe and lavish Palazzo Sasso hotel on the Amalfi Coast. Born in France to Calabrese parents, and having worked in such far-flung places as Japan and Thailand, it's no surprise to note Genovese's love of unusual spices, \"foreign\" ingredients, and Eastern preparations. These have not only gained him a loyal following but more prized Michelin stars. As a result, prices here are fairly exorbitant, but dishes like pasta bundles filled with onion, tapioca, and red currants in a saffron broth; or duck with black salsify, caramelized pear, and chocolate sauce are well worth it. Desserts are also expertly executed as well, thanks to Alsatian Marion Lichtle. For the full Genovese feast, go for one of his tasting menus. | Average cost: \u20ac120 | near Piazza Navona | 06\/68809595 | Reservations essential | Closed Sun. and Mon. and 3 wks in Aug. No lunch Tues.\n\nLa Montecarlo.   \n$ | PIZZA | Run by the niece of the owner of the pizzeria Da Baffetto, La Montecarlo has a similar menu and is almost as popular as its relative around the corner. Pizzas are super-thin and a little burned around the edges\u2014the sign of a good wood-burning oven. It's one of few pizzerias open for both lunch and dinner. | Average cost: \u20ac20 | Vicolo Savelli 13, Navona | 00186 | 06\/6861877 | No credit cards | Closed 2 wks in mid-Aug. and Mon. Nov.\u2013Apr.\n\nFodor's Choice |  La Rosetta.   \n$$$$ | SEAFOOD | Chef-owner Massimo Riccioli took the nets and fishing gear off the walls of his parents' trattoria to create what is widely known as the place to go in Rome for first-rate seafood. But beware: the staff may be friendly and the fish may be of high quality, but the preparation is generally very simple, and the prices can be numbingly high. Start with the justifiably well-known selection of marinated seafood appetizers, like carpaccios of fresh, translucent fish drizzled with olive oil and perhaps a fresh herb. Pastas tend to mix shellfish, usually with a touch of oil, white wine, and lemon. Simple dishes such as the classic zuppa di pesce (fish soup) deserve star billing under the title of secondi\u2014and command star prices. | Average cost: \u20ac120 | Via della Rosetta 9, Navona | 00186 | 06\/6861002 | www.larosetta.com | Reservations essential | Jacket required | Closed Sun. and 3 wks in Aug.\n\nObika.   \n$$ | ITALIAN | If you've ever wanted to take in a \"mozzarella bar,\" here's your chance. Mozzarella is featured here much like sushi bars showcase fresh fish\u2014even the decor is modern Japanese minimalism\u2013meets\u2013ancient Roman grandeur. The cheese, in all its varieties, is the focus of the dishes: there's the familiar cow's milk, the delectable water buffalo milk varieties from the Campagnia region, and the sinfully rich burrata from Puglia (a fresh cow's milk mozzarella encasing a creamy center of unspun mozzarella curds and fresh cream). They're all served with various accompanying cured meats, vegetables, sauces, and breads. An outdoor deck is a great spot for dining alfresco. Also visit the new, super-central smaller location in Campo de'Fiori (corner of Via dei Baullari | 06\/68802366) and the one in posh Parioli (Via Guido d'Arezzo 49 | 06\/685344184). Indeed, the concept has been such a success that other locations recently opened in cities from Florence and Istanbul to midtown Manhattan and L.A. | Average cost: \u20ac45 | Piazza di Firenze 26, Navona | 00186 | 06\/6832630 | www.obika.it.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Osteria dell'Ingegno.   \n$$$ | MODERN ITALIAN | This casual, yet trendy place is a great spot to enjoy a glass of wine or a gourmet meal in an ancient piazza in the city center. The cheery, modern interior decor\u2014walls made vibrant with modern paintings by local artists and lots of colorful glass bottles\u2014and hip young waiters will bring you back to the present day. So, too, will the simple but innovative menu, including dishes like the panzanella salad, the beef tagliata with red wine reduction and potato tortino, and the perfectly cooked duck breast with a seasonal fruit sauce. Outdoor tables from April to October make you feel as if you're on an opera stage set, for your perch looks out over the Tempio d'Adriano (built in AD 145). If ever there was a place to linger outdoors over limoncello, this is it. | Average cost: \u20ac50 | Piazza di Pietra 45, Pantheon | 00186 | 06\/6780662 | Closed Sun. and 2 wks in Aug.\n\n### Quirinale\n\nTullio.   \n$$$ | TUSCAN | Just off Piazza Barberini sits this Tuscan-accented upscale trattoria. The decor is basic wood paneling and white linens, with the requisite older\u2014and often grumpy\u2014waiters. The menu is heavy on Tuscan classics such as white beans and the famed bistecca alla fiorentina, a carnivore's dream. Meat dishes other than beef, such as lamb and veal, are also dependably good. The homemade pappardelle al cinghiale (wide, flat noodles in a tomato and wild boar sauce) are delectable. A few key Roman dishes and greens are offered, like brocoletti, saute\u00e9d to perfection with garlic and olive oil. The wine list favors robust Tuscan reds and thick wallets. | Average cost: \u20ac60 | Via San Nicola da Tolentino, near Piazza Barberini, Quirinale | 00175 | 06\/4745560 | www.tullioristorante.it | Closed Sun. and Aug.\n\n* * *\n\nGelaterie: A National Obsession\n\nFor many travelers, the first taste of gelato\u2014Italian ice cream\u2014is one of the most memorable moments of their Italian trip. Almost a cross between regular American ice cream and soft serve, gelato's texture is lighter and fluffier than hard ice cream because of the process by which it's whipped when freezing. Along with the listings here, you can find a number of gelaterias in Via di Tor Millina, a street off the west side of Piazza Navona, where there are also a couple of good places for frozen yogurt and delicious frullati\u2014shakes made with milk, crushed ice, and fruit of your choosing.\n\nIl Gelato di San Crispino.   \nPerhaps the most celebrated gelato in all of Italy are created here at San Crispino. Without artificial colors or flavors, these scoops are worth crossing town for\u2014nobody else creates flavors this pure. Flavors like chocolate rum, armagnac, and ginger-cinnamon keep taste buds tap-dancing. And to preserve the \"integrity\" of the flavor, the ice cream is only served in paper cups. New locations behind the Pantheon (Piazza della Maddalena 3) and San Giovanni (Via Acaia 56) are proof that the word is getting out and the empire is growing. | Via della Panetteria 54, Piazza di Trevi | 00183 | 06\/6793924 | www.ilgelatodisancrispino.it | Closed Tues.\n\nGiolitti.   \nFor years Giolitti was considered the best gelateria in Rome, and it's still worth a stop if you're near the Pantheon. It's best known for its variety of fresh seasonal fruit flavors, which taste like the essence of the fruits themselves. | Via degli Uffici del Vicario 40, Pantheon | 00186 | 06\/6991243.\n\nDella Palma.   \nClose to the Pantheon on a street just north of the Piazza della Rotonda, Della Palma serves 100 flavors of gelato, and for sheer gaudy display and range of choice it's a must. It also offers a colorful selection of bulk candy, as well as several flavors of granita on rotation. | Via della Maddalena 20\/23, Pantheon | 00186 | 06\/68806752.\n\nCremeria Monteforte.   \nImmediately beside the Pantheon is Cremeria Monteforte, which has won several awards for its flavors. Also worth trying is its chocolate sorbetto\u2014it's an icier version of the gelato without the dairy (except, of course, for the whipped cream you'll want them to plop on top)! | Via della Rotonda 22, Pantheon | 00186 | 06\/6867720.\n\nFiocco di Neve.   \nDon't miss the fabulous granita di caff\u00e8 (coffee ice slush) here as well as a big scoop of gelato\u2014the chocolate chip and After Eight (mint chocolate chip) flavors are delicious. | Via del Pantheon 51, Pantheon | 00186 | No phone.\n\nGelateria alla Scala.   \nThis may be a tiny place but don't let the size fool you. It does a good business offering artisanal gelato prepared in small batches, so when one flavor runs out on any given day, it's finished. | Via della Scala 51, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/5813174 | Closed Dec. and Jan.\n\nCremeria Ottaviani.   \nThis old-fashioned gelateria is noted for its excellent granita di caff\u00e8. | Via Leone IV 83\/85, Vatican | 00192 | 06\/37514774 | Closed Wed.\n\nPellacchia.   \nOn Prati's main shopping street, Pellacchia is a classic artigianale (homemade) ice-cream parlor that has been going since the 1920s. | Via Cola di Rienzo 3\u20135, Prati | 00192 | 06\/3210807 | Closed Mon.\n\nAl Settimo Gelo.   \nLocated in Prati, this spot has been getting rave reviews for both classic flavors and newfangled inventions such as cardamom, chestnut, and ginger. | Via Vodice 21\/a, Prati | 00195 | 06\/3725567 | www.alsettimogelo.it.\n\n* * *\n\n##  Campo de' Fiori and Ghetto\n\n### Campo de' Fiori\n\nFodor's Choice |  Acchiappafantasmi.   \n$ | PIZZA | This popular pizzeria near Campo de' Fiori offers pizza\u2014and much more. In addition to the traditional margherita and capricciosa, you'll find a spicy pizza with chili peppers and hot salami, and their prizewinning version with buffalo mozzarella and cherry tomatoes, shaped like a ghost (a theme throughout, hence the name, which means \"Ghostbusters\"). Appetizers are just as delicious\u2014as well as the traditional fried goodies and Calabrese specialties. The menu includes a variety of items not standard to pizzerias, such as a version of eggplant Parmesan with prosciutto and egg, and tongue-tingling spicy nibbles. True to the owners' Calabrian roots, they offer spicy homemade 'nduja, a spreadable sausage comprised of pork and chili pepper at a ratio of 50\/50\u2014not for the weak of constitution! | Average cost: \u20ac18 | Via dei Cappellari 66, Campo de' Fiori | 00186 | 06\/6873462 | www.acchiappafantasmi.it | Closed Mon. and 1 wk in Aug.\n\nAlberto Pica.   \n$ | CAF\u00c9 | This artisan is renowned for his artisanal gelato production and selection of seasonal sorbetti and cremolate (like sorbetto but made with the fruit pulp, not the juice). An interesting gelato flavor to try here is the riso a cannella, like a cinnamon rice pudding. These are possibly the grumpiest bar owners in Rome, so remember: in, out, and nobody gets hurt. | Average cost: \u20ac4 | Via della Seggiola 12, Campo de' Fiori | 00186 | 06\/6868405 | Closed Sun. and 2 wks in Aug.\n\nBoccondivino.   \n$$$ | MODERN ITALIAN | The four pillars around which the structure is built are ancient Roman, but when you walk through the 16th-century door, it's clear that Boccondivino (\"divine mouthful\") is all about the here-and-now, with the animal-print chairs and glass-fronted dining room. The outdoor seating in the intimate piazzetta out front is a great summer spot. This is also the perfect place for a dinner date. Start, perhaps, with a smoked swordfish served with peppery Roman arugula, candied citrus, and parmigiano cheese, then move on to (or split) the delicious pasta with pesto, shrimp, and cherry tomatoes. Then go for a secondo\u2014like the perennial sliced beef tagliata with veggies and balsamic, or southern Italian pezzogna fish (like a plump snapper) in acqua pazza\u2014a fish broth seasoned with tomato and a pinch of spicy chile pepper. Kudos for offering a bit more variety in the dessert category beyond the same-old Italian standards. | Average cost: \u20ac55 | Piazza Campo Marzio 6, Campo de' Fiori | 00186 | 06\/68308626 | www.boccondivino.it | Closed Sun. and 3 wks in Aug.\n\nDa Sergio.   \n$ | ROMAN | Every neighborhood has at least one old-school Roman trattoria and, for the Campo de' Fiori area, Da Sergio is it. Once you're seated (there's usually a wait), the red-and-white-check paper table-covering, bright lights, '50s kitsch, and the stuffed boar's head on the wall remind you that you're smack in the middle of the genuine article. Go for the delicious version of pasta all'amatriciana, or the generous helping of gnocchi with a tomato sauce and lots of Parmesan cheese, served, as tradition dictates, on Thursday. | Average cost: \u20ac25 | Vicolo delle Grotte 27 | 00186 | 06\/6864293 | Closed Sun. and 2 wks in Aug.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Ditirambo.   \n$$ | ITALIAN | Don't let the country-kitchen ambience fool you. At this little spot off Campo de' Fiori, the constantly changing selection of offbeat takes on Italian classics is a step beyond ordinary Roman fare. The place is usually packed with diners who appreciate the adventuresome kitchen, though you may overhear complaints about the brusque service. Antipasti can be delicious and unexpected, like Gorgonzola-pear souffl\u00e9 drizzled with aged balsamic vinegar, or a mille-feuille of eggplant, wild fennel, and anchovies. But people really love this place for rustic dishes like osso buco, Calabrian eggplant \"meatballs,\" and hearty pasta with rabbit rag\u00f9. Vegetarians will adore the cheesy potato gratin with truffle shavings. Desserts can be skipped in favor of a digestivo. | Average cost: \u20ac40 | Piazza della Cancelleria 74, Campo de' Fiori | 00186 | 06\/6871626 | www.ristoranteditirambo.it | Closed Aug. No lunch Mon.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Filetti di Baccal\u00e0.   \n$ | ITALIAN | For years, Dar Filettaro a Santa Barbara (to use its official name) has been serving just that\u2014battered, deep-fried fillets of salt cod\u2014and not much else. You'll find no-frills starters such as bruschette al pomodoro (garlic-rubbed toast topped with fresh tomatoes and olive oil), saut\u00e9ed zucchini, and, in winter months, the cod is served alongside puntarelle, chicory stems tossed with a delicious anchovy-garlic-lemon vinaigrette. The location, down the street from Campo de' Fiori in a little piazza in front of the beautiful Santa Barbara church, begs you to eat at one of the outdoor tables, weather permitting. Long operating hours allow those still on U.S. time to eat as early (how gauche!) as 6 pm. | Average cost: \u20ac18 | Largo dei Librari 88, Campo de' Fiori | 00186 | 06\/6864018 | No credit cards | Closed Sun. and Aug. No lunch.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Il Sanlorenzo.   \n$$$$ | SEAFOOD | This revamped, gorgeous space\u2014think chandeliers and soaring original brickwork ceilings\u2014houses one of the better seafood spots in the Eternal City. Tempting tasting menus are on offer, as well as \u00e0 la carte items like a wonderful series of small plates in their crudo (raw fish) appetizer, which can include a perfectly seasoned fish tartare trio, sweet scampi (local langoustines), and a wispy-thin carpaccio of red shrimp. The restaurant's version of spaghetti with lobster is an exquisite example of how this dish should look and taste (the secret is cooking the pasta in a lobster stock). Try a main course of a freshly caught seasonal fish prepared to order. Menu items often change based on the chef's whim and the catch of the day. | Average cost: \u20ac85 | Via dei Chiavari 4\/5, Campo de' Fiori | 00186 | 06\/6865097 | www.ilsanlorenzo.it | No lunch Sat.\u2013Mon.\n\nL'Angolo Divino.   \n$ | WINE BAR | There's something about this cozy wine bar that feels as if it's in a small university town instead of a bustling metropolis. Serene blue-green walls lined with wood shelves of wines from around the Italian peninsula add to the warm atmosphere. Smoked fish, cured meats, cheeses, and salads make a nice lunch or light dinner, and the kitchen stays open until the wee hours. Ask about tasting evenings dedicated to single grape varieties or regions. | Average cost: \u20ac25 | Via dei Balestrari 12, Campo de' Fiori | 00186 | 06\/6864413 | Closed 1 wk in Aug. No dinner Mon.\n\nMonserrato.   \n$$ | SEAFOOD | In a high-rent area dense with design stores, antiques shops, and jewelers, this simple spot is just a few steps from elegant Piazza Farnese and yet happily devoid of throngs of tourists. Monserrato's signature dishes are its fish specials: carpaccio di pesce (fresh fish carpaccio, served with lemon and arugula), insalatina di seppie (cuttlefish salad), bigoli con gamberi e asparagi (homemade pasta with shrimp and asparagus), and grilled fish that are simple but very satisfying. There's also a nice antipasto assortment so you can eat your share of veggies as well. Select a nice white from the Italo-centric wine list and when the weather heats up, you can enjoy it all with a breeze at umbrella-covered tables on the small, adjacent piazza. | Average cost: \u20ac45 | Via di Monserrato 96, Campo de' Fiori | 00186 | 06\/6873386 | Closed Mon. and 1 wk at Christmas.\n\nOsteria La Quercia.   \n$$ | ITALIAN | The beautiful Piazza della Quercia was once devoid of any restaurants, until this casual trattoria opened its doors. Now diners can sit under the gorgeous looming oak tree that lends the square its name. Its menu is simple\u2014the usual suspects include fried starters like stuffed zucchini flowers and baccal\u00e0, as well as Roman pasta dishes like spaghetti carbonara and amatriciana. Main dishes include baby lamb chops, involtini (thinly sliced beef stuffed with herbs and bread crumbs, rolled and baked), and meatballs in tomato sauce. The ubiquitous Roman saut\u00e9ed cicoria (chicory) with olive oil and chili pepper is a good choice for a green side. Service is friendly and allows for lingering on balmy Roman afternoons and evenings\u2014so close, and yet so seemingly far from the chaos of nearby Campo de'Fiori. | Average cost: \u20ac35 | Piazza della Quercia 23, Campo de' Fiori | 00186 | 06\/68300932 | www.laquerciaosteria.com.\n\nRoscioli.   \n$$$ | WINE BAR | More like a Caravaggio painting than a place of business, this food shop and wine bar is dark and decadent. The shop in front beckons with top-quality comestibles: wild Alaskan smoked salmon, hand-sliced prosciutto from Italy and Spain, more than 300 cheeses, and a dizzying array of wines. Venture farther inside to be seated in a wine cavelike room where you'll be served artisanal cheeses and salumi, as well as an extensive selection of unusual menu choices and interesting takes on classics. Try the caprese salad with DOC buffalo milk mozzarella, fresh and roasted tomatoes with bread crumbs and pistachios, or go for pasta with bottarga (dried mullet roe) or Sicilian large fusilli with swordfish, eggplant, and cherry tomatoes. The menu is further divided among meats, seafood (including a nice selection of tartars and other crudi raw fish preparations), and vegetarian-friendly items. TIP Book ahead to reserve a table in the cozy wine cellar beneath the dining room. And afterward head around the corner to their bakery for rightfully famous breads and sweets. | Average cost: \u20ac65 | Via dei Giubbonari 21\/22, Campo de' Fiori | 00186 | 06\/6875287 | www.anticofornoroscioli.com | Closed Sun.\n\nTrattoria Moderna.   \n$$ | ITALIAN | The space is as the name implies\u2014modern, with high ceilings, and done in shades of beige and gray\u2014and an oversize chalkboard displays daily specials, such as a delicious chickpea and baccal\u00e0 (salt cod) soup. The food runs toward the traditional but with a twist, like a pasta all'amatriciana with kosher beef instead of the requisite guanciale (cured pork jowl). Main courses are more creative, as well as more hit-or-miss. The jumbo shrimp in a cognac sauce with couscous was tasty, but the scant four shrimp a drawback. The trattoria gets an \"A\" for effort, with its friendly serving staff and very reasonable prices, and an extra bonus is the outdoor seating\u2014a few tables surrounded by greenery, off the lovely cobblestone street. | Average cost: \u20ac40 | Vicolo dei Chiodaroli 16, Campo de' Fiori | 00186 | 06\/68803423.\n\n### Ghetto\n\nAl Pompiere.   \n$$$ | ROMAN | The entrance on a narrow side street leads you up a charming staircase and into the main dining room of this neighborhood favorite, all white tablecloths and high arched ceilings. Its Roman Jewish dishes, such as fried zucchini flowers, battered salt cod, and gnocchi, are all consistently good and served without fanfare on white dishes with a simple border. There are also some nice, historic touches like a beef-and-citron stew that comes from an ancient Roman recipe of Apicius. And if you come across the traditional Roman porchetta (roasted suckling pig) special, make sure to order it before it runs out\u2014it is truly divine. In 2004, there was a terrible fire in a shop below the restaurant, but the kitchen was soon back in business, though the irony here is as thick as the chef's tomato sauce: Al Pompiere means \"the fireman.\" | Average cost: \u20ac55 | Via Santa Maria dei Calderari 38, Ghetto | 00186 | 06\/6868377 | Closed Sun. and Aug. and 1 wk in Jan.\n\nBa' Ghetto.   \n$$ | ITALIAN | This hot spot is a welcome addition to the main promenade in the Jewish ghetto. The decor is smart in its black-and-white-with-turquoise-touches look, and outdoor seating in warmer months is a great option in this historic stretch of the district. The kitchen is kosher (many places featuring Roman Jewish fare are not), serves meat dishes, and not only do they feature an assortment of Roman Jewish delights, they also offer a variety of Mediterranean-Middle Eastern Jewish fare. Enjoy starters like phyllo \"cigars\" stuffed with ground meat and spices, or the brik\u2014egg and tomato wrapped in phyllo triangles and briefly fried. There's a nice assortment of pasta dishes, but we advise going for main plates like the assortment of couscous dishes (the spicy seafood is delicious), or baccal\u00e0 with raisins and pine nuts. Interesting sides like chicory with bottarga (cured mullet roe) round out the meal. Note the strictly adhered-to hours: Saturday night, the restaurant posts post-Sabbath\/sundown opening times to the minute on a blackboard out front. Check out their latest addition to the ghetto's main drag, with the unfortunate name of Ba'Ghetto Milky (Via del Portico d'Ottavia 2\/a)\u2014it's the kosher dairy version of the original. | Average cost: \u20ac45 | Via del Portico d'Ottavia 57, Ghetto | 00186 | 06\/68892868 | www.kosherinrome.com | No dinner Fri. No lunch Sat.\n\nPiperno.   \n$$$ | ROMAN | The place to go for Rome's extraordinary carciofi alla giudia (fried whole artichokes), Piperno has been in business for more than a century. The location, up a tiny hill in a piazza tucked away behind the palazzi of the Jewish Ghetto, lends the restaurant a rarefied air. It's a popular location for Sunday brunch. Try the exquisite prosciutto and mozzarella di bufala plate, the fiori di zucca ripieni e fritti (fried stuffed zucchini flowers), and filetti di baccal\u00e0 (fillet of cod) to start. The display of fresh local fish is enticing enough to lure diners to try offerings from sea instead of land. Service is in the old-school style of dignified formality. | Average cost: \u20ac55 | Monte dei Cenci 9, Ghetto | 00186 | 06\/68806629 | www.ristorantepiperno.it | Closed Mon. and Aug. No dinner Sun.\n\nSora Lella.   \n$$$ | ROMAN | It may not be the most original spot in town, but Sora Lella can boast that it's the only restaurant that is open year-round on Isola Tiburina, the wonderously picturesque island set in the middle of the Tiber River between the Jewish ghetto and Trastevere. The dining rooms on two floors are elegant, and service is discreet. As for the food, try the delicious prosciutto and mozzarella to start, and move on to classics like pasta all'amatriciana, meatballs in tomato sauce, or Roman baby lamb chops. The stuffed calamari in white wine sauce is worthy of facendo una scarpetta\u2014taking a piece of bread to sop up the savory sauce. | Average cost: \u20ac55 | Via di Ponte Quattro Capi 16, Ghetto | 00186 | 06\/6861601 | www.soralella.com | Closed Sun., Tues. lunch, and 3 wks in Aug.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Vecchia Roma.   \n$$$ | SEAFOOD | Though the frescoed dining rooms are lovely, the choice place to dine is outside, under the big white umbrellas, with the baroque Piazza Campitelli unrolling before your eyes. After several decades, this is still considered one of the most solid spots on the Roman culinary scene, just the place to experience an intro to Roman cooking, upper-middle-class style. For appetizers, the seafood selection, which may include an assortment of fresh anchovies in vinegary goodness, seafood salad, or baby shrimp, is always fresh and seasonal. Chef Raffaella generally doles out large portions, so select one of her wonderful pasta dishes or skip straight to the secondi. Though there are meat and veggie dishes on offer, seafood is a house specialty, and simple southern Italian preparations, such as fresh white flaky fish in a potato crust with cherry tomatoes, are excellent no-fail choices. Sample the house-made fruit desserts for a light(ish) finish to the meal, hopefully accompanied by a dramatic sunset over the 17th-century facade of Santa Maria in Campitelli. | Average cost: \u20ac65 | Piazza Campitelli 18, Ghetto | 00186 | 06\/6864604 | www.ristorantevecchiaroma.com | Reservations essential | Closed Wed.\n\n##  Monti, Esquilino, Repubblica, and San Lorenzo\n\n### Monti\n\nCavour 313.   \n$ | WINE BAR | Wine bars are popping up all over the city, but Cavour 313 has been around much longer than most. With a tight seating area in the front, your best bet is to head to the large space in the rear, which is divided into sections with booths that give this bar a rustic feel, halfway to a beer hall. Open for lunch and dinner, it serves an excellent variety of cured meats, cheeses, and salads, with a focus on DOP, organic, and artisanal products. Choose from about 25 wines by the glass or uncork a bottle (there are more than 1,200) and stay a while. | Average cost: \u20ac25 | Via Cavour 313, Monti | 00184 | 06\/6785496 | www.cavour313.it | Closed Aug. No lunch weekends. Closed Sun. and June 15\u2013Sept.\n\nF.I.S.H.   \n$$$ | SEAFOOD | The name stands for Fine International Seafood House, which sums up the kitchen's approach. This is fresh, fresh fish cooked by capable and creative hands\u2014from Italian fish-based pastas to a Thai mollusk soup with lemongrass and coconut milk that awakens the senses. The menu is divided into sections: appetizers, tapas, Asian, and Mediterranean. Seating is divided into the front aqua lounge, the middle sushi bar, and the back dining room, but it is limited, so book ahead. | Average cost: \u20ac60 | Via dei Serpenti 16, Monti | 00184 | 06\/47824962 | www.f-i-s-h.it | Reservations essential | Closed Mon. and 2 wks in Aug. No lunch.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Trattoria Monti.   \n$$ | ITALIAN | Not far from Santa Maria Maggiore, Monti is one of the most dependable, moderately priced trattorias in the city, featuring the cuisine of the Marches, an area to the northeast of Rome. There are surprisingly few places specializing in this humble fare considering there are more people hailing from Le Marche in Rome than currently living in the whole region of Le Marche. The fare served up by the Camerucci family is hearty and simple, represented by various roasted meats and game, and a selection of generally vegetarian timbales and souffl\u00e9s that change seasonally. The region's rabbit dishes are much loved, and here the timballo di coniglio con patate (rabbit casserole with potatoes) is no exception. | Average cost: \u20ac40 | Via di San Vito 13a, Monti | 00189 | 06\/4466573 | Reservations essential | Closed Aug., 2 wks at Easter, and 10 days at Christmas.\n\n### Esquilino\n\nFodor's Choice |  Agata e Romeo.   \n$$$$ | MODERN ITALIAN | For the perfect marriage of fine dining, creative cuisine, and rustic Roman tradition, the husband-and-wife team of Agata Parisella and Romeo Caraccio is the top. Romeo presides over the dining room and delights in the selection of wine-food pairings. And Chef Agata was perhaps the first in the capital city to put a gourmet spin on Roman ingredients and preparations, elevating dishes of the common folk to new levels, wherein familiar staples like cacio e pepe are transformed with the addition of even richer Sicilian aged cheese and saffron. The \"baccala' 5 ways\" showcases salt cod of the highest quality. From antipasti (try the seafood crudo tasting: it's so artfully presented, it's actually served on a glass plate resembling a painter's palette) to desserts, many dishes are the best versions of classics you can get. The prices here are steep, but for those who appreciate extremely high-quality ingredients, an incredible wine cellar, and warm service, dining here is a real treat. | Average cost: \u20ac100 | Via Carlo Alberto 45, Termini | 00185 | 06\/4466115 | www.agataeromeo.it | Reservations essential | Closed weekends, 2 wks in July, and 2 wks in Aug.\n\nLa Gallina Bianca.   \n$$ | PIZZA | This pizzeria's location right down the road from Termini station makes it a perfect place for a welcome-to-Rome meal. A bright, country-cute, noisy locale, La Gallina Bianca attracts a young crowd and serves classic thin-crust pizzas. Try the \"full-moon\" specialty, perfect for cheese lovers, with ricotta, Parmesan, mozzarella, ham, and tomato. There are other menu items available from the trattoria menu for those who may be trying to stick to a less carb-loaded diet. | Average cost: \u20ac30 | Via A. Rosmini 5, Esquilino | 00184 | 06\/4743777 | www.lagallinabianca.com | Closed Aug.\n\nMonte Caruso.   \n$$$ | SOUTHERN ITALIAN | The regional delicacies of certain areas of Italy are grossly underrepresented in Rome. Monte Caruso is truly a standout, as its menu focuses on food from Lucania, an area of Italy divided between the southern regions of Basilicata and Calabria. Homemade pastas have strange-sounding names, such as cautarogni (large cavatelli with Sicilian broccoli) and cauzuni (enormous ricotta-stuffed ravioli), but the dishes are generally simple and hearty. | Average cost: \u20ac50 | Via Farini 12, Esquilino | 00185 | 06\/483549 | www.montecaruso.com | Reservations essential | Closed Sun. and Aug. No lunch Mon.\n\nPrimo.   \n$$$ | ITALIAN | A first for this (still) up-and-coming hipster neighborhood, this is a modern Italian restaurant highlighting local ingredients and simplified cooking techniques. But while the name Primo may reference the primary ingredients that are the focus of the menu, it could just as easily refer to the prime people-watching spot the restaurant enjoys on the 'hood's main drag. The young funky patrons sip from a selection of 250 wines, and nibble on hand-cut prosciutto, anchovy-and-broccoli gratin, and salads with goat cheese and radicchio. Pastas on offer include artichoke tortelli with marjoram and pecorino, and pappardelle with a chicken ragu. Seafood mains, like grilled swordfish with a pistachio sauce are also good choices. Those more carnivorous sink their teeth into the provolone and herb-stuffed veal, or braised beef cheeks with potato puree and artichokes. Desserts are tasty if fairly standard, so why not linger over one of the digestivi instead? | Average cost: \u20ac55 | Via del Pigneto 46, Pigneto | 00010 | 06\/7013827 | www.primoalpigneto.it | Closed Mon.\n\n### Repubblica\n\nTrimani Il Winebar.   \n$$ | WINE BAR | Trimani operates nonstop from 11 am to 12:30 am and serves hot food at lunch and dinner. Decor is minimalist, and the second floor provides a subdued, candlelit space to sip wine. There's always a choice of a soup and pasta plates, as well as second courses and torte salate (savory tarts). Around the corner is a wineshop, one of the oldest in Rome, of the same name. Call about wine tastings and classes (in Italian). | Average cost: \u20ac30 | Via Cernaia 37\/b, Repubblica | 00185 | 06\/4469630 | Closed Sun. and 2 wks in Aug.\n\n### San Lorenzo\n\nAfrica.   \n$$ | ETHIOPIAN | Ethiopia was the closest thing Italy ever had to a \"colony\" at one point. As a result, what Indian food is to London, Ethiopian\/Eritrean food is to Rome. Interesting offerings include braised meat main courses, yogurt-based breakfasts, and vegetarian-friendly stews\u2014all under the category of utensil-free dining. | Average cost: \u20ac35 | Via Gaeta 26\/28, Termini | 00185 | 06\/4941077 | No credit cards | Closed Mon.\n\nFormula 1.   \n$ | PIZZA | Its location in the trendy San Lorenzo neighborhood makes this a particularly convenient stop for dinner before checking out some of the area's way-cool bars. The atmosphere here is casual and friendly\u2014posters of Formula 1 cars and drivers past and present attest to the owner's love for auto racing\u2014and draws students from the nearby university as well as pizza lovers from all over the city. | Average cost: \u20ac18 | Via degli Equi 13, San Lorenzo | 00185 | 06\/4453866 | No credit cards | Closed Sun. and Aug. No lunch.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Tram Tram.   \n$$ | SOUTHERN ITALIAN | The name refers to its proximity to the tram tracks, but could also describe its size, as it's narrow-narrow and often stuffed to the rafters-rafters (in warmer weather, happily, there's a \"side car\" of tables enclosed along the sidewalk). The cuisine is derived from cook's hometown region of Puglia. You'll find an emphasis on seafood and vegetables\u2014maybe prawns with saffron-kissed saut\u00e9ed vegetables\u2014as well as pastas of very particular shapes. Try the homemade orecchiette, ear-shaped pasta, made here with clams and broccoli. Meats tend towards the traditional Roman offerings. No matter where you sit, you'll soon understand why Tram Tram is so snugly packed with satisfied Romans. | Average cost: \u20ac40 | Via dei Reti 44\/46, San Lorenzo | 00185 | 06\/490416 | www.ristorantetramtramroma.com | Reservations essential | Closed Mon. and 1 wk in mid-Aug.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Uno e Bino.   \n$$$ | MODERN ITALIAN | The setting is simple: wooden tables and chairs on a stone floor with little more than a few shelves of wine bottles lining the walls for decor. Giampaolo Gravina's restaurant in this artsy corner of the San Lorenzo neighborhood is popular with foodies and locals alike, as the kitchen turns out inventive cuisine inspired by the family's Umbrian and Sicilian roots. Dishes like octopus salad with asparagus and carrots, and spaghetti with swordfish, tomatoes, and capers are specialties. The Parmesan souffl\u00e9 is a study in lightness, all silky, salty, and absolute perfection. Delicious and simple, yet upscale, desserts cap off the dinner, making this small establishment one of the top dining deals\u2014and pleasurable meals\u2014in Rome. | Average cost: \u20ac60 | Via degli Equi 58, San Lorenzo | 00185 | 06\/4454105 | Closed Mon. and Aug. No lunch.\n\n##  Veneto, Borghese, and Spagna\n\n### Veneto\n\nMoma.   \n$$$ | ITALIAN | Almost a sister in spirit to the Hotel Aleph, a new favorite of the design trendoisie across the street, Moma is modern, moody, and very \"concept.\" The menu has hits and misses, and attempts to raise the nouvelle bar in Rome\u2014foie gras millefoglie with apple slices and cider vinegar gele\u00e9, anyone? Seared scallops, plump and sweet, were a find, and the rigatoni all'amatriciana was tasty. The main dish of Argentinian rib eye with balsamic vinegar was delicious. There are several basic desserts, of which the molten chocolate cake is probably the best, served with pear sorbetto and chocolate sauce. | Average cost: \u20ac55 | Via San Basilio 42\/43, Veneto | 00187 | 06\/42011798 | www.momaristorante.com | Closed Sun. and 2 wks in Aug.\n\nPap\u00e1 Baccus.   \n$$$ | TUSCAN | Italo Cipriani takes his meat as seriously as any Tuscan, using real Chianina beef for the house specialty, the bistecca alla fiorentina, a thick grilled steak served on the bone and rare in the center. Cipriani brings many ingredients from his hometown on the border of Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany. Try the sweet and delicate prosciutto from Pratomagno or the ribollita, a traditional bread-based minestrone soup. Anything that says \"cinta senese\" refers to a special breed of pig\u2014and is worth eating. Tuscans are nicknamed \"the bean eaters,\" and after a taste of the fagioli zolfini (tender white beans), you'll understand why. The welcome is warm, the service excellent, and the glass of prosecco (gratis) starts the meal on the right foot. | Average cost: \u20ac65 | Via Toscana 36, Veneto | 06\/42742808 | www.papabaccus.com | Closed Sun. and 2 wks in Aug. No lunch Sat.\n\n### Borghese\n\nAl Ceppo.   \n$$$ | ITALIAN | The well-heeled, the business-minded, and those of more refined palate frequent this outpost of tranquillity. Its owners hail from Le Marche, the region north and east of Rome that encompasses inland mountains and the Adriatic coastline. These ladies dote on their customers, as you'd wish a sophisticated Italian mamma would. There's always a selection of dishes from their native region, such as olive ascolane (green olives stuffed with ground meat, breaded, and fried), various fresh pasta dishes, succulent roast lamb, and a delicious marchigiano style rabbit, with sundried tomatoes and mushrooms. Other temptations include a beautiful display of seafood and a wide selection of meats ready to be grilled in the fireplace in the front room. | Average cost: \u20ac65 | Via Panama 2, Parioli | 00198 | 06\/8419696 | www.ristorantealceppo.it | Reservations essential | Closed Mon. and 2 wks in Aug.\n\nCasina Valadier.   \n$$$$ | ITALIAN | Every Hollywood movie from Three Coins in the Fountain to the Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone had a scene set here: a splendid pavilion set in the Villa Borghese park and designed by the great neoclassical architect Giuseppe Valadier. Fronted by an Empire-elegant portico and home to grand salons that once welcomed King Farouk of Egypt, Richard Strauss, Gandhi, and Mussolini, \"the most beautiful restaurant in Rome\" finally underwent a major renovation in 2007, with mixed results. The bar area and terrace are still delightful for sipping an expensive, well-made aperitivo but the setting (gorgeous, but even the refurbished interiors could use some upkeep) and magnificent view are not matched by what the kitchen puts out, as quality is inconsistent. Fresh tagliatelle with capon, sweetbreads, and black truffle are truly delicious, but a seafood fregola (Sardinian couscous) is fishy and not Mediterranean-fresh. Main courses are simple, so quality is important, but here again: inconsistent. The wine list is surprisingly moderate on cost and offers a nice variety from up and down the peninsula. The best way to enjoy this spot is to see it both in the daylight and at night, so coming for sunset aperitivi and then gliding into dinner (well lubricated with prosecco?) may be your best bet. | Average cost: \u20ac75 | Piazza Bucarest, Borghese | 00187 | 06\/69922090 | www.casinavaladier.it.\n\nDuke's.   \n$$$ | AMERICAN | It dubs itself a California-style restaurant and bar, although the California rolls have tuna and carrot in them and they've added mint leaves to the Caesar salad. But the truth is, once you look at Duke's menu after a stretch of Italian-only bingeing, you may actually want it all. Perhaps a nice, juicy beef fillet, and the finishing touch of the warm apple pie served with gelato. The decor is Malibu\u2013beach house\u2013minimalist. The outdoor patio in the back is consummately SoCal chic. And up front, opening out onto the street, all the beautiful people from the neighborhood (read: plenty of unnatural blondes) are huddled around the bar, sipping frozen cocktails, the whir of blenders and music blaring in the background. | Average cost: \u20ac50 | Viale Parioli 200, Borghese | 00198 | 06\/80662455 | www.dukes.it | Closed Sat.; June\u2013Sept. closed Sat. and Sun. and 1 wk in Aug.\n\nLa Maremma.   \n$ | PIZZA | This pizza place has been one of the biggest draws in Parioli for years, and its popularity has spawned a second outpost, closer to Via Veneto. Pizzas are available Roman style with a thin crust, or Neapolitan style, thicker and more filling. Outside tables can be had year-round, thanks to heaters that warm the terrace in winter. | Average cost: \u20ac25 | Viale Parioli 93\/c, Parioli | 00198 | 06\/8086002 | Closed Mon. and Aug. No lunch | Average cost: \u20ac25 | Via Alessandria 119\/d, Veneto | 06\/8554002.\n\n### Spagna\n\nCaff\u00e8 Romano dell'Hotel d'Inghilterra.   \n$$$ | ECLECTIC | One of Rome's most soign\u00e9 hotels, the d'Inghliterra houses this standard-issue symphony in beige marbles, beechwood walls, and Tuscan columns. You can tell that jet-setters like this spot\u2014it's got an orario continuato, or nonstop opening hours, from 10 am on, so snacking or having a late lunch is a possibility here. Though its menu claims to be \"global,\" some of the dishes on offer are international misfires, so best bets tend towards the authentic northern Italian meat preparations and southern Italian pasta and seafood dishes. Try interesting selections like the glazed boar with polenta, the guinea hen with stewed chestnuts and bacon, or the seafood soup, as well as a variety of pasta choices. Tables are close together, but perhaps you won't mind eavesdropping on your supermodel neighbor. | Average cost: \u20ac60 | Via Borgongna 4M, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/69981500.\n\nDal Bolognese.   \n$$$$ | EMILIAN | The darling of the media, film, and fashion communities, this classic restaurant on Piazza del Popolo is not only an \"in-crowd\" dinner destination but makes a convenient shopping-spree lunch spot. As the name promises, the cooking adheres to the hearty tradition of Bologna. Start with a plate of sweet San Daniele prosciutto with melon, then move on to the traditional egg pastas of Emilia-Romagna. Second plates include the famous Bolognese bollito misto, a steaming tray of an assortment of boiled meats (some recognizable, some indecipherable) served with its classic accompaniment, a tangy, herby salsa verde (green sauce). During dessert, take in the passing parade of your fellow diners\u2014they love to meet and greet with excessive air kisses. | Average cost: \u20ac75 | Piazza del Popolo 1, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/3611426 | Reservations essential | Closed Mon. and 3 wks in Aug.\n\nEl Toul\u00e0.   \n$$$$ | ITALIAN | One of Rome's more celebrated outposts of luxe, El Toul\u00e0 has the warm, welcoming comforts of a 19th-century country house: white walls, antique furniture in dark wood, framed prints, vaulted ceilings, and Venetian-style lamp shades. Along with the usual suspects of high-roller choices (caviar and blini), the chef offers a menu of contemporary interpretations of Italian classics, as well as those special El Toul\u00e0 dishes with a Venetian slant (the mother restaurant is in Treviso): delicious, expertly prepared risottos, and a nod to the various sea creatures of the Adriatic coast and Venetian lagoon. Note that jacket and tie are required November through February. | Average cost: \u20ac80 | Via della Lupa 29\/b, Spagna | 00186 | 06\/6873750 | www.toula.it | Reservations essential | Closed Sun. and Aug. No lunch Mon. and Sat.\n\nGiNa.   \n$ | CAF\u00c9 | \"Homey minimalism\" isn't a contradiction at this whitewashed caf\u00e8 with a modern edge. The block seats and sleek booths, the single flowers in Mason jars, white chandeliers, and multiplicity of mirrors make this small but multilevel space a tiny gem tucked away on the street leading from Piazza di Spagna. With a menu ranging from various bruschettas to interesting mixed salads, sandwiches, and pastas, this is a top spot for a light lunch or an aperitivo that won't break the bank in this high-end neighborhood. In fact, the best things here are the sweets: gelato, pastries, fruit with yogurt, and even some American pies and cheesecake, along with the best hot chocolate in Rome during the winter. In warmer months, fully stocked gourmet picnic baskets, complete with checked tablecloth, are ready for pick up on your way to the Villa Borghese park. | Average cost: \u20ac25 | Via San Sebastianello 7A, Spagna, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/6780251 | www.ginaroma.com | Open daily 11 am\u20138 pm.\n\n'Gusto.   \n$$ | ITALIAN | There's an urban-loft feel to this trendy two-story space, a bit like Pottery Barn exploded in Piazza Agusto Imperatore (the name of the restaurant is a play on this location and the Italian word for taste\/flavor). The ground floor contains a buzzing pizzeria-trattoria, while upstairs is the more upscale restaurant. We prefer the casual-but-hopping vibe of the ground-floor wine bar in the back, where a rotating selection of wines by the glass and bottle are served up alongside a vast array of cheeses, salumi, and bread products. Lunchtime features a great value salad bar. And for the kitchen enthusiast, the 'Gusto \"complex\" includes a store, selling everything from cookware to cookwear. | Average cost: \u20ac45 | Piazza Augusto Imperatore 9, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/3226273.\n\n'Gusto - Osteria.   \n$$$ | ITALIAN | This is the second sibling in the 'Gusto empire, and they've shifted their focus from cichetti (Venetian-style tapas) to hearty traditional Roman fare. And why not? Romans are traditionalists and regionalists, so When In Rome.... You may want to begin by choosing from the incredible selection of 400 cheeses in the basement cellar, then from the various fritti (fried items), and moving on to pastas such as sheep's milk cheese and pepper spaghetti. Secondi are meats or grilled seafood items, highlighting the simplicity of the cucina romana. The atmosphere is predictably buzzy, and the loftlike, airy space is a refreshing change from the trattoria standard. | Average cost: \u20ac55 | Via della Frezza 16, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/32111482 | www.gusto.it | Reservations essential.\n\nIl Brillo Parlante.   \n$ | WINE BAR | Il Brillo Parlante's location near Piazza del Popolo makes it convenient for lunch or dinner after a bit of shopping in the Via del Corso area. Choose from 20 wines by the glass at the bar or eat downstairs in one of several wood-panel rooms. The menu is extensive for a wine bar; choose from cured meats, crostini (toasted bread with various toppings such as p\u00e2t\u00e9 or prosciutto), pastas, grilled meats, and even pizzas. | Average cost: \u20ac22 | Via della Fontanella 15, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/3243334 | www.ilbrilloparlante.com | Closed Mon. and 1 wk in mid-Aug.\n\nIl Leoncino.   \n$ | PIZZA | Lines out the door on weekends attest to the popularity of this fluorescent-lighted pizzeria in the otherwise big-ticket neighborhood around Piazza di Spagna. This is one of the few pizzerias open for lunch as well as dinner. | Average cost: \u20ac18 | Via del Leoncino 28, Spagna | 06\/6867757 | Closed Wed. and Aug. No lunch Sat. and Sun.\n\nL'Enoteca Antica di Via della Croce.   \n$ | WINE BAR | This wine bar is always crowded, and for good reason. It's long on personality: colorful ceramic-tile tables are always filled with locals and foreigners, as is the half moon\u2013shaped bar where you can order from the large selection of salumi and cheeses on offer. Peruse the chalkboard highlighting the special wines by-the-glass for that day to accompany your nibbles. There's waiter service at the tables in back and out front on the bustling Via della Croce, where people-watching is in high gear. | Average cost: \u20ac20 | Via della Croce 76\/b, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/6790896 | Closed 2 wks in Aug.\n\nMargutta Vegetariano.   \n$$ | VEGETARIAN | Parallel to posh Via del Babuino, Via Margutta has long been known as the street where artists have their studios in Rome. How fitting, then, that the rare Italian vegetarian restaurant, with changing displays of modern art, sits on the far end of this gallery-lined street closest to Piazza del Popolo. Here it takes on a chic and cosmopolitan air, where you'll find meat-free versions of classic Mediterranean dishes as well as more daring tofu concoctions. Lunch is essentially a pasta\/salad bar to which you help yourself, while dinner offers \u00e0 la carte and prix-fixe options. | Average cost: \u20ac40 | Via Margutta 118, Piazza del Popolo | 0018 | 06\/32650577 | www.ilmarguttavegetariano.it.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Nino.   \n$$$ | ITALIAN | A favorite among international journalists and the rich and famous for decades (Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes had their celeb-studded rehearsal dinner here), Nino is Rome's best loved dressed-up trattoria. The decor is country rustic alla Tuscana, complete with carved wood wainscotting, dried flowers, old engravings, and a mellow yellow color on the walls that even Botticelli would have adored. Along with its look (and waiters!), Nino sticks to the classics when it comes to its food, which is basically Roman and Tuscan staples. Kick things off with a selection from the fine antipasto spread, or go for the cured meats or warm crostini (toasts) spread with liver p\u00e2t\u00e9. Move on to pappardelle al lepre (a rich hare sauce) or hearty Tuscan ribollita soup, and go for the gold with a piece of juicy grilled beef. One warning: if you're not Italian, or a regular, or a celebrity, the chance of brusque service multiplies\u2014so insist on good service and you'll win the waiters' respect. | Average cost: \u20ac55 | Via Borgognona 11, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/6786752, 06\/6795676 | www.ristorantenino.it | Closed Sun. and Aug.\n\nTati al 28.   \n$$$ | NORTHERN ITALIAN | This offshoot of the 'Gusto empire focuses specifically on what can be dubbed Italian brasserie fare: basics, including pizza, with an emphasis on northern Italian fare that leans as heavily on French influence as it does on the rest of the Italian peninsula's tradition. The space is a soaring modern spot, like the rest of the 'Gusto siblings, though here there is a concentration on the interplay between black and white, light and dark, with a vibe of urban smart. A sardine appetizer with fried zucchini is a sophisticated Italian version of fish-and-chips. The zuppa di pesce (fish stew) is as packed with flavor as one would hope, and an interesting collection of other northern Italian staple dishes are prettily presented and live up to the visuals with great taste all around. Service can be a bit slow, but hey, the waiters are serious about their bella figura\u2014meaning they look good, so important in Rome. | Average cost: \u20ac50 | Piazza Augusto Imperatore 28, Piazza di Spagna | 00186 | 06\/68134221 | www.gusto.it.\n\n* * *\n\nRefueling the Roman Way\n\nStaggering under the weight of a succession of three-course meals, you may ask yourself, how do the Romans eat so much, twice a day, every day? The answer is, they don't.\n\nIf you want to do as the Romans do, try lunch at a tavola calda (literally, hot table), a cross between a caff\u00e8 and a cafeteria where you'll find fresh food in manageable portions.\n\nThere's usually a selection of freshly prepared pastas, cooked vegetables such as bietola all'agro (cooked beet greens with lemon), roasted potatoes, and grilled or roasted meat or fish.\n\nGo to the counter to order an assortment and quantity that suits your appetite, and pay by the plate, usually about \u20ac5 plus drinks. Tavole calde aren't hard to find, particularly in the city center, often marked with \"tavola calda\" or \"self-service\" signs.\n\nThe other ubiquitous options for a light lunch or between-meal snack are pizza al taglio (by the slice) shops, bars, and enoteche (wine bars). At bars throughout Italy, coffee is the primary beverage served (drinking establishments are commonly known as pubs or American bars); at them you can curb your appetite with a panino (a simple sandwich) or tramezzino (sandwich on untoasted white bread, usually heavy on the mayonnaise).\n\nWine bars vary widely in the sophistication and variety of food available. You can count on cheese and cured meats at the very least.\n\n* * *\n\n##  Vatican, Borgo, and Prati\n\n### Vatican\n\nFodor's Choice |  La Veranda dell'Hotel Columbus.   \n$$$ | ROMAN | Deciding where to sit at La Veranda is not easy, since both the shady courtyard, torch-lit at night, and the frescoed dining room are among Rome's most spectacular settings. While La Veranda has classic Roman cuisine on tap, the kitchen offers nice, refreshing twists on the familiar with an innovative use of flavor combinations. Try the unusual duck leg confit starter, stuffed with raisins and pinenuts with an onion compote and plum sorbet. Or go for the grilled tuna bites with anchovy-caper dumplings and an eggplant torta. Even the pastas are unexpected: saffron fettucine with cuttlefish and zucchini flowers is subtle and elegant\u2014much like the surroundings. Call ahead, especially on Saturday, because the hotel often hosts weddings, which close the restaurant, and you don't want to miss passing a few hours of your Roman Holiday in these environs. | Average cost: \u20ac65 | Borgo Santo Spirito 73, Borgo | 00193 | 06\/6872973 | wwww.hotelcolumbus.net | Reservations essential.\n\n### Prati\n\nCesare.   \n$$$ | ITALIAN | An old standby in the residential area near the Vatican known as Prati, Cesare is a willing slave to tradition. The refrigerated display of fresh fish of the day is a tip-off of what's on offer. Classic fish dishes, such as fresh marinated anchovies and sardines, and mixed seafood salad dressed in a lemon citronette, quell those seafood cravings. Homemade pasta with meat sauce is the primo to get, and saltimbocca (thinly sliced veal with prosciutto and sage) or the thick Florentine steaks are the ultimate meat-lover's dishes. As with any other traditional Roman restaurant, gnocchi are served on Thursday and pasta with chickpeas on Friday. Also try the \u20ac38 \"menu toscano\"\u2014a great, multicourse value. The look of the place is quite clubby, and the menu's tendency toward stick-to-the-ribs comfort food makes it a great place to go in the autumn and winter, when the cooler weather ushers in dishes featuring truffles, game, and heartier fare. | Average cost: \u20ac50 | Via Crescenzio 13, Prati | 00193 | 06\/6861227 | www.ristorantecesare.com | Closed Sun., Aug., and Easter wk.\n\nDal Toscano.   \n$$$ | TUSCAN | An open wood-fired grill and classic dishes such as ribollita (a thick bread and vegetable soup) and pici (fresh, thick pasta with wild hare sauce) are the draw at this great family-run Tuscan trattoria near the Vatican. The cuts of beef visible at the entrance tell you right away that the house special is the prized bistecca alla fiorentina\u2014a thick grilled steak left rare in the middle and seared on the outside, with its rub of gutsy Tuscan olive oil and sea salt forming a delicious crust to keep in the natural juices of the beef. Seating outside on the sidewalk in warm weather is a nice touch. | Average cost: \u20ac55 | Via Germanico 58\/60, Prati | 00192 | 06\/39725717 | www.ristorantedaltoscano.it | Closed Mon., 3 wks in Aug., and 1 wk in Jan.\n\nDel Frate.   \n$$ | WINE BAR | This impressive wine bar, adjacent to one of Rome's noted wineshops, matches sleek and modern decor with creative cuisine and three dozen wines available by the glass. The house specialty is marinated meat and fish, and you can also get cheeses, smoked meats, and composed salads. For dessert, dip into the chocolate fondue. | Average cost: \u20ac30 | Via degli Scipioni 118, Prati | 06\/3236437 | Closed 3 wks in Aug.\n\nIl Simposio di Costantini.   \n$$$$ | WINE BAR | At the most upscale wine bar in town, decorated with wrought-iron vines, wood paneling, and velvet, you come for the wine, but return for the food. Everything here is appropriately raffinato (refined): marinated and smoked fish, composed salads, top-quality salami and other cured meats and p\u00e2t\u00e9s. There are plenty of dishes with classic Roman leanings, like the artichoke dish prepared three ways. Main courses favor carnivores, as roast lamb, a fillet with foie gras, or game (like pigeon, in season) complement the vast offering of top-notch red wines. The restaurant boasts 80 assorted cheeses to savor with your dessert wine. | Average cost: \u20ac70 | Piazza Cavour 16, Prati | 00193 | 06\/3203575 | www.pierocostantini.it | Reservations essential | Closed Sun. and last 2 wks of Aug. No lunch Sat.\n\nL'Isola della Pizza.   \n$ | PIZZA | Right near the Vatican Metro stop, the \"Island of Pizza\" is also known for its copious antipasti. Simply ask for the house appetizers, and a waiter will swoop down with numerous plates of salad, seafood, bruschetta, prosciutto, and crispy pizza Bianca. Though it's all too easy to fill up on these fun starters, the pizza is dependably good, and meat lovers can get a decent steak. | Average cost: \u20ac25 | Via degli Scipioni 47, Prati | 00192 | 06\/39733483 | www.isoladellapizza.com | Closed Sun., Aug., and Christmas wk. No lunch.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Taverna Angelica.   \n$$$ | MODERN ITALIAN | The area surrounding St. Peter's Basilica isn't known for culinary excellence, but Taverna Angelica is an exception. Its tiny size allows the chef to concentrate on each individual dish, and the menu is creative without being pretentious. Dishes such as warm octopus salad on a bed of mashed potatoes with a basil-parsley pesto drizzle are more about taste than presentation. The lentil soup with pigeon breast brought hunter's cuisine to a new level, and spaghetti with crunchy pancetta and leeks is what the Brits call \"more-ish\" (meaning you want more of it). Fresh sliced tuna in a pistachio crust with orange sauce is light and delicious. It may be difficult to find, on a section of the street that's set back and almost subterranean, but Taverna Angelica is worth seeking out. | Average cost: \u20ac55 | Piazza A. Capponi 6, Borgo | 00193 | 06\/6874514 | www.tavernaangelica.it | Reservations essential.\n\n##  Trastevere and Gianicolo\n\n### Trastevere\n\nAlle Fratte di Trastevere.   \n$$ | ROMAN | Here you can find staple Roman trattoria fare as well as dishes with a southern slant. This means that spaghetti alla carbonara (with pancetta, eggs, and cheese) shares the menu with the likes of penne alla Sorrentina (with tomato, basil, and fresh mozzarella). For starters, the bruschettas here are exemplary, as is the pressed octopus carpaccio on a bed of arugula. As for secondi, you can again look south and to the sea for a mixed seafood pasta or a grilled sea bass with oven-roasted potatoes, or go for the meat with a fillet al pepe verde (green peppercorns in a brandy cream sauce). Service is always with a smile, as owner Francesco and his trusted staff make you feel at home. | Average cost: \u20ac35 | Via delle Fratte di Trastevere 49\/50 | 00153 | 06\/5835775 | www.allefratteditrastevere.com | Closed Wed. and 2 wks in Aug.\n\nDa Ivo.   \n$ | PIZZA | Never not busy, this place opens early and closes late, and in-between the pizzeria is packed with locals, some tourists, and sports fans who know they can watch the Roma soccer team play on big TVs, in good company. The selection of pizzas is large, and there's a trattoria menu available to boot. A coveted street-side table is a great spot from which to view Trastevere's people parade. | Average cost: \u20ac25 | Via di San Francesco a Ripa 158, Trastevere | 06\/5817082 | Closed Tues. and 2 wks in Jan.\n\nDar Poeta.   \n$ | PIZZA | Romans drive across town for great pizza from this neighborhood institution on a small street in Trastevere. Maybe it's the dough\u2014it's made from a secret blend of flours that's reputed to be easier to digest than the competition. They offer both thin-crust pizza and a thick-crust (alta) Neapolitan-style pizza with any of the given toppings. For dessert, there's a ridiculously good calzone with Nutella chocolate-hazelnut spread and ricotta cheese, so save some room. Service from the owners and friendly waitstaff is smile-inducing. | Average cost: \u20ac24 | Vicolo del Bologna 45, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/5880516 | www.darpoeta.com.\n\nFerrara.   \n$$$ | ITALIAN | What used to be a well-stocked enoteca with a few nibbles has become what locals now know as the \"Ferrara block\": the enoteca has expanded to become a restaurant, wine bar, and a gastronomic boutique taking over a good section of one of the area's most famous streets. The renovations have resulted in an airy, modernist destination, with the original space as it was, all wooden chairs and ceramic-tiled tables: enoteca chic. Service can be iffy to slow, and, in the end, the results coming out of the kitchen are inconsistent. A fine starter is the ricotta and herb-stuffed zucchini flowers sprinkled with crispy pancetta. Secondi range from seared tuna in a sesame seed crust to roast pork with prunes. But true to its enoteca roots, it's the award-winning wine selection that impresses here. | Average cost: \u20ac60 | Piazza Trilussa 41, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/58333920 | www.enotecaferrara.it | Reservations essential.\n\nGlass Hostaria.   \n$$$$ | MODERN ITALIAN | After 14 years in Austin, Texas, Glass chef Cristina Bowerman returned to Rome to reconnect with her Italian roots. Her cooking is as innovative as the building she works in\u2014which has received numerous recognitions for its architecture and design since opening in 2004\u2014but Bowerman still abides by some cardinal Italian kitchen rules, such as the use of fresh, local, and seasonal ingredients. With an impassioned sense for detail, taste, and presentation, she serves a delicious pumpkin gnocchi with fontina fondue, black truffle, and toasted almonds. Another favorite dish is the scallops with pistachio cream and seasonal mushrooms. And for dessert: a white truffle cr\u00e8me br\u00fbl\u00e9e. Need help pairing your wine? Glass offers more than 600 labels for the interested oenophiles. | Average cost: \u20ac85 | Vicolo del Cinque 58, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/58335903 | www.glass-hostaria.com | Closed Mon. No lunch.\n\nIl Boom.   \n$$ | SOUTHERN ITALIAN | On a charming back street set just a block from the busiest streets of bustling Trastevere sits this culinary homage to '50s and '60s Italy during the golden age of La Dolce Vita. The walls are black-and-white blow-ups of paparazzi photos and shots of film stars like Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren, and the jukebox from the era lends a retro feel to the small dining room. The food highlights dishes of southern Italy, so interesting variations on dishes with eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, and mozzarella dominate the menu. Here's your chance, too, to sample southern Italian wines from as-yet-unknown regions like Molise and Basilicata. Service can be as slow as it is in the languorous south. | Average cost: \u20ac35 | Via dei Fienaroli 30A, Trastevere | 06\/5897196 | Closed Sun. and 3 wks in Aug.\n\nIl Ciak.   \n$$ | TUSCAN | This Tuscan staple in Trastevere is a carnivore's delight. Specializing in the Tuscan chianina beef as well as the many game and pork dishes of the region, Il Ciak prepares reliably tasty fare. It's probably best appreciated during the autumn and winter months, when hunter's dishes\u2014such as wild boar sausage or the pasta with wild hare sauce\u2014get accompaniments like porcini mushrooms and truffles with polenta. Be prepared to share the pleasure of your oversize fiorentina steak\u2014prepared al sangue (rare), of course. | Average cost: \u20ac45 | Vicolo del Cinque, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/5894774 | Reservations essential | Closed Sun.\n\n* * *\n\nCaff\u00e8: Rome's Best Coffeehouses\n\nAlthough Rome may not boast the grand caff\u00e8 of Paris or Vienna, it does have hundreds of small places on pleasant side streets and piazzas to while away the time. Many caff\u00e8 have tons of personality and are quite friendly to lingering patrons. The coffee is routinely of high quality. Locals usually stop in for a quickie at the bar, where prices are much lower than for the same drink taken at the table.\n\nAntico Caff\u00e8 Greco.   \nA national landmark, this place, once favored by Byron, Shelley, Keats, Goethe, and Casanova, still has enough red-velvet chairs, marble tables, neoclassical sculpted busts, and antique artwork lining the walls to lend it the air of a gorgeously romantic, bygone era. Set in the middle of the shopping madness of Via Condotti, it now gets filled with tourists but locals who love to breathe the air of history\u2014more than 250 years of it\u2014know enough to come here off-hours, the best time to glimpse authenticity. | Average cost: \u20ac15 | Via dei Condotti 86, Piazza di Spagna | 00187 | 06\/6791700 | www.anticocaffegreco.eu.\n\nCaff\u00e8 Sant'Eustachio.   \nTraditionally frequented by Rome's literati, this has what is generally considered Rome's best cup of coffee. Servers are hidden behind a huge espresso machine, vigorously mixing the sugar and coffee to protect their \"secret method\" for the perfectly prepared cup. (If you want your caff\u00e8 without sugar here, ask for it amaro). | Average cost: \u20ac2 | Piazza Sant'Eustachio 82, Pantheon | 00186 | 06\/68802048.\n\nTazza d'Oro.   \nMany admirers contend this is the city's best cup of coffee. The hot chocolate in winter, all thick and gooey goodness, is a treat. And in warm weather, the coffee granita is the perfect cooling alternative to a regular espresso. | Average cost: \u20ac4 | Via degli Orfani, Pantheon | 00186 | 06\/6789792 | www.tazzadorocoffeeshop.com.\n\nRosati.   \nYou can sit yourself down and watch the world go by at Rosati, one of the closest \"institution\"-like places that Rome has in its caff\u00e8 culture, open since 1922. | Average cost: \u20ac20 | Piazza del Popolo 5, Spagna | 00196 | 06\/3225859, 06\/3227378.\n\nCaff\u00e8 della Pace.   \nWith its sidewalk tables taking in Santa Maria della Pace's adorable piazza, this has long been the haunt of Rome's beau monde. Set near Piazza Navona, it also has two rooms filled with old-world personality and paparazzi-worthy patrons. The neighborhood, hipper than ever, with newly clogged vicoli, means a table here is a very prized commodity. | Average cost: \u20ac15 | Via della Pace 3, Navona | 00186 | 06\/6861216 | www.caffedellapace.it.\n\nCaff\u00e8 Teichner.   \nJust off the Corso, this relatively pricey establishment on a lively piazza offers all the basic nibbles (tramezzini, panini), along with the patronage of true Roman residents. | Average cost: \u20ac10 | Piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina 15\u201317, Spagna | 00186 | 06\/6871557 | caffeteichner@email.it.\n\nBar San Calisto.   \nWalk toward Viale di Trastevere and discover the wonderfully down-at-the-heels Bar San Calisto, immensely popular with the old local community and expat crowd. The drinks are as inexpensive as the neighborhood gets and the same could be said about the institutional lighting; the crowd waivers between bohemian and just unshowered and drunk. Don't miss the super hot chocolate in winter and the chocolate gelato in summer! | Average cost: \u20ac4 | Piazza San Calisto 4, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/5895678 | Reservations not accepted.\n\nCaff\u00e8 della Scala.   \nA mellow locale with old photos of jazz artists lining the walls, this spot sports French-Moroccan-brothel-meets-Louisiana-piano-bar decor and a mixed Roman and expat clientele. The outdoor tables are the ones to snag. | Average cost: \u20ac8 | Via della Scala 4, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/5803610.\n\n* * *\n\nJaipur.   \n$$ | INDIAN | Named after the pink city in India, this restaurant meets the standards of the most discerning Londoners, who know a thing or two about their curries. Here, in this large space just off the main Viale di Trastevere, you'll find a vast, high-ceilinged dining room decked in retina-burning yellow with festive Indian decorations on the huge walls (there's also dining outside when the weather calls for it). Portions are small but made for sharing, so go ahead and get a variety of dishes to \"divide and conquer.\" | Average cost: \u20ac35 | Via di San Francesco a Ripa 56, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/5803992 | www.ristorantejaipur.it | Closed Mon.\n\nFodor's Choice |  La Gensola.   \n$$$ | SICILIAN | For Italian \"mainlanders,\" going out for Sicilian fare is like international dining: it's a culinary adventure involving out-of-the-ordinary tastes and flavor combinations, many thanks to the island's interesting mix of Arab, African, and Mediterranean influences. La Gensola, tucked away on a back street on the \"quiet side\" of Viale Trastevere, offers a respite from the Roman standards, and a welcome alternative it is. Start with antipasto, perhaps the fresh tuna \"meatballs\" or gratine\u00e9d scallops with squid ink. Pastas, like a homemade tagliatelle with sun-dried tomatoes, baby calamari, and spicy peperoncino, are zippy on the palate. Since Sicily is a Mediterranean island, its cuisine leans heavily on the bounty of the sea, so a fresh fish like turbot with tomatoes, red onion, and capers is a wonderful choice. Allow the knowledgeable servers to guide you through the selective wine list featuring some lesser-known southern Italian labels. And for dessert, don't pass up an opportunity to try a cannoli or a piece of cassata cake. Mmm, buono! | Average cost: \u20ac55 | Piazza della Gensola 15, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/5816312 | www.osterialagensola.it.\n\nOmbre Rosse.   \n$ | WINE BAR | Set on lovely Piazza Sant'Egidio in the heart of Trastevere, this open-day-and-night spot is a great place to pass the time. You can have a morning cappuccino and read one of their international newspapers; have a light lunch (soups and salads are fresh and delicious) while taking in some sun or working on your laptop (free Wi-Fi); enjoy an aperitivo and nibbles at an outdoor table; or finish off an evening with friends at the bar. Ombre Rosse bustles with regulars and expats who know the value of a well-made cocktail and an ever-lively atmosphere. | Average cost: \u20ac25 | Piazza Sant'Egidio 12, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/5884155 | No lunch Sun.\n\nPanattoni.   \n$ | PIZZA | Nicknamed \"the mortuary\" for its marble-slab tables, Panattoni is actually about as lively as you can get. Packed every night, it serves crisp pizzas that come out of the wood-burning ovens at top speed. The fried starters here, like a nice baccal\u00e0, are light and tasty. Panattoni stays open well past midnight, convenient for a late meal after the theater or a movie nearby. | Average cost: \u20ac20 | Viale Trastevere 53\u201357, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/5800919 | Reservations not accepted | No credit cards | Closed Wed. and 3 wks in mid-Aug. No lunch.\n\nRivadestra.   \n$$$ | ITALIAN | The name is a reference to the right bank of the Tiber river\u2014which in Rome encompasses Trastevere, Rome's version of Paris's historic \"Left Bank\" of bohemians and intellectuals. Here, Rivadestra stands out among the old-school Roman eateries and amber-lit bars; walking through the heavy doors of the entrance is like walking into an oasis. The backlit bar and candelabras create a warm glow, and the service is quite welcoming. The streamlined menu offers starters like a pumpkin flan or eggplant stewed with olive oil and herbs, but better to head straight for well-executed primi, like the gramigna pasta with a sea bass and zucchini rag\u00f9 with shrimp. Main dishes included a delicate sea bass in a potato crust, and seared tuna steak with a pepper compote. Finish off with a molten chocolate cake or a cheese plate paired with their extensive list of digestivi. You won't leave overly stuffed, but you will leave happily content. | Average cost: \u20ac55 | Via della Penitenza 7, Trastevere | 00165 | 06\/68307053 | www.rivadestra.com | Closed Sun. (summer), Mon. (winter).\n\nRomolo.   \n$$ | ROMAN | Nowhere else do the lingering rays of the setting Roman sun seem more inviting than within the famed tavern garden of this charming Trastervere haunt\u2014set right by the arch of Porta Settimiana this was once reputedly the onetime home of Raphael's lady love, La Fornarina. And though belly-warming winter meals can be enjoyed in the ancient palazzo, it's the outdoor garden seating that makes this a truly coveted dining spot in the summer months. Who can resist classic spaghetti alla carbonara or pasta all'amatriciana in these surroundings? House specialties include the mozzarella alla fornarina (deep-fried mozzarella with ham and anchovies) and anything with the chef's legendary artichoke sauce. Service is equally warm and the wine list as local as the staff. | Average cost: \u20ac50 | Via di Porta Settimiana 8, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/5818284 | Reservations essential | Closed Mon.\n\nSpirito di Vino.   \n$$ | ITALIAN | At this restaurant on the less-traveled side of Viale Trastevere, diners can enjoy an evening of historic and culinary interest. The restaurant itself was rebuilt on the site of a 12th-century Jewish synagogue, and as such, the spot is rich with history\u2014several ancient sculptures, now in the Vatican and Capitoline museums, were unearthed in the basement. The food ranges from inventive (mini-meatballs seasoned with coriander) to traditional (spaghetti with pecorino cheese and pepper), to historical (braised pork shoulder with apples and leeks, following an ancient Roman recipe). The proud owner is happy to explain every dish on the menu, and he even offers a postdinner tour of the wine cellar\u2014and that basement. | Average cost: \u20ac45 | Via dei Genovesi 31, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/5896689 | www.spiritodivino.com | Closed Sun. and 2 wks in Aug.\n\nZ'Imberto.   \n$$ | SEAFOOD | Under a brightly lit awning covering a lively Trastevere piazza, you find the kind of casual trattoria one expects to stumble upon in every Italian seaside village: locals waiting for tables, a bustling casual setting, and ebullient servers pushing heaping plates of fresh seafood and pasta. Here, waiters serve with a smile and a wink, joking with clients while dishing out large portions of the house specialty: local seafood. Of course, traditional Roman meat staples are present on the menu, but really, with itsy-bitsy baby calamari the size of a fingertip fried up so perfectly, why stick to the standards? Pastas with all varieties of sea creatures abound, as do main plates of swordfish and grilled calamari. But we think the best plan is to order up the mixed house seafood antipasto for the table, order some salads and a couple of pastas to share, and close the meal with samplings from frosty bottles of digestivi planted firmly on your table. This is what they meant when they coined the term la dolce vita. | Average cost: \u20ac45 | Piazza San Giovanni della Malva, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/5816646 | Closed Mon.\n\n### Gianicolo\n\nAntico Arco.   \n$$$$ | MODERN ITALIAN | Founded by three friends with a passion for wine and fine food (the team leader is Patrizia Mattei), Antico Arco attracts foodies from Rome and beyond with its culinary inventiveness and high style. The location up on top of the Janiculum hill provides for a charming setting and a warm ambience difficult to come by elsewhere in the city. Renovations in recent years have updated and transformed the once-dark and cozy dining rooms into plush, modern spaces with whitewashed brick walls, dark floors, and black velvet chairs with fresh lighting. Seating upstairs is still a treat. The menu changes with the season, but you may find delights such as crudo di ricciola con lime, zenzero, e insalata di puntarelle (raw amberjack with lime, ginger, and a salad of chicory stems in anchovy vinaigrette), a classic pasta alla carbonara made even richer with the addition of black truffles, or a fillet d'agnello (fillet of lamb) in a hazelnut crust with a sprout salad in balsamic vinegar. The chocolate souffl\u00e9 with a molten chocolate center is justly famous among chocoholics all over the city. | Average cost: \u20ac85 | Piazzale Aurelio 7, Gianicolo | 00152 | 06\/5815274 | www.anticoarco.it | Reservations essential | Closed Sun. and 2 wks in Aug.\n\n##  Colosseo, Aventino, and Testaccio\n\n### Colosseo\n\nAi Tre Scalini.   \n$$ | ROMAN | A traditional restaurant by the Colosseum, Ai Tre Scalini is old-school Roman with touches of the Sicilian. The seating outside in warm weather is pleasant, and some dishes highlight the chef's playfulness, like the unusual radicchio and cheese-stuffed zagnolotti (small ravioli) in a lobster sauce. A wide variety of second courses, from gilthead bream topped with paper-thin potato rounds, to simple beef with rosemary, are indeed what they seem, served by waiters who have clearly been around for quite some time. | Average cost: \u20ac45 | Via SS. Quattro 30, Colosseo | 00184 | 06\/7096309 |  infoai3scalini.com | www.ai3scalini.com | Closed Mon. and 10 days in Sept.\n\nFodor's Choice |  San Teodoro.   \n$$$$ | SEAFOOD | The atmosphere: far removed from the madding crowds. The setting: a pair of enclosed piazzas, walls covered in ivy, nestled by the Roman Forum and the Campidoglio. The specialty: refined Roman cuisine, featuring tastes of Roman Jewish fare and specializing in seafood. In spring and summer there's a lovely outdoor dining deck, and in cooler months, the bright rooms decorated with contemporary art offer pleasant surroundings. The menu includes classic fried artichokes (among the best in the city), homemade ravioli con cipolla di Tropea (filled with red onion and tossed in balsamic vinegar), and favorite local fish turbot, barely adorned with perfectly roasted potatoes and extra-virgin olive oil. Everything down to the last bite (make your dessert choice the chocolate medley or the cannoli) is a pleasure, even if it doesn't come cheaply. | Average cost: \u20ac80 | Via dei Fienili 50-51, Ghetto | 00186 | 06\/6780933 | Reservations essential | Closed Sun.\n\n### Testaccio\n\nAngelina.   \n$$ | ITALIAN | Via Galvani is prime real estate in the hip Roman nabe of Testaccio, just around the corner from Monte Testaccio where so many bars, restaurants, and discos pulsate into the wee hours. But here at Angelina, you're one or two stories above all the riff-raff, looking out above the soon-to-be new Testaccio market, eating grilled pizzas and steaks, or sipping drinks among the treetops that line the street. Or you're inside, in one of Angelina's whitewashed dining rooms pungently perfumed with the smell of the grill. Starters range from salumi to fried veggies, and first courses are hearty Roman staples like rigatoni all'amatriciana or cacio e pepe. But the focus here is on meat alla brace\u2014anything and everything grilled, from sausages to steaks to lamb. Even scamorza, cheese treated almost like a steak and thrown on the grill, is served here with fanfare. It's a bit of a scene here, from aperitivo through dopocena (post-dinner), so get ready to enjoy the party, tesoro (darling). Another location that's more of a casual bar-caf\u00e9, called Angelina Trevi, is found near the Trevi Fountain at Via Poli 27 (06\/6797274). | Average cost: \u20ac45 | Via Galvani 24a, Testaccio | 00153 | 06\/57283840 | www.ristoranteangelina.com | No dinner Sun.\n\nChecchino dal 1887.   \n$$$$ | ROMAN | Literally carved out of a hill of ancient shards of amphorae, Checchino remains an example of a classic, family-run Roman restaurant, with one of the best wine cellars in the region. Though the slaughterhouses of Testaccio are long gone, an echo of their past existence lives on in the restaurant's soul food\u2014mostly offal and other less-appealing cuts like trippa (tripe), pajata (intestine with the mother's milk still inside), and coratella (sweetbreads and heart of beef) are all still on the menu for die-hard Roman purists. For the less adventuresome, house specialties include braised milk-fed lamb with seasonal vegetables. Head here for a taste of Old Rome, but note that Checchino is really beginning to show its age. | Average cost: \u20ac70 | Via di Monte Testaccio 30 | 00153 | 06\/5746318 | www.checchino-dal-1887.com | Closed Sun., Mon., Aug, and 1 wk at Christmas.\n\nDa Oio a Casa Mia.   \n$ | ROMAN | This classic Roman trattoria has all the usual suspects, including locals straight out of central casting and gruff but good-natured service. The Roman classic pastas here are good bets, with delicious versions of carbonara, amatriciana, and rigatoni with a coda alla vaccinara (stewed oxtail) tomato sauce. Secondi like meatballs, straccetti (strips of beef in wine sauce over a bed of arugula), chicken hunter's style, and stewed tripe (for those who enjoy it) are all excellent options. The grilled eggplant preserved in olive oil, vinegar, and with a nice kick from the peperoncino, is a killer side dish not to be overlooked. Some critics point their noses in the air when it comes to this place but that is just more room for those of us who appreciate the unrefined finds of Rome. Outdoor seating in warm months is the way to go. | Average cost: \u20ac28 | Via Galvani 43\u201345, San Lorenzo | 00153 | 06\/5782680 | Closed Sun.\n\nPerilli.   \n$$ | ITALIAN | In this restaurant dating from 1911, the old Testaccio remains, and it has the decor to prove it. A seasonal antipasto table starts things off, offering Roman specialties like stewed Roman artichokes and puntarelle (curled chicory stems in a garlicky vinaigrette with lots of lemon and anchovy). The waiters wear crooked bow ties and are just a little bit too hurried\u2014until, that is, you order classics like pasta all'amatriciana and carbonara, which they relish tossing in a big bowl tableside. This is also the place to try rigatoni con pajata (with calves' intestines)\u2014if you're into that sort of thing. Secondi plates are for carnivores only, and the house wine is a golden enamel-remover from the Castelli Romani. | Average cost: \u20ac40 | Via Marmorata 39, Testaccio | 00153 | 06\/5742415 | Closed Wed.\n\nRemo.   \n$ | PIZZA | Expect a wait at this perennial favorite in Testaccio frequented by students and locals. You won't find tablecloths or other nonessentials, just classic Roman pizza and boisterous conversation. | Average cost: \u20ac18 | Piazza Santa Maria Liberatrice 44, Testaccio | 06\/5746270 | No credit cards | Closed Sun., Aug., and Christmas wk. No lunch.\n\n##  Beyond the City Center\n\nAcquolina.   \n$$$$ | SEAFOOD | Famed chef Angelo Troiani, chef-proprietor of Il Convivio, has branched out, heading out of the city center to the Flaminio area, and also branched out by now specializing in high-quality seafood. He tapped chef Giulio Terrinoni to head the kitchen, and the results are delicious and understated, with some dishes reflecting the time-honored Italian tradition of letting great seafood speak for itself while others get spiffed-up treatments. The crudo is ultra-fresh, and pastas like the seafood carbonara and the cacio e pepe with skate and zucchini flowers are upscale aquatic riffs on Roman classics. Main dishes range from fish stew to a gran fritto misto. The owners are concerned about sustainability, and as such, don't serve certain endangered sea creatures (like bluefin tuna carpaccio). Desserts are surprisingly sophisticated. Service is helpful and thorough, which helps to make up for the sometimes slow kitchen. | Average cost: \u20ac80 | Via Antonio Serra 60, Flaminio | 00191 | 06\/3337192 | Closed Sun. No lunch.\n\nL'Archeologia.   \n$$$ | ITALIAN | In this farmhouse just beyond the catacombs, you dine indoors beside the fireplace in cool weather or in the garden under age-old vines in summer. The atmosphere is friendly and intimate. Specialties include fettuccine al finocchio salvatico (with wild fennel), abbacchio alla scottadito (grilled lamb), and fresh seafood. But remember that the food here is secondary: you're paying for the view and the setting more than any culinary adventure or excellence with the classics. | Average cost: \u20ac55 | Via Appia Antica 139, Via Appia, south side of Rome | 00178 | 06\/7880494 | www.larcheologia.it | Closed Tues.\n\nFodor's Choice |  La Pergola.   \n$$$$ | MODERN ITALIAN | La Pergola's rooftop location offers a commanding view of the city, and as you're seated in your plush chair, you know you're in for a three\u2013Michelin star experience, and the only one in Rome. First, your waiter will present you with menus: food, wine, and water (you read correctly). Then you must choose between the German Wunder-chef Heinz Beck's alta cucina specialties, though most everything will prove to be the best version of the dish you've ever tasted. Lobster is oh-so-lightly poached, fish is cooked perfectly, and melt-in-your-mouth lamb in a veggie-accented jus is deceptively simple but earthy and perfect. Each course comes with a flourish of sauces or extra touches that makes it an event in its own right, while the cheese cart is well explained by knowledgeable servers. The dessert course is extravagant, including tiny petits fours and treats tucked away in small drawers that make up the serving \"cabinet.\" The wine list is as thrilling as one might expect with the financial backing of the Waldorf-Astoria, and their investment in one of the top wine cellars in Italy. | Average cost: \u20ac150 | Cavalieri Waldorf-Astoria, Via Cadlolo 101, Monte Mario, Northwest Rome | 00136 | 06\/3509221 | www.romecavalieri.com\/lapergola.php | Reservations essential | Jacket and tie | Closed Sun. and Mon., and 2 wks in Dec. No lunch.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\n_Main Table of Contents _\n\nThe Scene\n\nHotels By Neighborhood\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPlanning\n\nUpdated by Nicole Arriaga\n\nIt's the click of your heels on inlaid marble, the whisper of 600-thread count Frette sheets, the murmured buongiorno of a coat-tailed porter bowing low as you pass. It's a rustic attic room with wood-beamed ceilings, a white umbrella on a roof terrace, a 400-year-old palazzo with Casanova's name in the guest book. Maybe it's the birdsong warbling into your room as you swing open French windows to a sun-kissed view of the Colosseum, a timeworn piazza, a flower-filled marketplace. Obviously, from the moment you saw Roman Holiday, your love affair with living \"la dolce vita\" has never been closer to reality than being a guest in some Roman hotels. Audrey Hepburn couldn't have had it better.\n\nHappily, living la vita bella doesn't always mean you have to break the bank. There are many midrange and budget hotels and pensioni (small, family-run lodgings) available, some with real flair. When it comes to accommodations, Rome offers a wide selection of high-end hotels, bed-and-breakfasts, designer \"boutique\" hotels, and quiet options that run the gamut from whimsical to luxurious. Whether you want a simple place to rest your head or a complete cache of exclusive amenities, you have plenty to choose from.\n\nOf course, if you look at the extremes, hotels in Rome are something like the Sistine Chapel: at the top, they're heaven, but at the lower end, they can feel more like purgatorio. Palatial settings, cloud-nine comfort, spacious rooms, and high standards of service can be taken for granted in Rome's top establishments. Luxury hotels like the Eden, the Hassler, and the Hotel de Russie are justly renowned for sybaritic comfort: postcard views over Roman rooftops, white linen and silver at a groaning-table breakfast buffet, and the fluffiest, thirstiest, softest towels since cotton was king. Can you hear the angels singing?\n\nBut in other categories, especially moderate and inexpensive, standards vary considerably. That's a nice way of saying that very often, Rome's budget hotels are not up to the standards of space, comfort, quiet and service that are taken for granted in the United States: you'll still find places with tiny rooms, lumpy beds, and anemic air-conditioning. Many of the family-run pensions near Termini station and elsewhere suffer from the maladies of budget hotels in major cities everywhere: too little space, too much noise, and chronic, some say fatal, lack of hominess. Happily, the good news is that if you're flexible there are happy mediums aplenty, and the following pages are packed with mid-price-range reviews ().\n\nOne thing to figure out before you arrive is which neighborhood do you want to stay in\u2014If a picturesque location is your main concern, stay in one of the small hotels around Piazza Navona or Campo de' Fiori. If luxury is, head for Via Veneto or beyond the city center, where price-to-quality ratios are high and some hotels have swimming pools. Most of Rome's good budget hotels are concentrated around Termini train station, but here accommodations can vary widely, from fine to seedy, and you'll have to use public transportation to get to the historic part of town.\n\nThere are obvious advantages to staying in a hotel within easy walking distance of the main sights, particularly because parts of downtown Rome are closed to traffic and are blessedly quieter than they once were. Here, no matter how inexpensive these lodgings may be, they give their guests one priceless perk: a sense of being in the heart of history.\n\n##  Planning\n\n### Lodging Strategy\n\nWhere should we stay? With hundreds of hotels to choose from in Rome, it may seem like a daunting question. But fret not\u2014our expert writers and editors have done most of the legwork. The 90-plus selections here represent the best lodging this city has to offer, from spartan convents to opulent palaces. Scan Best Bets on the following pages for top recommendations by price and experience. Or locate a specific review in the listings. They're organized alphabetically within each neighborhood. Happy hotel hunting!\n\n### Reservations\n\nUnless you don't mind flying by the seat of your pants, it's best to book ahead. This is especially true for May and June, when the Eternal City is virtually bursting at the seams; the same goes for major Catholic holidays such as Easter and Christmas. The city is never empty, but July and August and January and February are slower months. These are the best times to find rock-bottom rates as well.\n\nBe as specific as possible about the accommodations you desire. Request the room size (single, double, or triple), type (standard, deluxe, or suite), and whether you want air-conditioning, a no-smoking room, a private bathroom with a shower or tub (or both), a terrace or balcony, or a view of the city (and ask whether there are extra costs associated with any of these). You may be required to leave a deposit; get a statement from the hotel about its refund policy before releasing your credit card number or mailing a money order. Insist on a written confirmation from the hotel stating the duration of your stay, room rate, any extras, location, room size, and type.\n\n### Checking In\n\nAs soon as you get to Rome, you'll notice the leisurely pace of life here, which extends to hotel check-in times. If you arrive early in the morning (as is often the case with North American flights), you may find that your room is not ready yet (after 2 pm is pretty standard for most hotels, big and small). In which case, most hotels will store your luggage and encourage you to go out sightseeing. If you think you'll arrive later in the day, mention this before booking to make sure someone will be on hand to check you in. Some smaller hotels don't have a round-the-clock staff, and it's best to avoid unpleasant surprises. Checkout times are a little stricter, between 10 am and noon. If you need more time than that, the hotel may try to charge you for an extra night. However, if you just want to store your luggage for a few hours on your last day, most hotels will accommodate this request.\n\n### Breakfast Included?\n\nNear the end of each review, we list \"Breakfast\" if this meal is included in the hotel's room rate.\n\n### Facilities\n\nThe most expensive hotels have all the amenities you would expect at top levels and rates, with full services, spacious lounges, bars, restaurants, and some fitness facilities. Midrange hotels may have refrigerators, in-room safes, and double-glazed windows to keep out street noise. Budget hotels will have in-room direct-dial telephone and TV, and most will have air-conditioning. In less expensive places, you may have to pay extra for air-conditioning, and the shower may be the drain-in-the-floor type that hovers over the toilet and drenches the whole bathroom.\n\nUnless stated in the review, hotels are equipped with elevators, and all guest rooms have air-conditioning, TV, and telephones. The number of rooms listed at the end of each review reflects those with private bathrooms (which means they have a shower or a tub, but not necessarily both). Note that we use \"Wi-Fi\" when wireless access is available, and \"Internet\" when any other type of Internet access is available, aside from Wi-Fi.\n\n### With Kids\n\nItalians love kids, and many hotels go out of their way to accommodate families, with ideas, special games, and other perks. Although hotels often allow children to stay in their parents' room for free, keep in mind that hotel rooms in Italy tend to be very small by American standards. It's a good idea to inquire about triples, connecting rooms or suites, or consider taking a short-term apartment rental or residence hotel for the duration of your stay.\n\n### Prices\n\nIn 2011, the city of Rome implemented a new tax for all overnight stays. Guests in bed-and-breakfasts, vacation apartment rentals, and 1-, 2-, and 3-star hotels will incur an additional \u20ac2 surcharge per person per night for a maximum of 10 nights. In 4- and 5-star hotels, the surcharge is \u20ac3 per person per night for a maximum of 10 nights. In the off-season months of late January, February, July, and August, prices can be considerably discounted (sometimes up to half off the regular rate). Inquire about specials and weekend deals, and you may be able to get a better rate per night if you are staying a week or longer. Rates are inclusive of service, but it's customary to tip porters, waiters, maids, and concierges.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPantheon, Navona, Trevi, and Quirinale | Campo de' Fiori and Ghetto | Monti, Esquilino, Repubblica, and San Lorenzo | Veneto, Borghese, and Spagna | Vatican, Borgo, and Prati | Trastevere and Gianicolo | Aventino, Testaccio, and Palatino | Colosseo Area | Beyond the City Center\n\nThe following reviews are listed alphabetically within neighborhoods.\n\n##  Pantheon, Navona, Trevi, and Quirinale\n\nIn this upscale area around spectacular Piazza Navona and the Pantheon and Trevi Fountain to the east, a picture-perfect moment awaits at every turn. The area offers a broad range of accommodations, from pricey digs to rough-around-the-edges pensioni, all housed in 17th- and 18th-century palazzos. Much of the area is pedestrian-only, with a lively mix of restaurants and nightlife.\n\n### Pantheon\n\nAbruzzi.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | Rarely do magnificent views come with such a relatively gentle price tag: from the windows of this newly updated, comfortable little hotel, the Pantheon is literally in your face. Pros: views of the Pantheon; sizeable bathrooms; the piazza is a hot spot. Cons: some staff seem to want to avoid running credit cards (though the hotel accepts them). | Rooms from: \u20ac250 | Piazza della Rotonda 69, Pantheon | 00186 | 06\/97841351 | www.hotelabruzzi.it | 29 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nAlbergo Ces\u00e0ri.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | On a pedestrian-only street near the Pantheon, the exterior of this lovely little hotel hasn't changed much since Stendhal stayed here in the 1800s, and the restyled interior with soft-green touches and prints of old Rome has an air of warmth and serenity, but perhaps the true gem here is the hotel's rooftop bar, where guests can enjoy views of Roman rooftops and churches over breakfast or cocktails. The renovated space leaves practically no memory of the days when Garibaldi, Gregorovius, and an assembly of aristocrats stayed here. The tastefully decorated rooms have hardwood floors, and bathrooms are done in smart two-tone blue marble. Pros: prime location and soundproofed from the street noise; computer with Internet access available; friendly staff that provides good service. Cons: walls are paper-thin so noise can be an issue; a\/c is not especially strong. | Rooms from: \u20ac240 | Via di Pietra 89\/a, Pantheon | 00186 | 06\/6749701 | www.albergocesari.it | 47 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nAlbergo del Sole al Pantheon.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | The granddaddy of Roman hotels and one of the oldest in the world\u2014the doors first opened in 1467\u2014this charming hotel adjacent to the grand facade of the Pantheon has high ceilings, terra-cotta floors, and Renaissance-style beds. Frederick III, Ariosto, Cagliostro, and Pietro Mascagni (who checked in here to celebrate his opening night of the opera, Cavalleria Rusticana) all graced this hotel with their presence. For a truly authentic experience, request a room that overlooks the Pantheon and the piazza's gorgeous caff\u00e8 scene. Pros: real Roman atmosphere and character; a rich breakfast buffet; free Internet point for guests. Cons: rooms are a bit small; despite the double-glazed windows, street noise can be an issue. | Rooms from: \u20ac275 | Piazza della Rotonda 63, Pantheon | 00186 | 06\/6780441 | www.hotelsolealpantheon.com | 33 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Albergo Santa Chiara.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | If you're looking for a good location (right behind the Pantheon) and top-notch service at great prices\u2014not to mention comfortable beds and a quiet stay\u2014look no further than this historic hotel, run by the same family for some 200 years. Guests choose it not only for its prime spot behind the Pantheon and across the way from Santa Maria sopra Minerva, but also because of its warm and welcoming staff. The decor is nothing to write home about: the lobby is an all-white affair with furniture you might find in your grandmother's house, and some rooms are a bit bland. For families or those looking for a bit more space, Santa Chiara also rents out three apartments, for two to five people, with full kitchens. Pros: great location in the historical center behind the Pantheon; the staff is both polite and helpful; there is a lovely terrace\/sitting area in front of the hotel that overlooks the piazza. Cons: the rooms are small and could use some restyling. Some rooms don't have a window. | Rooms from: \u20ac250 | Via Santa Chiara 21, Pantheon | 00186 | 06\/6872979 |  info@albergosantachiara.com | www.albergosantachiara.com | 96 rooms, 3 suites, 3 apartments | Breakfast.\n\nBabuino 181.   \n$$$$ | HOTEL | Named for its street known for high-end boutiques, antique shops, and upscale inns, this stylish hotel with spacious, loftlike accommodations offers top-notch amenities, ultimate privacy, and personalized service. The suites have hardwood floors and cool, contemporary decor; bathrooms are decked out with sleek mosaic tiles. Sip caff\u00e8 from one of the Nespresso machines in the common area or on the rooftop terrace. Pros: cool amenities in the rooms such as iPod and iPhone charging docks; Nespresso coffee machines; spacious suites. Cons: the rooms can be a bit noisy; breakfast is nothing special. | Rooms from: \u20ac430 | Via Babuino 181, Borghese | 00187 | 06\/69921907 | www.romeluxurysuites.com\/babuino | 14 rooms.\n\nGrand Hotel de la Minerve.   \n$$$$ | HOTEL | Once one of Rome's landmark fixtures, this 17th-century palazzo used to be a favorite address for everyone from Stendhal to Sartre along with a bevy of crowned (and uncrowned\u2014Carlotta, the deposed empress of Mexico resided here for a while) heads but none would recognize the former grand hotel since its zillion-dollar renovation two decades ago: results were mixed, from the gaudy (that lobby glass ceiling) to the great (the rooftop restaurant, which allows you to almost touch the dome of the Pantheon). Happily, it retains its prime position in the lovely square that is home to Bernini's elephant obelisk and just around the corner from Hadrian's mighty temple. Though many of the rooms have had a face-lift in recent years, several guest rooms still have furnishings that are a bit outdated and worn around the edges. Pros: only 50 yards from the Pantheon yet set on quiet Piazza della Minerva; staff is friendly and accommodating; some rooms have terraces. Cons: not all rooms have the amenities of a 5-star hotel such as a minibar, satellite TV, and safe; Internet connection is spotty and Wi-Fi is expensive. | Rooms from: \u20ac400 | Piazza della Minerva 69, Pantheon | 00186 | 06\/695201 | grandhoteldelaminerve.it | 119 rooms, 16 suites | No meals.\n\nPantheon.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | A superb little hotel right next to the monument itself, the Pantheon has a typically Roman lobby\u2014warm and cozy yet opulent\u2014and rooms with antique walnut furnishings, fresh flowers, paisley bedspreads, and wood-beam ceilings. Replete with stained glass, sumptuous wood paneling, and a Renaissance beamed ceiling, the centerpiece of the welcoming lobby is a massive and glorious chandelier. Just as welcoming is the staff, which exemplifies true Italian hospitality. Pros: proximity to the Pantheon; big, clean bathrooms; friendly staff. Cons: rooms are in need of some upgrading; the lighting is low and the rooms can feel a bit stuffy. | Rooms from: \u20ac290 | Via dei Pastini 131, Pantheon | 00186 | 06\/6787746 | www.hotelpantheon.com | 13 rooms, 1 suite | Breakfast.\n\n* * *\n\nRenting an Apartment in Rome\n\nThe saying \"Two's company and three's a crowd\" definitely holds true in Roman hotel rooms. If you're traveling with a larger group, consider renting a short-term apartment. Apartments are generally rented out the old-fashioned way by their owners, though in some cases a realtor or management company is involved. A three-night minimum is the norm. Prices will vary, but expect them to be higher in the historic city center, the Vaticano\/Borgo, the Campo de' Fiori, and Trastevere areas. TIP Keep in mind that there's sometimes an extra charge involved for final cleaning, utilities, and Internet access when renting an apartment. When seeking a holiday home in Rome, start your research online. Rome's official tourism website (www.turismoroma.it) offers a search function for a number of different housing options.\n\nWanted in Rome (www.wantedinrome.com) is a popular English language expat magazine that features an extensive classifieds section on their website. The Bed & Breakfast Association of Rome (www.b-b.rm.it) offers an online apartment rental search in addition to their B&B search. They personally inspect all properties on their site. Cross-Pollinate (www.cross-pollinate.com), an accommodation service owned by the people who run the Beehive Hotel, gives visitors the information to seek out their own accommodations. They personally screen all properties. San Francisco\u2013based Craigslist hosts classifieds for 450 cities worldwide, including Rome. Craigslist Rome lists postings for apartments, houses, swaps, sublets, and other vacation rentals at rome.en.craigslist.it.\n\nHotels with Apartments\n\nMore and more hotels in Rome now offer their prospective guests a selection of apartments (either located on the grounds or just nearby), in addition to rooms and suites.\n\nAlbergo Santa Chiara. | 3 apartments | Via Santa Chiara 21, Pantheon | 00186 | 06\/6872979 | www.albergosantachiara.com.\n\nHotel Campo de' Fiori. | 11 apartments | Via del Biscione 6, Campo de' Fiori | 00186 | 06\/68806865 | www.hotelcampodefiori.it.\n\nItalia. | 1 apartment | Via Venezia 18, Termini | 00184 | 06\/4828355 | www.hote.italiaroma.com.\n\nJulia. | 2 apartments | Via Rasella 29, Via Veneto | 00187 | 06\/4881637 | www.hoteljulia.it.\n\nMecenate Palace Hotel. | 2 apartments | Via Carlo Alberto 3, Termini | 00185 | 06\/44702024 | www.mecenatepalace.com.\n\nHotel Trastevere. | 3 apartments | Via Luciano Manara 24a\u201325, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/5814713 | www.hoteltrastevere.net.\n\nResidence Hotels\n\nAnother alternative to a hotel is a residence. These specialize in apartment-style accommodations and are ideal for longer stays. Residence hotels usually have fully equipped kitchens and offer linens, laundry, and cleaning services. Most are available for weekly or monthly rentals. Costs for an apartment for two range from about \u20ac1,300 for a week to \u20ac2,600 per month.\n\nAldrovandi Residence City Suites. | Via Ulisse Aldrovandi 11, Parioli | 00197 | 06\/3221430 | www.aldrovandiresidence.it.\n\nMecenate Palace Hotel. | 10 executive \"residence\" rooms | Via Carlo Alberto 3, Termini | 00185 | 06\/44702024 | www.mecenatepalace.com.\n\nPalazzo al Velabro. | Via del Velabro 16, Ghetto | 00186 | 06\/6792758 | www.velabro.it.\n\nResidence Ripetta. | Via di Ripetta 231, Popolo | 00186 | 06\/3231144 | www.ripetta.it.\n\n* * *\n\n### Navona\n\nGenio.   \n$$ | HOTEL | Located just outside one of Rome's most beautiful piazzas\u2014Piazza Navona\u2014this pleasant hotel has a lovely rooftop terrace where you can sip morning cappuccino and enjoy the view and good-size rooms decorated in warm colors. Modeled along classic Roman lines, the lobby and public areas are cozy. Rooms are sophisticated with long, flowing drapes, wall-to-wall carpeting and, if you're lucky, parquet wooden floors. You can snag a really good deal here in January and February, when room rates are incredibly cheap. Pros: you can sip wine on the rooftop and take in the view; rooms are a decent size for a Roman hotel; the bathrooms are elegantly designed. Cons: Genio is on a busy street so there is often traffic noise; walls are paper-thin; both the decor and the carpet have seen better days. | Rooms from: \u20ac170 | Via Giuseppe Zanardelli 28, Navona | 00186 | 06\/6832191 | www.hotelgenioroma.it | 60 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nRelais Palazzo Taverna.   \n$$ | HOTEL | This little hidden gem on a side street behind the lovely Via dei Coronari is a pleasant surprise for travelers who happen to stumble upon it, a good compromise for those looking for boutique-style accommodations on a budget: the stylish guest rooms have kitsch wallpaper print that's so cute it looks like someone gift-wrapped them, and it's rare to find lodgings with such cool design at affordable prices like these right around the corner from Piazza Navona. Pros: centrally located; boutique-style accommodations at budget prices. Cons: breakfast is served in your room; staff is on duty only until midnight. | Rooms from: \u20ac150 | Via dei Gabrielli 92, Navona | 00186 | 06\/20398064 | www.relaispalazzotaverna.com | 11 rooms.\n\n### Trevi\n\nTrevi.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | Location, location, location: at this delightful place tucked away down one of Old Rome's quaintest alleys near the Trevi Fountain, the smallish rooms are bright and clean, and you can eat marvelous pasta at the arborlike roof-garden restaurant as you peer at the city below. A few of the larger rooms have antique furniture and wooden ceilings with massive beams. Pros: pass the Trevi Fountain each day as you come and go; comfortable rooms; roof-garden restaurant. Cons: breakfast room is cramped; this area can be very noisy due to foot traffic around the Trevi Fountain. | Rooms from: \u20ac240 | Vicolo del Babbuccio 20\/21, Trevi | 00187 | 06\/6789563 | www.hoteltrevirome.com | 29 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nTritone.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | You won't know what to do first\u2014toss your bags in your room or toss a coin in the fountain\u2014so close to the tempting Fontana di Trevi at this trusty hotel, where the rooms have modern decor, plasma-screen TVs, and spacious travertine bathrooms, and breakfast is served in the rooftop garden with panoramic views of the city. The hotel is close not only to major sights but also great shopping, in particular to the multifloor Zara store (a Spanish clothing icon). Because it's on a busy street, noise can be an issue despite double-glazed windows. Some of the newer rooms have all-wood paneling and pop art on the walls. Pros: walking distance to major attractions; modern decor with flat-screen TVs; friendly staff. Cons: cramped reception area; most rooms have twin beds; despite soundproofing, street-side rooms can be noisy; Wi-Fi isn't free. | Rooms from: \u20ac210 | Via del Tritone 210, Piazza di Trevi | 00187 | 06\/69922575 | www.tritonehotel.com | 43 rooms | Breakfast.\n\n##  Campo de' Fiori and Ghetto\n\nThere's nothing like being in the heart of stunningly beautiful Vecchia Roma (Old Rome)\u2014a neighborhood that holds two of the most enchanting piazzas of the city: Campo de' Fiori and Piazza Farnese. Just around the corner from here, take a stroll down one of Rome's most romantic streets, Via Giulia, where streams of ivy flow from street corner to street corner, elegantly draping the buildings. Not all the hotels here are as fairy tale\u2013like as the scenery that surrounds them, though. While most are noted for their charm and character, many lack space while others lack style A little to the south in the Ghetto, the impossibly narrow alleyways and deep quiet of most of this small quarter make it easy to imagine its bohemian-chic condos as the teeming tenements they once were.\n\n### Campo de' Fiori\n\nAlbergo del Sole al Biscione.   \n$$ | HOTEL | This affordable and comfortable hotel, centrally located in the heart of Campo de' Fiori and built atop the ruins of the ancient Theater of Pompey, has warm, cozy decor and a rooftop terrace with a stunning view of Sant'Andrea delle Valle. Rooms are basic, just enough to get you a good night's sleep. The hotel doesn't offer breakfast but upon request will arrange it for you at a delightful bar just down the street. Pros: parking garage in the hotel; reasonable rates for the location; lovely rooftop terrace. Cons: some rooms are small and without a\/c; no elevator at the entrance of hotel; a bit noisy because of student groups and\/or street noise in the area. | Rooms from: \u20ac130 | Via del Biscione 76, Campo de' Fiori | 00186 | 06\/68806873 | www.solealbiscione.it | 59 rooms | No credit cards | No meals.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Casa di Santa Brigida.   \n$$ | B&B\/INN | The friendly sisters of Santa Brigida oversee simple, straightforward, and centrally located accommodations\u2014right next to Campo de' Fiori\u2014in one of Rome's loveliest convents, with a rooftop terrace overlooking Palazzo Farnese; sometimes the sisters offer guests tickets to the papal audience. You won't find iPod charging docks or flat-screen TVs here, and breakfast is only served after the sisters have finished their prayers. Still, the atmosphere is serene and the rooms are perfect for the price. The Brigidine sisters, who wear a distinctive habit and veil with a caplike headband, are known for their gentle manner. You can also book a meal here. The guesthouse entrance is around the corner from the church at Via Monserrato 54. Pros: no curfew in this historic convent; insider papal tickets; location in the Piazza Farnese. Cons: weak a\/c; no TVs in the rooms (though there is a common TV room); mediocre breakfast. | Rooms from: \u20ac160 | Piazza Farnese 96, Campo de' Fiori | 00186 | 06\/68892596 |  piazzafarnese@brigidine.org | www.brigidine.org | 2 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nHotel Campo de' Fiori.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | Each room in this ivy-draped hotel, perhaps one of Rome's most handsome, is entirely unique in its colors, furnishings, and refined feel, and the views of Roman rooftops from the Campo de' Fiori's terrace certainly don't disappoint. Inside the hotel, take in Renaissance-style frescoes, exposed brickwork, and thoughtful touches throughout. If you desire more extensive accommodations, the hotel offers 14 apartments in the area that can accommodate two to five guests. Pros: modern amenities such as flat-screen LCD TV with satellite, individual air-conditioning, and free Wi-Fi; rooftop terrace; a 4% discount if you pay in cash. Cons: some of the rooms are very small; breakfast works on a voucher system with a nearby caff\u00e8; the staff isn't as hospitable as most Italians. | Rooms from: \u20ac300 | Via del Biscione 6, Campo de' Fiori | 00186 | 06\/68806865 | www.hotelcampodefiori.it | 23 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Hotel Ponte Sisto.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | With one of the prettiest patio-courtyards in Rome (Europe?), this hotel offers its own blissful definition of Pax Romana: peace, indeed, will be yours, sitting in this enchanting spot, shadowed by gigantic palm trees, set with tables, and adorned with pink and white flowers, all surrounded by the suavely ochre walls of the hotel, gorgeously renovated in 2001 from a palazzo built by the noble Venetian Palottini family. Just two steps away from Trastevere and Campo de' Fiori, it also features refined guest rooms, some which look over the garden of the historic Palazzo Spada, while others catch a glimpse of the cupola of St. Peter's Basilica in the distance. Inside, cherrywood accents, recessed lighting, and luminous marble floors give a calming effect. Suites come with Jacuzzis and furnished balconies or terraces, and the hotel also has a bar and restaurant. The location is indeed superb: Not only are you in the middle of all of the sights, but a wonderful array of Roman trattorias await you just across the Ponte Sisto in Trastevere. Pros: staff is friendly; rooms with views (and some with balconies and terraces); luxury bathrooms; beautiful courtyard garden. Cons: street-side rooms can be a bit noisy; some rooms are on the small side; meals at the restaurant can only be planned for groups. | Rooms from: \u20ac300 | Via dei Pettinari 64, Campo de' Fiori | 00186 | 06\/686310 | www.hotelpontesisto.it | 103 rooms, 4 suites | Breakfast.\n\nTeatro di Pompeo.   \n$$ | HOTEL | Have breakfast under the ancient stone vaults of Pompey's Theater, the site of Julius Caesar's assassination, and sleep under restored beamed ceilings that date from the days of Michelangelo at this hotel with simple (and perhaps a bit dated) rooms and wonderful, genuinely helpful staff. Rooms have terra-cotta floors, comfortable old-fashioned beds, and antique (almost too antique) furniture. Hotel Teatro di Pompeo is the kind of place where you can really feel that you're living where the ancient Romans once did. Pros: location is central to the Campo but not right on the market square; helpful staff; an old-school Roman feel. Cons: it can be noisy on both the street side and the interior courtyard; rooms are small and some are a bit musty. | Rooms from: \u20ac200 | Largo del Pallaro 8, Campo de' Fiori | 00186 | 06\/68300170 | www.hotelteatrodipompeo.it | 12 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nTiziano.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | With Campo de' Fiori, Piazza Navona, and the Pantheon all at your doorstep, this 18th-century hotel in a former palace\u2014the once grand Palazzo Pacelli\u2014makes an ideal base from which to explore. Hotel Tiziano is located smack-dab in the middle of everything: shops, restaurants, buses, and all the major sights. On the second floor\u2014the old piano nobile\u2014you'll find guest rooms with some of the loftiest ceilings in Rome, all extrovertly done with Roman cornices, bold color schemes, French windows, parquet floors, and \"modern\" furnishings. Some rooms have balconies overlooking church cupolas. Pros: a very \"European\" feel; excellent value and location; computer terminal with Internet access at the reception for guests to use. Cons: lots of traffic on the Corso, so some rooms are noisy; loud hallways, especially when hosting student university groups; not as glamorous as other 4-star hotels. | Rooms from: \u20ac210 | Campo Vittorio Emanuele II 110, Campo de' Fiori | 00186 | 06\/6865019 | www.tizianohotel.it | 51 rooms | Breakfast.\n\n### Ghetto\n\nArenula.   \n$$ | HOTEL | A hefty bargain by Rome standards, Hotel Arenula has an almost unbeatable location (in the Jewish Ghetto just across the river from Trastevere), an imposingly elegant stone exterior, and simple but comfortable rooms with pale-wood furnishings and double-glazed windows, but alas, no elevator. Standing on an timeworn byway off central Via Arenula, the hotel welcomes you with a luminous and cheerful all-white interior. The graceful oval staircase of white marble and wrought iron in the lobby is lovely, but guests with rooms on the fourth floor had better be in good shape! Pros: it's a real bargain; conveniently located in the Ghetto (close to Campo de' Fiori and Trastevere), and it's spotless. Cons: totally no-frills accommodations; no elevator; can still be a bit noisy despite the double-glazed windows. | Rooms from: \u20ac130 | Via Santa Maria dei Calderari 47 , off Via Arenula, Ghetto | 00186 | 06\/6879454 | www.hotelarenula.com | 50 rooms | Breakfast.\n\n##  Monti, Esquilino, Repubblica, and San Lorenzo\n\nThe wide, busy streets around Rome's central train station feel much more urban than the rest of the city center. Traffic is heavier, 19th-century buildings are taller, and the overall feeling is gray and commercial\u2014not the Rome of travel brochure fantasies. But the hotel density here is the highest in the city, and you're assured of finding a room in a pinch. And parts of this area, such as Monti and San Lorenzo, have become popular with the hipster crowd thanks to abundant eateries (both Italian and ethnic) and funky wine bars. Although most travelers choose the area because it's cheap, there are a surprising number of high-end hotels here as well, and if you're looking for a luxurious room, the price-quality ratio here is better than in swankier parts of town.\n\n### Monti\n\nItalia.   \n$$ | HOTEL | Just a block from bustling Via Nazionale, this hotel feels like a classic pensione: low budget with a lot of heart, with inexpensive rooms with big windows, desks, parquet floors, and baths with faux-marble tiles, and a generous buffet breakfast. The hotel is a family affair and a friendly one. The bedspreads and drapes are carefully color-coordinated in green, red, and white, in a tasteful nod to the Italian flag. Thoughtful touches like an ice machine and free wireless Internet access make a stay here all the more tempting. Midsummer rates can be bargained down. Pros: free Wi-Fi and Internet access throughout the hotel; Internet point for guests without computers to use; great price; individual attention and personal care. Cons: can be a bit noisy; a\/c is an extra \u20ac10. | Rooms from: \u20ac135 | Via Venezia 18, Monti | 00184 | 06\/4828355 | www.hotelitaliaroma.com | 31 rooms, 1 apartment | Breakfast.\n\nMontreal.   \n$ | B&B\/INN | A good choice for budget travelers, this modest hotel on a central avenue across the square from Santa Maria Maggiore, three blocks from Stazione Termini, occupies a totally renovated older building and offers bright, fresh-looking, though small, rooms. The owner-managers are pleasant and helpful, and the neighborhood isn't far from the characteristic quarter Monti, famous for its funky wine bars, cobblestone streets, and surplus of Roman trattorias and good ethnic eats. Pros: informative and helpful staff provides maps and good recommendations; bathrooms are spacious; hotel has a cozy feel. Cons: location can be noisy at night; need to take a bus or a Metro to get to most of the sights. | Rooms from: \u20ac100 | Via Carlo Alberto 4, Monti | 00185 | 06\/4457797 | www.hotelmontrealroma.com | 27 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nRichmond.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | Right at the beginning of Via Cavour, this charming little hotel\u2014ideally situated for visits to the Forum, the Colosseum, and all the major sites of Ancient Rome\u2014has an attractive rooftop terrace and modern rooms with hand-painted frescoes. Enjoy breakfast at one of the street caff\u00e8 nearby, or take in the panoramic view on the terrace. The decor is highlighted with tasteful, classical touches. Pros: impressive views of the Forum; friendly and courteous staff; modern bathrooms. Cons: rooms are small; expect to see some signs of wear; some bathrooms are shared. | Rooms from: \u20ac230 | Largo Corrado Ricci 36, Monti | 00184 | 06\/69941256 | www.hotelrichmond.it | 23 rooms | Breakfast.\n\n### Esquilino\n\nAdler.   \n$$ | B&B\/INN | This tiny pensione, run by the same family for more than three decades, provides a comfortable stay\u2014rooms are basic, but impeccably clean\u2014on a quiet street near the main station for reasonable prices. Ideal for families, Adler has six spacious rooms that sleep three, four, or five, as well as a single and a double. Worn but cozy chairs line the lobby, and in summer, breakfast can be taken on the leafy courtyard balcony. Reserve three or more nights and they'll throw in a free airport pickup transfer. Pros: breakfast on the terrace; free Internet point in the lobby; strong a\/c. Cons: some rooms are dark; showers are tiny; no safes in the rooms. | Rooms from: \u20ac130 | Via Modena 5, Esquilino | 00184 | 06\/484466 | www.hoteladler-roma.com | 8 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Britannia.   \n$$ | HOTEL | Originally built as a residence by Prince Philip Don Orsini in 1876, the Britannia is an enticing option for travelers looking for style and comfort\u2014as for the latter, this elegant Art Nouveau building between the Quirinale and Viminale, makes you feel as if you're in a private home furnished with luxury fabrics, original artwork, and handsome marble bathrooms. The attention to detail is evident in every corner, from the frescoed halls to the breakfast room. Downstairs, public rooms have somewhat crass allusions to Empire 19th-century style, with plaid printed walls and dark leather couches and chairs. The attentive staff provides amenities such as English-language dailies and local weather reports delivered to your room each morning. Pros: spacious; comfortable rooms with free Wi-Fi; some pets are allowed; good service. Cons: rooms can be noisy for light sleepers; not very close to the city's main attractions. | Rooms from: \u20ac180 | Via Napoli 64, Esquilino | 00184 | 06\/4883153 | www.hotelbritannia.it | 33 rooms, 1 suite | Breakfast.\n\nDoria.   \n$$ | HOTEL | A convenient location close to the grand Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore and reasonable rates are the advantages of this diminutive hotel, where space is ingeniously exploited\u2014from the minuscule elevator to the nicely furnished though smallish rooms\u2014and guests take breakfast on the rooftop terrace. The rooms are tastefully yet simply decorated, most in yellow; all feature soundproof windows. The hotel's most prized asset is the roof garden\u2014again, not very large, but fine for enjoying an al fresco cappuccino and a pleasant view. The Doria has a clone, the Hotel Amalfi, across the street, with the same amenities and some larger rooms with three beds. Pros: smart use of space; breakfast on the rooftop terrace. Cons: minuscule elevator; small reception area; despite soundproofing there's still some traffic noise. | Rooms from: \u20ac130 | Via Merulana 4, Esquilino | 00185 | 06\/4465888 | www.doriahotel.it | 20 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nMorgana.   \n$$ | HOTEL | A stylish hotel just a stone's throw from Termini sounds like some sort of a miracle, but, complete with unbeatable prices, the Morgan welcomes guests with chic rooms (kitschy striped walls, oversized comfy beds, long flowing drapes), top amenities\u2014Jacuzzi tubs, flat-screen TVs with satellite, and Wi-Fi\u2014and a neighborhood that is super-convenient, if not the best in town. Breakfast is generous and abundant, and the hotel organizes a happy hour in the evenings with a buffet of finger foods and other tasty treats for roughly \u20ac10. Pros: with direct bookings, Morgana offers special packages with free airport transfer or a free guided tour; the hotel is pet-friendly. Cons: neighborhood is run-down; removed from most sightseeing (though you can take buses or the Metro). | Rooms from: \u20ac165 | Via Filippo Turati 33\/37, Esquilino | 00185 | 06\/4467230 | www.hotelmorgana.com | 121 rooms, 2 suites | Breakfast.\n\nRadisson SAS Es.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | Imagine your guest room was at a big-city modern art museum and you'll start to get the picture here: spacious bedrooms with funky fixtures (beds often smack in the middle of the room), windows that light up at night, and plenty of other minimalist and ultra-contemporary design touches, most in complete contrast to what you'll find throughout Rome. Colorful accents throughout contrast with an overarching theme of white or muted tones, or sheer minimalism (bathroom walls are glass, which may be a little too open for the more private traveler). In addition to a swimming pool and sundeck on the roof, the hotel has a health and fitness room with spa, plus a bar, two restaurants, and free high-speed Internet and Wi-Fi everywhere. Pros: distinctive design; convenient, transportation-wise, as it's so close to Termini; friendly and helpful staff, plus a lot of extras (like free Wi-Fi). Cons: Termini can be a bit unsavory at night; see-through bathrooms don't allow for much privacy. | Rooms from: \u20ac240 | Via Filippo Turati 171, Esquilino | 00185 | 06\/444841 | www.rome.radissonsas.com | 232 rooms, 27 suites | Breakfast.\n\nResidence Candia.   \n$ | RENTAL | Located in the Prati area just behind the Vatican Museums, this place (hotel-style rooms and apartment accommodations both have kitchenettes with refrigerators) is the perfect solution for those looking to be just outside the chaotic centro but close enough to all the major sights. Travelers looking for something a bit more low-key and homey will feel right at home at Residence Candia. This residence is also conveniently close to two Metro stops. Pros: Wi-Fi in all rooms; owner sometimes hosts free dinners for his guests and provides free papal mass tickets. Cons: the residence can be a bit noisy sometimes when student groups are staying there. | Rooms from: \u20ac120 | Via Candia 135\/B, Prati | 00192 | 06\/39721046 | www.residencecandia.it | 55.\n\n### Repubblica\n\nAlpi.   \n$$ | HOTEL | You'll feel right at home from the moment you waltz into Hotel Alpi, where high ceilings with elegant chandeliers, white walls, and marble floors lend both elegance and warmth and all the guest rooms are tastefully decorated, some with antique furniture. Fresh flowers are swooningly displayed throughout the hotel and on the terrace. There are slightly formal lounges and a cozier bar downstairs; a restaurant serves traditional Mediterranean cuisine. Pros: clean and comfortable; lovely terraces for dining and relaxing; numerous common spaces to lounge in. Cons: not all rooms are created equal; slow elevator; you'll probably want to take a bus or Metro to most major sights. | Rooms from: \u20ac140 | Via Castelfidardo 84, Repubblica | 00185 | 06\/4441235 | www.hotelalpi.com | 48 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nFodor's Choice |  The Beehive.   \n$ | B&B\/INN | Living the American dream in Italy is exactly what one Los Angeles couple did in 1999, when they opened the Beehive, a hip, alternative budget hotel (bathrooms are shared) near Termini train station where you can take a yoga class, go organic in the on-site caff\u00e8, or lounge the afternoon away in the lovely garden or reading lounge. Most people don't know quite what to make of it except that it's cool, a cross between a hostel and a holistic center. Additional amenities include Wi-Fi and their very own gallery; what you won't find are televisions and air-conditioning. If you would prefer your own self-catering apartment with a kitchen and private bathroom for your group or family, or if you'd just like an individual room in an apartment, the Beehive also rents three apartments in the neighborhood. Pros: yoga, massage, and other therapies offered on-site; Sunday brunches at their caff\u00e8 featuring organic pancakes. Cons: no TV, a\/c, baggage storage, or private bathroom; breakfast is not included in the room rate. | Rooms from: \u20ac85 | Via Marghera 8, San Lorenzo | 00185 | 06\/44704553 | www.the-beehive.com | 8 rooms, 1 dormitory, 3 apartments | No meals.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Exedra.   \n$$$$ | HOTEL | If Rome's semi-stodgy hotel scene has an It-Girl, it's the hard-to-top Exedra, where high rollers love to host splashy parties by the rooftop swimming pool and magazines love to rave about them; rooms are predictably luscious in an uptown way, with silky linens and handsome nouveau-colonial bedsteads, and many face the spectacular fountain in the piazza outside. Unlike its naughty younger brother the Aleph, the Exedra is a model of neoclassical respectability, all gilt-framed mirrors and fresh flowers, but there's a glint of cutting edge in the paparazzi-inspired (and inspiring) Tazio brasserie. Why stay here, rather than at the umpteen other expensively elegant hotels in central Rome? You can think about it while you lounge by that rooftop pool. Pros: spacious and attractive rooms; great spa and pool; terrace with cocktail service; close to Termini station. Cons: food and beverages are expensive; beyond the immediate vicinity, parts of the neighborhood can be sketchy. | Rooms from: \u20ac360 | Piazza della Repubblica 47, Repubblica | 00185 | 06\/489381 | www.boscolohotels.com | 240 rooms, 18 suites | Breakfast.\n\nLeon's Place Hotel.   \n$$ | HOTEL | Almost akin to flipping through the pages of Italian Vogue, a stroll through this glamorous design hotel (just a short distance from the Piazza Repubblica hub) reveals lots of chic and bling-tastic decor, including Art Deco\u2013inspired furnishings, plush chairs and sofas, sparkling chandeliers sprouting black feathers, a velvety black swing dangling from the ceiling, and streamlined guest rooms done up in gray and black\u2014all this style and you won't even have to splurge for it. After you've settled into your room, shimmy down to the bar decked out in glittery mosaic tiles and still more chandeliers. Pros: several rooms have balconies with panoramic views of the city; free Wi-Fi in the common areas of hotel; top-quality toiletries; affordable prices. Cons: not very central; some rooms face the courtyard; no Wi-Fi in the rooms. | Rooms from: \u20ac180 | Via XX Settembre 90\/94, Repubblica | 00187 | 06\/890871 | www.leonsplace.net | 50 rooms and 4 suites.\n\nMarcella Royal.   \n$$ | HOTEL | You can do your sightseeing from the rooftop terrace of the Marcella, a midsize hotel with the feel of a smaller, more intimate establishment, where all the guest rooms are furnished with flair. Take in the view while you breakfast; the hotel also offers a light dinner service for guests who prefer to stay in and relax in the evening. Many rooms also have good views, and they are decorated using tasteful color schemes, with floral prints and mirrored walls. The spacious suites are ideal for families. The hotel is 10 minutes from Via Veneto and Termini Station. Pros: breakfast in the roof garden; aperitivo at the piano bar; light dinner offered; staff goes the extra mile to help guests with all of their needs. Cons: small rooms; Internet is spotty; not exactly close to the major attractions. | Rooms from: \u20ac200 | Via Flavia 106, Repubblica | 00187 | 06\/42014591 | www.marcellaroyalhotel.com | 85 rooms, 2 suites | Breakfast.\n\nMascagni.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | Situated on a side street around the corner from one of Rome's most impressive piazzas (Piazza della Repubblica), this friendly hotel has staff that go out of their way to make you feel at home, public spaces cleverly styled with contemporary art pieces, and wood fixtures and furnishings accentuated by warm colors in the guest rooms. The intimate lounges and charming bar\u2014very cozy and attractive with its floral fabric and wood bar\u2014follow the same decorating scheme, as does the breakfast room, where a generous American breakfast buffet is laid out in the morning, complete with complimentary newspapers. Special programs catering to different groups include the \"Family Perfect\" room, which comes with a PlayStation, a DVD player with Disney movies, and wooden blocks for small children to play with. Pros: staff is friendly and attentive; evening lounge that serves up cold cuts or light pasta dishes; great for families with kids. Cons: elevator is too small and takes a while; weak a\/c; slow Internet. | Rooms from: \u20ac250 | Via Vittorio Emanuele Orlando 90, Repubblica | 00185 | 06\/48904040 | www.hotelmascagni.com | 40 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nMiami.   \n$$ | HOTEL | Rooms at this low-key hotel, in a dignified 19th-century building on Rome's busy Via Nazionale, are soundproof and tastefully styled with coordinated curtains, bedspreads, and wallpaper, but the main draw is the hotel's location on main bus lines and near Termini station and the Metro, very central for sightseeing and shopping, though not ideal for eating out. Rooms are simple, clean, and comfortable, if uninspiring. Winter rates from November through February are a good bargain. And remember, rooms that face the courtyard are quieter. Pros: pleasant staff; soundproof windows; strong a\/c. Cons: no alarm clock; small breakfast room. | Rooms from: \u20ac150 | Via Nazionale 230, Repubblica | 00184 | 06\/4817180 | www.hotelmiami.com | 42 rooms, 4 suites, 1 apartment | Breakfast.\n\nResidenza Cellini.   \n$$ | B&B\/INN | Fresh flowers in the foyer help make this small, family-run residence close to Termini station feel like a gracious home, and since there are only six rooms\u2014traditionally furnished and accentuated with fine draperies, stylish furnishings, warm wooden parquet floors, and authentic decorative stucco ceilings\u2014you're guaranteed personal attention from the eager-to-please staff. The lobby's glossy parquet floors, elegant door moldings, and handsome wood Empire-style desk and chairs make a sweet impression. The hotel is somewhat distant from the city's main historic attractions, but Roma Termini and its transportation links are close by. Pros: it feels like you're visiting Rome in another era; Jacuzzi bathtubs and hydrojet showers; personalized care from the staff. Cons: not close to the main attractions; the orthopedic mattresses may be too firm for some; breakfast is the standard Continental fare. | Rooms from: \u20ac200 | Via Modena 5, Repubblica | 00184 | 06\/47825204 | www.residenzacellini.it | 6 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nRomae.   \n$$ | HOTEL | On the better side of Termini station, the Romae has the advantages of a strategic location\u2014it's within walking distance of many sites, and handy to bus and Metro lines\u2014and attracts guests for its comfortable rooms and ample amenities such as satellite TV, in-room safe, and Internet access. The rooms are simple with white walls and light-colored wood fixtures. Pros: spacious rooms; complimentary beverages offered throughout the day; international newspapers available; free Internet access. Cons: breakfast is served at the bar across the street; not much action in the neighborhood at night; showers tend to give problems. | Rooms from: \u20ac140 | Via Palestro 49, Castro Pretorio | 00185 | 06\/4463554 | www.hotelromae.com | 40 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nVilla delle Rose.   \n$ | HOTEL | When the Eternal City becomes too chaotic for you, head to this relaxing retreat in a charming 19th-century palazzo minutes away from Termini station, with its beautiful rose garden where guests typically have breakfast or sip afternoon tea. Guest-room furnishings are a bit old-fashioned, but the rooms are comfortable and functional. Pros: delightful garden with blooming roses and jasmine; free parking; free Wi-Fi. Cons: some of the rooms are small (ask for a larger one); the elevator is also small. | Rooms from: \u20ac115 | Via Vicenza 5, Repubblica | 00185 | 06\/4451795 | www.villadellerose.it | 37 rooms | Breakfast.\n\n### San Lorenzo\n\nAphrodite.   \n$$ | HOTEL | Given a recent design makeover, this hotel offers plenty of panache for the money: the mod, minimalist reception area strikes an elegant note (a little off-key since the immediate area here is right next door to Termini Station), and guest rooms are clean and friendly, adorned with soft pastel colors. Some rooms are on the spartan side, but the overall feel is fresh and modern. White walls and curtains lend a peaceful, almost monastic quality to the place. You can't beat it for the value. Pros: panache for a low price; big bathrooms with mosaic tiles. Cons: not very central location; small rooms. | Rooms from: \u20ac130 | Via Marsala 90, Termini | 00185 | 06\/491096 | www.aphroditehotelrome.com | 50 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nDes Artistes.   \n$$ | HOTEL | The three Riccioni brothers have put their hearts and souls into running the Des Artistes, making it the cr\u00e8me de la cr\u00e8me of this neighborhood near Termini, and you'll want to book well ahead to reserve your spot in this delightful hotel, decked out with 20th-century paintings, with mahogany furniture and handsome fabrics in the guest rooms. The bathrooms are unusually elegant for a 3-star hotel and even include towel warmers, handy for cold winter nights. Des Artistes hasn't forgotten its roots, though: there's also a \"hostel\" floor with 11 simpler rooms for travelers on a budget. As for location, this is somewhat on the fringe, being several blocks (in the wrong direction) from Roma Termini, near the Castro Pretorio Metro stop. Pros: good value; decent-size rooms; relaxing roof garden. Cons: breakfast room is small; reception is on the fifth floor; you have to pay for Wi-Fi. | Rooms from: \u20ac130 | Via Villafranca 20, Castro Pretorio | 00185 | 06\/4454365 | www.hoteldesartistes.com | 40 rooms, 27 with bath | Breakfast.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Yes Hotel.   \n$$ | HOTEL | This chic hotel may fool you into thinking these digs are expensive, but the contemporary coolness of Yes Hotel\u2014crisp neutral colors and modern fabrics in the guest rooms and high-end amenities such as flat-screen TVs, top-of-the-line toiletries, and electronic safes\u2014comes at a budget price. It's located around the corner from Termini train station, which makes it a good base for sightseeing. Wireless Internet access is available in the rooms and throughout the hotel for an extra free. Pros: flat-screen TVs with satellite TV; doesn't have the feel of a budget hotel; discount if you pay cash; great value. Cons: rooms are small; no individual climate control or refrigerators in the rooms. | Rooms from: \u20ac140 | Via Magenta 15, Termini | 00185 | 06\/44363836 | www.yeshotelrome.com | 29 rooms, 1 suite | Breakfast.\n\n##  Veneto, Borghese, and Spagna\n\nThough the glamorous days of dolce vita, when celebs and paparazzi packed the famed Via Veneto, are long gone, this area still houses haute couture shops\u2014Gucci, Prada, Fendi\u2014and loads of fine restaurants and luxury lodgings. It's the absolute best place to do some serious shopping, and its dining scene and street caff\u00e8 make for great people-watching. The American Embassy is here and so is the Hard Rock Caf\u00e9, and it's convenient to Villa Borghese, the Spanish Steps, and Rome's Metro stop\u2014Barberini is at the bottom of the uphill-winding (and rather steep) street.\n\n### Veneto\n\nFodor's Choice |  Aleph.   \n$$$$ | HOTEL | If you're wondering where the beautiful people are, look no further than the Aleph, the most unfalteringly fashionable of Rome's design hotels\u2014the just-this-side-of-kitsch theme is Dante's Divine Comedy, and you can walk the line between heaven and hell through the Angelo bar, the red-red-red Sin restaurant, and Paradise spa\u2014where the guest rooms are happily more subdued, in neutral tones with wood furniture, made galleryesque by giant black-and-white photos of Rome. As many will guess, this hotel was \u00fcber-designed by Adam Tihany (who also did the honors at Rome's Exedra). His relentless, in-your-face decor throws everything into the mix, from Shogun suits to his signature red twigs to shirred silk lamps. Fortunately, he likes to poke fun at himself (clothes hooks shaped like devil's horns; tiny TVs set in the bathroom floors in front of your toilet), and earnestly cool staff notwithstanding, the Aleph doesn't take itself as seriously as might be feared. When Old Rome feels, well, old\u2014this is something new. If money is no object, book the presidential suite for your very own Jacuzzi on your private terrace. Pros: access to the spa facilities is included for all hotel guests without any added cost; award-winning design. Cons: rooms are too petite for the price; cocktails are expensive; Internet is costly, too, and Wi-Fi isn't guaranteed. | Rooms from: \u20ac500 | Via San Basilio 15, Veneto | 00187 | 06\/422901 | aleph-roma.boscolohotels.com | 96 rooms, 6 suites | No meals.\n\nAlexandra.   \n$$ | HOTEL | For nearly a century, Hotel Alexandra has been a family affair, and its modest poise and distinguished style\u2014it doesn't feel like a 3-star place\u2014allow it to hold its own against its flashier big brothers and sisters on the Via Veneto. Thankfully, the hotel has seen some revamping since the days when King Vittorio Emanuele II reigned. The rooms feature refined mahogany dressers, mirrors, and headboards, while the walls and drapes are decked out in soft neutral and pastel tones. The price isn't all that bad, considering its prominent location. Pros: great location near Piazza Barberini for sightseeing, restaurants, and transportation; decorated with authentic antiques; free Wi-Fi. Cons: mostly tiny rooms and tinier bathrooms; breakfast is just the standard fare (and no cappuccino). | Rooms from: \u20ac160 | Via Veneto 18, Veneto | 00187 | 06\/4881943 | www.hotelalexandraroma.com | 60 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nBarberini.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | Here you can find about all you could ask for in a Roman hotel: charm, taste, and the good fortune to look out onto one of the best museums in town, Palazzo Barberini, and its location near the Metro, the Trevi Fountain, and good restaurants is hard to beat. The marble-floor lobby is light and welcoming, and upstairs each room is furnished with fixtures designed exclusively for the hotel. Guest rooms are a bit kitsch with paisley prints adorning the walls and matching drapes. The breakfast buffet on the rooftop, while fresh, delicious, and copious, is not included (and not cheap). The attentive staff offers special deals for dinners, theater tickets, and other events, so be sure to ask. Pros: beautiful view from the roof terrace; located on a quiet side street close to several important attractions; facilities for the disabled; spa facilities. Cons: breakfast buffet costs \u20ac30 extra; some rooms are on the small side; not all rooms have bathtubs; room service is limited. | Rooms from: \u20ac270 | Via Rasella 3, Barberini | 00187 | 06\/4814993 | www.hotelbarberini.com | 35 rooms, 4 suites | Breakfast.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Daphne Veneto.   \n$$ | B&B\/INN | Inspired by Baroque artist Gianlorenzo Bernini's exquisite Apollo and Daphne sculpture at the Borghese Gallery, the Daphne Inn at Via Veneto is an \"urban B&B\" run by people who love Rome and will do their best to make sure you love it, too: in addition to an intimate lodging experience, elegantly designed rooms, comfortable beds, and fresh fruit and pastries with your coffee each morning, the staff will help you map out your destinations, schedule itineraries, plan day trips, book tours, choose restaurants, and organize your transportation\u2014it's like having your own personal travel planner. A cell phone is even provided for you to use during your stay in Rome (though you have to pay for the calls). Pros: if rooms at Daphne Veneto are booked, inquire about its sister hotel, Daphne Trevi; the opportunity to see Rome \"like an insider\"; the beds have Simmons mattresses and fluffy comforters. Cons: no TVs; some bathrooms are shared; Daphne only accepts Visa or MasterCard to hold bookings (though you can actually pay with an AmEx). | Rooms from: \u20ac180 | Via di San Basilio 55, Veneto | 00187 | 06\/87450087 | www.daphne-rome.com | 7 rooms, 2 suites | Breakfast.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Eden.   \n$$$$ | HOTEL | A recent refurbishment of the Hotel Eden has put it back in the running for one of Rome's top luxury lodgings: once a favorite haunt of Hemingway, Ingrid Bergman, and Fellini, this superlative hotel combines dashing elegance, exquisitely lush decor, and stunning vistas of Rome with true Italian hospitality. Set atop an oh-my-weary-feet hill near the Villa Borghese (and a bit out of the historic center for serious sightseers), this hotel was opened in the late 19th century and quickly became famous for its balcony views and Roman splendor. Even the most basic room here is elegantly designed: banquette window seats, rich mahogany furniture, soaring ceilings, Napol\u00e9on-Trois sofas, and fine linens allow you to dive deep into the whoooooossh of luxury here. Topping it all off is one of Rome's most fabled \"food-with-a-view\" restaurants, La Terrazza dell'Eden, whose perch offers views that are truly panaromantic (you can enjoy almost the same vistas for the price of a Campari on its rooftop bar: remember to dress up all the same). Pros: gorgeous mirrored roof terrace restaurant; you could be rubbing elbows with the stars; 24-hour room service. Cons: expensive (unless money is no object for you); no Wi-Fi in the rooms; some say the staff can be hit-or-miss. | Rooms from: \u20ac440 | Via Ludovisi 49, Veneto | 00187 | 06\/478121 | www.lemeridien.com\/eden | 121 rooms, 13 suites | No meals.\n\nHotel Suisse.   \n$$ | HOTEL | In the same family for more than three generations, this lovely little hotel on the picturesque and fabled Via Gregoriana, minutes away from the Spanish Steps and its famous boutiques (and just steps away from the former residences of Hans Christian Andersen and the painter Ingres), offers rooms that feel more like a friend's elegantly furnished apartment. Set in a somewhat unprepossessing building, the hotel itself is sweet and serviceable, with rooms on an array of floors: if possible, opt for the ones facing the back\u2014blissfully quiet even though you're in the thick of things. Pros: good value for reasonable price; the rooms are obviously cared for; great location. Cons: breakfast is taken in your room; you will need to be buzzed in during certain hours; there are a few stairs to climb before you reach the elevator. | Rooms from: \u20ac165 | Via Gregoriana 54, Veneto | 00187 | 06\/6783649 | www.hotelsuisserome.com | 12 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nJulia.   \n$ | HOTEL | Tucked away behind Piazza Barberini down a sinuous cobbled lane, this small establishment welcomes you with a reception area that is surprisingly modern and straightforward; and though the more traditional guest rooms are short on character, they're marvelously spacious and clean. Guests also have access to free, wireless, high-speed Internet. Pros: safe neighborhood; convenient to sights and transportation; quiet (since it's just off Piazza Barberini on a small side street). Cons: no frills; very basic accommodations; some of the rooms are dark. | Rooms from: \u20ac120 | Via Rasella 29, Veneto | 00187 | 06\/4881637 | www.hoteljulia.it | 33 rooms, 30 with bath, 2 suites, 3 apartments | Breakfast.\n\nLa Residenza.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | Mainly Americans frequent this cozy hotel in a converted town house near Via Veneto, where the rooms are basic, comfortable, and tasteful (although single rooms are almost windowless), but the real charm of the hotel is found in its bar, terrace, and lounges, which are adorned with stylish wallpaper and loveseats that invite you to make yourself at home. Rates include a generous American-style buffet breakfast and in-house movies every night. Pros: big American breakfast; spacious; quiet rooms with balconies; friendly staff; cocktail parties. Cons: the building's exterior doesn't compare to its interior; located on a street with some \"gentleman's\" clubs; if you're in Rome for the Vatican, it's a long walk (or a Metro ride) from here. | Rooms from: \u20ac210 | Via Emilia 22, Veneto | 00187 | 06\/4880789 | www.hotel-la-residenza.com | 29 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nMajestic.   \n$$$$ | HOTEL | The first luxury hotel built on the Via Veneto, in 1889, during the days of the dolce vita, the luxurious Majestic was a favorite among Rome's royalty and social climbers and is still a grand, refined hotel lined with luxurious furnishings, spacious, light-filled rooms, up-to-date accessories, and white marble bathrooms. Authentic antiques furnish the public rooms, and the excellent restaurant looks like a Victorian conservatory. If that's not enough dolce vita for you (a scene from the famed Fellini film was set outside the hotel), some suites have whirlpool baths. The grill\/street caff\u00e8 on street level is a great spot along Via Veneto for people-watching. Pros: old-world elegance; silky linens on big, plushy beds; some rooms even have their own balconies that overlook the Via Veneto; nice fitness center with personal trainer upon request. Cons: pricey; breakfast is especially expensive; not all of the rooms are spacious. | Rooms from: \u20ac480 | Via Vittorio Veneto 50 , Veneto, Veneto | 00187 | 06\/421441 | www.hotelmajestic.com | 85 rooms, 13 suites | No meals.\n\nMarriott Grand Hotel Flora.   \n$$$$ | HOTEL | This handsome hotel at the top of Via Veneto next to the Villa Borghese park is something of a beacon on the Rome landscape, and no expense has been spared in decorating the rooms and suites, among the largest in the Eternal City; each one is unique, and carefully chosen antiques grace them all. The Grand Hotel Flora's standard of excellence is among the highest in the city. Many of the rooms\u2014all elegant and smartly furnished\u2014face the enchanting gardens of Villa Borghese. There's a lovely roof-garden restaurant on the seventh floor and a large conference hall. Pros: convenient location and pleasant staff; spectacular view of the Borghese Gardens and the Roman skyline from the breakfast terrace; free Internet. Cons: breakfast finishes fast; sometimes the noise from Via Veneto drifts in; crowded with businessmen and big tour groups. | Rooms from: \u20ac390 | Via Veneto 191, Veneto | 00187 | 06\/489929 | www.mariotthotels.com | 156 rooms, 24 suites | Breakfast.\n\nRegina Baglioni.   \n$$$$ | HOTEL | A former playground of kings and poets, the Regina Baglioni\u2014royal in its elegance, replete with chandeliers, grand staircases, red carpets, and gigantic statues\u2014enjoys a prime spot on the Via Veneto, which is convenient for the street's dolce vita caff\u00e8 and the Villa Borghese, but its noisy neighbor, the Hard Rock Caf\u00e9, is too close for comfort for some. When you first enter the building, the hotel somewhat resembles a Neoclassical ballroom. The guest rooms continue the palatial theme in their appointments, with Oriental carpets, luxury brocades, wall silks, and period antiques. The seventh-floor suites enjoy superb views of the Eternal City. Pros: over-the-top decor; refurbished rooms; Brunello Lounge and Restaurant. Cons: not all the rooms have been refurbished; staff is hit-or-miss; Internet is spotty. | Rooms from: \u20ac430 | Via Veneto 72, Veneto | 00187 | 06\/421111 | www.reginabaglioni.com | 136 rooms, 7 suites | No meals.\n\nSofitel Rome Villa Borghese.   \n$$$$ | HOTEL | Set in a refurbished 1902 Victorian palace, the Hotel Sofitel\u2014which has a long-standing reputation with business travelers\u2014is cleverly situated on a quiet street between the hot spots of Via Veneto and the Spanish Steps and exudes old-world elegance, albeit with a modern design sensibility. Sofitel Roma has its own bar and restaurant, the Antico Boston, which serves both international and Italian cuisine. Rooms are decorated in rich tones and whimsical patterns of stripes and floral prints. You'll return each evening to find fresh linens and turndown service with the classic chocolate-on-your-pillow touch. Pros: luxury lodging off the main drag (but not too far from it); first-rate concierge and porter. Cons: luxury chain hotel with business clientele that could make it a bit stuffy at times; some say the a\/c could be stronger; the showers are a bit leaky. | Rooms from: \u20ac320 | Via Lombardia 47, Veneto | 00187 | 06\/478021 | www.sofitel.com | 113 rooms, 4 suites | Breakfast.\n\nVictoria.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | Oriental rugs, oil paintings, and fresh flowers are scattered throughout the lobbies and guest rooms at this hotel heavy on traditional-style wallpapers and well furnished with armchairs and other amenities; American businesspeople who prize the hotel's personalized service, restful atmosphere, and elegantly designed restaurant and bar are frequent guests. Some upper rooms and the roof terrace overlook the majestic pines of the Villa Borghese. Pros: view of the Borghese Gardens; quiet and comfortable; rooftop bar and restaurant; orthopedic mattresses. Cons: it's a schlep to most sights; service is inconsistent; rooms are small. | Rooms from: \u20ac220 | Via Campania 41, Veneto | 00187 | 06\/423701 | www.hotelvictoriaroma.com | 110 rooms | No meals.\n\nThe Westin Excelsior, Rome.   \n$$$$ | HOTEL | Ablaze with lights at night, this seven-layer-cake hotel\u2014topped off by its famous corner cupola, a landmark nearly as famous as the American Embassy palazzo across the street\u2014is lavished with mirrors, elegant moldings, Oriental rugs, crystal chandeliers, and huge, Baroque floral arrangements, while guest rooms have elegant drapery, marble baths, top-quality linens, and big, firm beds. Once the stomping ground of princes and maharajahs, the Excelsior today is the hotel of choice for visiting diplomats, celebrities, and, well, American business conferences. The hotel has an array of restaurants and bars, none more famous than Doney's\u2014once the epicenter of Fellini's paparazzi. Recently renovated, Doney's now features a patisserie, an American bar, and fine dining. Pros: elegant period furnishings and decor; potential for star-sightings; health club and indoor pool. Cons: not all rooms are created equal; some say the Excelsior's age is starting to show; extras are extra-expensive. | Rooms from: \u20ac470 | Via Veneto 125, Veneto | 00187 | 06\/47081 | excelsior.hotelinroma.com | 319 rooms, 32 suites | No meals.\n\n### Borghese\n\nGrand Hotel Parco dei Principi.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | The 1960s-era facade of this large, seven-story hotel contrasts with the turn-of-the-20th-century Italian court decor and the extensive botanical garden, right on the border of the exclusive Parioli district and the Villa Borghese park, resulting in a combination of traditional elegance and contemporary pleasure: picture windows in every room with views over an ocean of green, surmounted by St. Peter's dome; the hotel has a wonderful free-form swimming pool, a piano bar with stained glass and carved walnut appointments, an uber-chic spa, and chamber music in the garden. Pros: quiet location on the Borghese Gardens; nice pool; outstanding service. Cons: beyond the city center; extras are expensive; a bit of a walk to caff\u00e8 and restaurants. | Rooms from: \u20ac250 | Via G. Frescobaldi 5, Borghese | 00198 | 06\/854421 | www.parcodeiprincipi.com | 160 rooms, 20 suites | Breakfast.\n\n### Spagna\n\nCondotti.   \n$$$ | B&B\/INN | Near the most expensive shopping street in Rome, Via dei Condotti, and one block from the Spanish Steps, this delightful little hotel\u2014where all guest rooms are soundproof and many enjoy views of the rooftops of Rome\u2014is all about peace and, comfort, and location. The common areas and guest rooms include elegant period walnut furnishings, gilt-edge mirrors, and top-notch linens and fabrics. Each room has its own temperature control, a rarity here. Pros: soundproof rooms with terraces; individual climate control; friendly and helpful staff. Cons: small rooms; you might have to send your bags up in the elevator and follow them separately\u2014that's how tiny it is. | Rooms from: \u20ac215 | Via Mario de' Fiori 37, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/6794661 | www.hotelcondotti.com | 16 rooms, 2 suites | Breakfast.\n\nDei Borgognoni.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | Travelers with shopping on their minds will appreciate the position of this quietly chic hotel near Piazza San Silvestro, a short walk from the Spanish Steps, and set in a centuries-old palazzo that's been remodeled to provide spacious lounges and a glassed-in garden courtyard; a small private art collection is also on view. Guest rooms, cleverly furnished with sharp gray, black, and red tones, have been designed to create an illusion of space, though they are actually petite. Some rooms have balconies or terraces on the interior court, and the hotel offers free bicycles for guests to putter around the city. Pros: reasonably priced but still very central; some rooms have private balconies or terraces. Cons: some of the rooms are surprisingly small for their price; the breakfast lacks variety; some staff can be a little off-putting. | Rooms from: \u20ac300 | Via del Bufalo 126, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/69941505 | www.hotelborgognoni.it | 51 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nFodor's Choice |  D'Inghilterra.   \n$$$$ | HOTEL | From monarchs and movie moguls to some of the greatest writers of all time (John Keats, Mark Twain, and Hemingway), the D'Inghilterra\u2014with a marvelous residential feel and a staff that is as warm as the surroundings are velvety\u2014has welcomed Rome's most discerning tourists since it opened its doors in 1845, and what they really adore about the hotel are first-floor salons, which seem like old sepia-toned photographs come to life. The hotel's name pays tribute to the Brits who once colonized the Spanish Steps district back in the Grand Tour era and they would still recognize the entrance, set on a potted-palm cobblestone stretch of posh Via Bocca di Leone, and the jewel of a lobby\u2014tiny, unassuming, like a sentry box against the hustle and bustle outside the front door. In fact, you're in the heart of the shopping district here, so traffic noises can intrude even through the double-pane windows (the best rooms here overlook a quiet, plant-covered terrace); others favor the Bar, which is James Bond\u2013suave. Upstairs, some guest rooms include wall-to-wall carpeting or wood floors with Chinese tapestry and Baroque mirrors. The hotel's restaurant, Caf\u00e8 Romano, with soign\u00e9 19th-century-style decor, is another favorite, especially among Rome's ladies who lunch, who stop in for a light snack or aperitivo while shopping. Pros: distinct character and opulence; turndown service (with chocolates!); a genuinely friendly and attentive staff. Cons: the elevator is both small and slow; bathrooms are surprisingly petite; the location\u2014despite soundproofing\u2014is still noisy. | Rooms from: \u20ac400 | Vai Bocca di Leone 14, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/699811 | www.hoteldinghilterraroma.it | 97 rooms, 11 suites | No meals.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Hassler.   \n$$$$ | HOTEL | When it comes to million-dollar views, this exclusive hotel has the best seats in the house, which is why movie stars like Tom Cruise and Jennifer Lopez, money shakers, and the nouveaux riche are all willing to pay top dollar to stay at this top address of Rome, perched atop the Spanish Steps; they are indeed lucky, for while the Hassler's exterior is bland, the recently restyled guest rooms are among the world's most extravagant and lavishly decorated. The hotel is owned by the Wirth family, a famous dynasty of Swiss hoteliers. You can get more standard rooms at the back of the hotel, which will spare you and your wallet the VIP prices. Of course, even the lowest prices at the Hassler can't compare with what you could find somewhere else. The recently renovated penthouse boasts the largest terrace in Rome (and a \u20ac5,000-a-night price tag). The rooftop restaurant, Im\u00e0go (which guests use for the breakfast buffet), is world famous for its view, if not for its food; and the Palm Court, which becomes the hotel bar in summer, overflows with flowers. Pros: charming old-world feel; prime location and panoramic views at the top of the Spanish Steps; just \"steps\" away from some of the best shopping in the world. Cons: VIP prices; many think the staff is too standoffish; the spa facilities are far from 5-star material. | Rooms from: \u20ac650 | Piazza Trinit\u00e0 dei Monti 6, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/69934755, 800\/223\u20136800 Toll-free from the U.S. | www.hotelhasslerroma.com | 82 rooms, 13 suites | No meals.\n\nHotel Art.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | High Fashion Rome meets Chic Contemporary Gallery at this hotel that sits on Via Margutta, \"the street of painters\": as you glide your way through the stylish lobby, the smart furnishings and fixtures in the public spaces of the hotel will build up your urge to bid on an item as if you were at an auction at Christie's, but the color-coordinated guest rooms are more standard contemporary style (sleek wood headboards accented by handmade Florentine leather, puffy white comforters, bathrobes, and high-speed Internet). The real gem is the Crystal Bar, set in an old chapel, with stuccoed pillars and arches and gilded panels in Raphaelesque style topped off with a glittering chandelier. Pros: feels like you've checked into an ultra-hip art gallery; helpful and pleasant staff; in between two Metro stops; comfortable beds. Cons: the glass floors are noisy at night; the courtyard bar crowd may keep you awake; the a\/c can be fussy. | Rooms from: \u20ac280 | Via Margutta 56, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/328711 | www.hotelart.it | 44 rooms, 2 suites | Breakfast.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Hotel de Russie.   \n$$$$ | HOTEL | A ritzy retreat for government bigwigs and Hollywood high rollers, the de Russie\u2014just steps away from the famed Piazza del Popolo and set in a 19th-century historic hotel that once boasted a clientele that included royalty, Picasso, and Cocteau\u2014got the best money could buy when famed hotelier Sir Rocco Forte gave this dowager a face-lift, replete with that Soho-hip decor (Donghia-style furnishings and a mod minimalism) that seems to depressingly prevail, in cookie-cutter fashion, in Forte hotels New York to Geneva. Almost making up for this is the hotel's most prized possession: the spectacular multiterraced garden courtyard, which can be seen from many (but not all) guest rooms and its sharp Le Jardin de Russie restaurant. When not lounging outside on their plushy terrace, VIPs can be found at the world-class spa facility or sipping Prosecco poolside. Pros: big potential for celebrity sightings; special activities for children; extensive gardens (including a butterfly reserve); first-rate luxury spa. Cons: hotel is a bit worn around the edges; decor is generic-luxe; breakfast is nothing special; avoid street-side rooms. | Rooms from: \u20ac750 | Via del Babuino 9, Popolo | 00187 | 06\/328881 | www.rfhotels.com | 122 rooms, 33 suites | Breakfast.\n\nHotel Homs.   \n$$ | HOTEL | Tucked away on a quiet side street leading to Piazza di Spagna is this midsize hotel with two spectacular rooftop terraces that provide fine views of the whole area and guest rooms furnished in true Roman style: with beautiful antiques, wooden fixtures, rich colored fabrics and bedspreads, and long flowing drapes. Rome's most comprehensive English-language bookshop, the Anglo-American, is directly across the street. The hotel also has apartments to rent for those looking for something a little roomier. Pros: walking distance to Piazza di Spagna; steps away from a big bus hub; close to the Metro; helpful staff. Cons: no breakfast included in the room rate; small rooms; fee for Internet access. | Rooms from: \u20ac190 | Via della Vite71\u201372, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/6792976 | www.hotelhoms.it | 53 rooms, 5 suites, 1 apartment | No meals.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Il Palazzetto.   \n$$$$ | If you have ever fantasized about staying in one of those houses that perch over the Spanish Steps, make that dream your very special reality by checking into one of the four guest rooms here: you'll wind up reclining the day away on Il Palazzetto's gorgeous terrace to watch the never-ending street theater that is the Scalinatella. Even the legendary Hassler, set across Piazza Trinit\u00e0 dei Monti atop the steps, can't make this claim. Beyond the tiny reception, enormous red salons welcome you to the piano nobile of this Renaissance-era house; in reality they are the red-on-red bar and restaurant of the International Wine Academy. Things get much more tranquil in the four beige-on-beige guest rooms (note: only three look out over the steps); none come with room service but all have something better, the full use of the facilities of its sister hotel, the Hassler. Pros: that address, that view; high-style bar. Cons: restaurant here is often rented out for crowded special events; bedrooms do not access the communal terraces; the McDonalds near the hotel entrance. | Rooms from: \u20ac350 | Vicolo del Bottino 8, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/6993-41000 | www.ilpalazzettoroma.com\/ | 4 | No meals.\n\nInn at the Spanish Steps.   \n$$$$ | B&B\/INN | After a hard day of shopping on Rome's Rodeo Drive, Via dei Condotti, you'll be pleased to see that this quaint yet cushy hotel\u2014which occupies the upper floors of a centuries-old town house it shares with Casanova's old haunt, Antico Caff\u00e8 Greco\u2014fits right in with its neighbors: the inn wins a gold star for its smart design and sharp decor. All junior suites are handsomely decorated with damask fabrics, antiques, and a great sense of style. The simpler rooms glow with ochre walls and framed paintings, while the grander ones are jewel boxes complete with frescoed ceilings and elegantly striped walls. Pros: some of the world's best shopping at your doorstep; rooms with superb views of the Spanish Steps; afternoon snacks and outstanding breakfast buffets. Cons: interior rooms are claustrophobic; the area can be noisy due to crowds at the Spanish Steps; not all rooms are graced with the stunning Spanish Steps view. | Rooms from: \u20ac340 | Via Condotti 85, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/69925657 | www.atspanishsteps.com | 22 suites | Breakfast.\n\nLocarno.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | The sort of place that inspired a movie (Bernard Weber's 1978 Hotel Locarno, to be exact), this has been a longtime choice for art aficionados and people in the cinema, but everyone will appreciate the hotel's fin de si\u00e8cle charm, intimate feel, and central location off Piazza del Popolo. Exquisite wallpaper and fabric prints are coordinated in the rooms, and some rooms are decorated with antiques\u2014the grandest room looks like an art director's take on a Medici bedroom. Everything is lovingly supervised by the owners, a mother-daughter duo. The buffet breakfast is ample, there's bar service on the panoramic roof garden, and complimentary bicycles are available if you feel like braving the traffic. Pros: luxurious feel (it may even seem like you're in a movie); spacious rooms (even by American standards); free bicycles for exploring Rome. Cons: some of the rooms are dark; the annex doesn't compare to the main hotel; the regular staff probably won't go out of their way to help you. | Rooms from: \u20ac230 | Via della Penna 22, Spagna | 00186 | 06\/3610841 | www.hotellocarno.com | 64 rooms, 2 suites | Breakfast.\n\nPanda.   \n$ | HOTEL | You couldn't possibly find a better deal in Rome than here at the Panda\u2014especially given its key location just behind the Spanish Steps on one of the poshest shopping streets in the centro, Via della Croce\u2014where the smallish guest rooms are outfitted in terra-cotta, wrought iron, and very simple furnishings; spotlessly clean; and quiet, thanks to double-glaze windows. Pay even less by sharing a bath\u2014in low season, you may have it to yourself anyway. Pros: discount if you pay cash; free Wi-Fi; located on a quiet street, but still close to the Spanish Steps. Cons: Wi-Fi signal can be a bit weak; not all rooms have private bathrooms; no elevator; no TVs in the rooms. | Rooms from: \u20ac100 | Via della Croce 35, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/6780179 | www.hotelpanda.it | 20 rooms, 14 with bath | Breakfast.\n\nSan Carlo.   \n$$ | HOTEL | Decidedly classical and refined, this renovated 17th-century mansion\u2013turned\u2013hotel with modern comforts at reasonable prices\u2014right around the corner from the best shopping district in Rome\u2014has bright and comfortable rooms, some with their own terraces overlooking the city's rooftops. A top-floor terrace is ideal for having breakfast or taking in the sun throughout the day. The rooms also have flat-screen TVs and free Wi-Fi. Pros: rooms with terraces and views of historic Rome; rooftop garden; attentive staff. Cons: there are a lot of stairs and no elevator; breakfast is basic Italian fare (great coffee but otherwise just cornetti (Italian croissants), cereal, and yogurt); the rooms can be noisy. | Rooms from: \u20ac195 | Via delle Carrozze 92\u201393, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/6784548 | www.hotelsancarloroma.com | 50 rooms, 2 suites | Breakfast.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Scalinata di Spagna.   \n$$$ | B&B\/INN | This tiny hotel's prime location at the top of the Spanish Steps, inconspicuous little entrance, and quiet, sunny charm all add to the character that guests fall in love with over and over again\u2014which explains why it's often booked up for months, even years at a time\u2014but if you're lucky enough to nab a spot here, you'll enjoy stylish rooms accentuated with floral fabrics and Empire-style sofas and the hotel's extravagant rooftop garden: gaze over Rome as you nibble cornetto and sip cappuccino. Amenities, such as breakfast service until noon and in-room Internet access, are a nice touch. Pros: friendly and helpful concierge; fresh fruit in the rooms; free Wi-Fi throughout. Cons: it's a hike up the hill to the hotel; no porter and no elevator; service can be hit-or-miss. | Rooms from: \u20ac220 | Piazza Trinit\u00e0 dei Monti 17, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/6793006 | www.hotelscalinata.com | 16 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nValadier.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | In the heart of the centro, just steps away from the prominent Piazza del Popolo and a few minutes' walk from the Spanish Steps, is this luxury hotel\u2014known for comfortable rooms with marble and travertine bathrooms and a superb location\u2014that has captured the hearts of elite travelers over the years. Once a convent, later a house of ill repute, this palazzo has seen it all, though not a trace of either incarnation remains. As for decor, it's traditional hotel luxe, with a lot of polished surfaces, mirrors, and shiny lights, so don't expect any time-burnished patina. However, the view from the rooftop terrace restaurant, complete with a panorama of domes and cupolas, is enchanting. Pros: excellent American-style breakfast buffet; piano bar; flat-screen TVs; good water pressure and cool a\/c. Cons: cocktails are a pretty penny (or, rather, a pretty centesimo); rooms are smaller than you'd expect for a luxury hotel; the lighting in rooms is very dim. | Rooms from: \u20ac290 | Via della Fontanella 15, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/3611998 | www.hotelvaladier.com | 60 rooms | Breakfast.\n\n##  Vatican, Borgo, and Prati\n\nSince you can't stay in Vatican City itself, the next best thing for those who want a more spiritual stay or something a little more low-key is to stay in the Borgo or Prati areas nearby. These boast a wide range of accommodations ranging from pilgrim plain to cardinal luxe. Borgo, directly outside the Vatican walls, has medieval charm, but can be overrun by tourists. A 10-minute walk to the north lie the residential streets of Prati and many of the hotels listed here.\n\n### Vatican\n\nAlimandi.   \n$$ | HOTEL | A stone's throw away from the Vatican Museums, this family-run hotel offering good service and good prices comes with all sorts of perks: great location, a spiffy lobby, spacious lounges, a tavern, a roof-top terrace, and roof gardens; and while the hotel is a bit out of the center, two nearby Metro stops help you move about. There's even a recreation room with a billiard table and an exercise room equipped with step machines and a treadmill. Rooms are spacious and well furnished; many can accommodate extra beds. Pros: nice family-owned hotel with a friendly staff; a rooftop terrace; a gym; near reasonably priced restaurants and shops. Cons: breakfast is a good spread but it goes quickly; rooms are small; not close to much of interest other than the Vatican. | Rooms from: \u20ac180 | Via Tunisi 8, Vatican | 00192 | 06\/39723948 | www.alimandi.it | 35 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Residenza Paolo VI.   \n$$ | HOTEL | Set in a former monastery that is still an extraterritorial part of the Vatican and magnificently abutting Bernini's colonnade of St. Peter's Square, the Paolo VI (pronounced Paolo Sesto, Italian for Pope Paul VI) is unbeatably close to St. Peter's, with guest rooms that are luxurious and comfortable and amazingly quiet. Replete with a stone terrace that directly overlooks Bernini's 17th-century porticoes, this hotel enjoys one of the most spectacular perches in Rome. For truly superior rooms, ask for the newly inaugurated rooms on the piano nobile (noble floor). Within breathing distance of the residence of Benedict XVI, it's not surprising that the management here is devoutly Catholic, as you may gather from the framed portraits of the pope on the front desk and the daily prayer slipped under your door in lieu of a newspaper. But heaven can wait once you settle into your breakfast buffet on the wonderful roof terrace and drink in the view of Michelangelo's great dome. Pros: unparalleled views of St. Peter's from the roof terrace; a sound sleep is assured in these quiet rooms; the breakfast spread is huge. Cons: the small rooms are really small; bathrooms are small; the atmosphere at night is a little too quiet. | Rooms from: \u20ac190 | Via Paolo VI 29, Vatican | 00193 | 06\/68134108 | www.residenzapaolovi.com | 35 rooms | Breakfast.\n\n### Borgo\n\nAtlante Star.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | The lush rooftop-terrace garden caff\u00e8 with a stage-front-and-center view of St. Peter's Basilica is one reason guests book their stay here, while others include close proximity to the Vatican, top-notch service, and superb shopping all at your fingertips. In a distinguished 19th-century building, the guest rooms are attractively decorated with striped silk linens and prints for an old-world atmosphere. The friendly family management is attentive to guests' needs and they take pride in offering extra-virgin olive oil from their own trees in the country. A sister hotel, the Atlante Garden, just around the corner, has larger rooms at slightly lower rates. If requested, the Atlante Star will pick you up at Fiumicino airport for free. Pros: close to St. Peter's; impressive view from the restaurant and some of the rooms; Internet points throughout the hotel. Cons: some rooms are nicer than others; the area can feel a bit residential. | Rooms from: \u20ac260 | Via Vitelleschi 34, Borgo | 00193 | 06\/6873233 | www.atlantehotels.com | 65 rooms, 10 suites | Breakfast.\n\nSant'Anna.   \n$$ | HOTEL | In the picturesque, medieval Borgo neighborhood in the shadow of St. Peter's, this fashionable small hotel has exceedingly stylish ample bedrooms with new wood-beam ceilings, designer fabrics, and comfy beds; the marvelously decorated and spacious attic rooms also have tiny terraces. The frescoes in the vaulted breakfast room and fountain in the courtyard add an individual touch. Pros: Borgo Pio is a pedestrian-only zone during the day; beds are comfy; staff is eager-to-please. Cons: no bar or restaurant in the hotel; the neighborhood is dead at night. | Rooms from: \u20ac130 | Borgo Pio 133, Borgo | 00193 | 06\/68801602 | www.hotelsantanna.com | 20 rooms | Breakfast.\n\n### Prati\n\nAmalia.   \n$$ | HOTEL | Convenient to St. Peter's, the Vatican, and Prati's Cola di Rienzo shopping district (and just a block from the Ottaviano stop of Metro line A), this small hotel is crisp and smart with spacious, clean rooms simply furnished, freshly painted, and accented with striped bedspreads. The nearby Metro is convenient for getting to the historic center. Pros: good location for visiting the Vatican and for shopping; 24-hour turnaround on laundry services; large beds. Cons: breakfast is more sweet than savory; sometimes hot water in bathrooms runs out quickly; Wi-Fi is only free when you book the superior rooms. | Rooms from: \u20ac140 | Via Germanico 66, Prati | 00192 | 06\/39723356 | www.hotelamalia.com | 33 rooms, 26 with bath, 1 suite | Breakfast.\n\nGerber.   \n$$ | HOTEL | Across the river from Piazza del Popolo on a quiet side street in the Prati neighborhood, this intimate, unpretentious hotel offers genuinely friendly service, immaculately maintained facilities including a garden and sun terrace for breakfast or a relaxed moment, and simple rooms with pleasant, neutral-tone, modern furnishings. Pros: good value for your money; great service; comfortable beds and big bathrooms. Cons: elevator is tiny; some of the rooms are quite small; you'll probably need to take a taxi, bus, or Metro to the other sights around town. | Rooms from: \u20ac150 | Via degli Scipioni 241, Prati | 00192 | 06\/3221001 | www.hotelgerber.it | 27 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nHotel Dei Mellini.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | On the west bank of the Tiber between the Spanish Steps and St. Peter's Basilica (a three-minute stroll from Piazza del Popolo), this place has style to match its setting: antique prints and fresh flowers give warmth to the light-filled reception rooms, while grand drapes, wood-grain headboards, marble-top sinks, elegant chairs, and framed photos in the sleek and sumptuous guest rooms make for a luxurious stay. Marble bathrooms complete the pampered feel. There is also a bar, cafeteria, roof garden, and solarium. Free parking is available nearby. Pros: spacious and spotless rooms; turndown service; the neighborhood is quiet, so you'll get a good night's rest. Cons: if you want to be near the action, this is not the place for you; not a lot of dining options in the immediate vicinity; restaurant in the hotel is used primarily for breakfast and serves light sandwiches upon request. | Rooms from: \u20ac280 | Via Muzio Clementi 81, Prati | 00193 | 06\/324771 | www.hotelmellini.com | 80 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Hotel San Pietrino.   \n$ | HOTEL | The San Pietrino is one secret we just can't keep to ourselves: a cute, simple hotel on the third floor of a 19th-century palazzo a five-minute walk from the Vatican that continues to offer rock-bottom prices even in tough economic times. In addition to clean, simple rooms, San Pietrino offers air-conditioning, TVs with DVD players, and high-speed Internet to guests. There is no breakfast included and no bar in the hotel, but not to worry\u2014with all the local caff\u00e8 and bars, you won't have any trouble finding yourself a cornetto and cappuccino in the morning or a Prosecco in the evening. Pros: heavenly prices near the Vatican; TVs with DVD players; high-speed Internet; close to Rome's famous farmers' market, Mercato Trionfale. Cons: a couple of Metro stops away from the center of Rome; no breakfast; no bar. | Rooms from: \u20ac100 | Via Giovanni Bettolo 43, Prati | 00195 | 06\/3700132 | www.sanpietrino.it | 12 rooms | No meals.\n\n##  Trastevere and Gianicolo\n\nWith its village-like charm, Trastevere is considered the most characteristic neighborhood in all of Rome, where everyone wants to eat, play, and stay. This former working-class neighborhood, which once hosted artists and artisans, is now the home base of many of Rome's expats and exchange students. Hotels, squeezed into the neighborhood's former denizens' very modest buildings, tend toward the budget pension, although a few midrange hotels set in stylishly converted convents have sprung up in the last few years.\n\n### Trastevere\n\nCarmel.   \n$ | HOTEL | Across the Tiber from the main synagogue, Rome's only kosher hotel has back-to-basics furnishings in simple rooms, a very friendly staff, and a charming vine-covered terrace, as well as two kitchens for use by guests keeping kosher (prepared kosher meals can also be arranged). Breakfast is not included in the price and is served in the snack bar next door. Not all rooms have a private bath, so make sure to inquire before booking. Pros: good budget choice; kosher-friendly; short walk to Jewish Ghetto; free Wi-Fi. Cons: pay in cash upon check-in; no breakfast served on Sundays; no-frills accommodations; reception closed after 8 pm. | Rooms from: \u20ac100 | Via Goffredo Mameli 11, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/5809921 | www.hotelcarmel.it | 10 rooms, 8 with bath, 1 suite | No credit cards | Breakfast.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Casa di Santa Francesca Romana.   \n$$ | HOTEL | In the heart of Trastevere but tucked away from the hustle and bustle of the medieval quarter, this simply delightful hotel in a former monastery is centered on an impressive ochre-colored courtyard, lined with potted trees and tables, and though there isn't much on the amenities front aside from a TV-room and a reading room and the guest rooms are standard-issue, for the money this is a fabulous location and spectacular buy. The monastery was built to honor the 15th-century St. Francesca Romana, and guest rooms are appropriately simple, with cool white walls, tile floors, and simple desks that won't win any design awards. Another perk is the wonderful array of mom-and-pop trattorias dotted around the area. Pros: the price can't be beat; excellent restaurants nearby; breakfast is delicious; quiet and great location; away from rowdy side of Trastevere. Cons: thin walls; decor is a bit bland. | Rooms from: \u20ac130 | Via dei Vasceillari 61, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/5812125 | www.sfromana.it | 36 rooms, 1 suite | Breakfast.\n\nCisterna.   \n$ | HOTEL | On a quiet street in the very heart of medieval Trastevere, this basic but comfortable hotel is ideally located for getting to know Rome's most authentic neighborhood, a favorite of artists and bohemians for decades. Beamed ceilings add a rustic touch, and there's a marble terrace-garden with a classical fountain. The hotel's decor is unspectacular, but for the price, who can complain? One room, No. 40, has its own private terrace. Pros: simple accommodations for budget travelers; friendly staff; good location in trendy Trastevere. Cons: hotel decor does not match the trendiness of the neighborhood; street-side rooms are noisy; the block is popular for just hanging out. | Rooms from: \u20ac100 | Via della Cisterna 7\u20138\u20139, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/5817212 | www.cisternahotel.it | 20 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Hotel Santa Maria.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | A Trastevere treasure with a pedigree going back four centuries, this ivy-covered, mansard-roofed, rosy-brick-red, erstwhile Renaissance-era convent\u2014just steps away from the glorious Santa Maria in Trastevere church and a few blocks from the Tiber\u2014has sweet and simple guest rooms: a mix of brick walls, \"cotto\" tile floors, modern oak furniture, and stylishly floral bedspreads and curtains. Surrounded by towering tenements the complex is centered on a monastic porticoed courtyard, lined with orange trees\u2014a lovely place for breakfast. Pros: a quaint and pretty oasis in a central location; relaxing courtyard; stocked wine bar. Cons: it might be tricky to find; some of the showers drain slowly; it's not always easy finding a cab in Trastevere. | Rooms from: \u20ac220 | Vicolo del Piede 2, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/5894626 | www.htlsantamaria.com | 18 rooms, 2 suites | Breakfast.\n\nHotel Trastevere.   \n$ | HOTEL | This tiny hotel captures the villagelike charm of the Trastevere district: the entrance hall features a mural of the famous Piazza di Santa Maria, a few blocks away, and hand-painted Art Nouveau wall designs add a touch of graciousness throughout, while open medieval brickwork and a few antiques scattered about complete the mood. Most rooms face Piazza San Cosimato, where there's an outdoor food market every morning except Sunday. For those looking for a little extra space, the Hotel Trastevere also has a few apartments for rent nearby. Pros: cheap with a good location; convenient to transportation; free Wi-Fi; friendly staff. Cons: no frills; few amenities. | Rooms from: \u20ac105 | Via Luciano Manara 24\u201325, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/5814713 | www.hoteltrastevere.net | 20 rooms, 3 apartments | Breakfast.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Relais Le Clarisse.   \n$$$ | B&B\/INN | Set within the former cloister grounds of the Santa Chiara order, with gardens so beautiful you'll think you were in Sorrento or Capri, Le Clarisse makes travelers feel more like personal guests at a friend's villa rather than at a hotel, thanks to the comfortable size of the accommodations and the personal touches and service extended by the staff. In one of Rome's most popular neighborhoods, this charming little oasis features five simple, but classically styled accommodations (two doubles and three suites) with terra-cotta-tiled floors, wrought-iron bed frames, and oak furnishings, each of which opens onto a bright courtyard surrounded by a Mediterranean garden of grapevines and olive and lemon trees and has the most modern technologies: individual climate control, flat-screen TVs, air-conditioning, high-speed Internet and Wi-Fi, and Jacuzzi showers and tubs. Le Clarisse is set on the former cloister grounds of the Santa Chiara order, and the gardens are so beautiful, you'll think you were in Sorrento or Capri. Travelers feel more like personal guests at a friend's villa rather than at a hotel, thanks to the comfortable size of the accommodations and the personal touches and service extended by the staff. Across the street is the Alcazar movie theater, which shows original language films (as opposed to versions that have been dubbed into Italian) on Monday and Tuesday nights. Pros: spacious rooms with comfy beds; high-tech showers\/tubs with good water pressure; staff is multilingual, friendly, and at your service. Cons: this part of Trastevere can be noisy at night; the rooms here fill up quickly; they only serve American coffee. | Rooms from: \u20ac220 | Via Cardinale Merry del Val 20, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/58334437 | www.leclarisse.com | 5 rooms, 3 suites | Breakfast.\n\n##  Aventino, Testaccio, and Palatino\n\nLeafy residential streets, quiet nights, and fresh hilltop breezes are some of the perks of staying in this well-heeled (and relatively unhistoric) neighborhood. Hotels take full advantage of the extra space and the sylvan setting, most with gardens or courtyards where you can enjoy alfresco R & R far from the madding crowds. Bear in mind that public transportation is somewhat limited up here, and allow at least a half hour by foot to major sights. Testaccio, however offers a bountiful surplus of great eateries and a buzzing nightlife for travelers looking for a bit more action after hours.\n\n### Aventino\n\nDomus Aventina.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | The best part of this quaint, friendly hotel is that it's situated between two of Rome's loveliest gardens\u2014a municipal rose garden and Rome's famous Orange Garden, where you might catch a glimpse of brides and grooms taking their wedding pictures\u2014in the heart of the historic Aventine district not far from the Temple to Mithras and the House of Aquila and Priscilla (where St. Peter touched down). The 17th-century facade has been restored so it almost looks modern\u2014ditto for the inside, where guest rooms have standard modern decor. Half the rooms also have balconies. Pros: quiet location; walking distance to tourist attractions; complimentary Wi-Fi in rooms and public spaces. Cons: no elevator in the hotel; small showers; no tubs. | Rooms from: \u20ac205 | Via di Santa Prisca 11\/b, Aventino | 00153 | 06\/5746135 | www.domus-aventina.com | 26 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nHotel San Anselmo.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | Completely refurbished in 2006 and given a sleek metropolitan feel, this 19th-century villa blends bits of Baroque antique-flair (such as period chandeliers) with contemporary pieces (such as the sharp stainless steel fireplace in the public spaces), all within a molto charming garden, where birdsong adds to the charm of this already romantic retreat, set far from the bustle of the city center atop the Aventine Hill. Each guest room is carefully designed to follow a particular theme such as \"Room of the Poems,\" which features poems beautifully scrawled onto the walls, and the \"Room of Kisses,\" with a big canopy bed with romantic and suggestive drapes. Pros: historic building with artful decor; great showers with jets; a garden where you can enjoy your breakfast. Cons: some consider it a bit of a hike to sights; limited public transportation; the wireless is pricey. | Rooms from: \u20ac210 | Piazza San Anselmo 2, Aventino | 00153 | 06\/570057 | www.aventinohotels.com | 45 rooms | Breakfast.\n\n### Testaccio\n\nSanta Prisca.   \n$ | HOTEL | Off the beaten path and on the border of working-class Testaccio, this clean and comfortable hotel has been welcoming guests for more than 50 years, and though the exterior looks like nothing more than your average Roman apartment building, once inside you'll find that rooms are spacious, and if you're lucky you'll get one with a cute little balcony. The area itself offers plenty of parking, and the advantage of being so close to Testaccio is the abundance of great lounges, pizzerias, and nightlife. Pros: near public transportation (trams and Metro); complimentary Wi-Fi; outside terrace with chairs and tables for relaxing; Internet point available for guests without computers. Cons: some say the breakfast is mediocre; the school next door can be a little noisy on weekdays. | Rooms from: \u20ac120 | Largo M. Gelsomini 25, Testaccio | 00153 | 06\/5741917 | www.hotelsantaprisca.it | 49 rooms, 2 suites | Breakfast.\n\n##  Colosseo Area\n\nWhen Nero fiddled, this neighborhood burned\u2014the lowlands around the Colosseum and the Forum were the Suburra, the Imperial City's most notorious slum. There's nary a trace of evildoing now, and narrow alleys are quaint rather than sinister. This is a fine base for the sights of the ancient city, but area eating and drinking establishments can have a touch of the tourist trap. Waking up to views of the Forum, maybe you won't mind.\n\nCapo d'Africa.   \n$$$$ | HOTEL | Many find the modern look and feel of Capo d'Africa\u2014not to mention its plush beds and deep bathtubs\u2014refreshing after a long day's journey through ancient Rome: each room is decorated in warm, muted tones with sleek furniture, stylish accents, and contemporary art. The hotel features a nonsmoking floor, fitness center, and solarium. It sits on a quiet street near the Colosseum, Palatine, Roman Forum, and it's not far from the Metro. A delicious breakfast is served on the rooftop terrace, where you can also enjoy an aperitivo overlooking Rome at the end of your day. And if you're not too tuckered out, you can take a spin at the gym before bed. Pros: quiet, comfortable rooms; fitness center. Cons: despite proximity to Colosseum, there isn't a great view of it from the hotel; not a lot of restaurants in the immediate neighborhood. | Rooms from: \u20ac320 | Via Capo d'Africa 54, Colosseo | 00184 | 06\/772801 | www.hotelcapodafrica.com | 64 rooms, 1 suite | Breakfast.\n\nCelio.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | There's much more to brag about than the Colosseum when it comes to the location of this chic boutique hotel\u2014where the small guest rooms are sumptuously frescoed with \"faux\" paintings in styles ranging from Pompeiian to Renaissance and have French windows and elegant, marble-tiled bathrooms (some with Jacuzzis)\u2014in the romantic Celian Hill setting; think of them as hidden treasures that are often overlooked by the masses looking to cross everything off their Must-See list: the haunting Santi Quattro Coronati church, the time-capsuled Piazza Santi Giovanni e Paolo, and the verdant slopes of the Villa Celimontana park, all just a stroll away. Not far is Nero's Golden House, but lest you lose track of modern times, this hotel offers free Wi-Fi access and a rooftop gym. But the hidden-corner-of-Rome locale just may be the trump card. Pros: rooftop garden and gym; mosaic floors and over-the-top decor; comfortable beds. Cons: very small bathrooms; breakfast is nothing to brag about. | Rooms from: \u20ac220 | Via dei Santissimi Quattro 35\/c, Colosseo | 00184 | 06\/70495333 | www.hotelcelio.com | 20 rooms, 2 suites | Breakfast.\n\nDuca d'Alba.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | In Italy, it's all about the bella figura (making a good impression), so when you step into this lovely little boutique hotel near the Colosseum, you'll know you've hit the jackpot: between the marble decor and reproductions of antiquated paintings, the Duca d'Alba definitively tells the traveler that their stay will be a clean and comfortable one, and the hotel's attentive staff and reasonable rates make it a good value to boot. The tasteful neoclassical-style decor includes custom-designed furnishings and marble bathrooms. Guest rooms are styled in a modern motif with striped or plaid wallpaper, flat-screen TVs, and hardwood floors. The presence of fresh flowers around the hotel and in the rooms is also a nice touch. Breakfast consists of an ample buffet. Pros: Ancient Rome is at your doorstep; great cappuccino for your morning pick-me-up; a fitness center with a treadmill and weights; near the Metro. Cons: rooms are a bit cramped; late-night revelers from the Irish pub across the way. | Rooms from: \u20ac220 | Via Leonina 14, Colosseo | 00184 | 06\/484471 | www.hotelducadalba.com | 27 rooms, 1 suite | Breakfast.\n\nHotel Forum.   \n$$$$ | HOTEL | A longtime favorite, this converted 18th-century convent has a truly unique setting on one side of the Fori Imperiali with a cinematic view of ancient Rome across the avenue (remember, you can also drink all this in at the rooftop bar\/restaurant), while the hotel itself is comfortable though considerably less exciting: the decor is traditional in the extreme, with the requisite gold wall sconces, walnut paneling, red-velvet armchairs, and Asian carpets painting the run-of-the-mill hotel lobby picture. Upstairs, the guest rooms are similarly low-key, although pleasant; suites offer velvety fabrics and some antiques. Bathrooms have been restyled using antique tiles. Little on the restaurant menu can compete with the view from this rooftop restaurant\u2014if you get the view (many tables are not ringside, so to speak). Pros: bird's-eye view of ancient Rome; \"American\" bar on the rooftop terrace. Cons: small rooms; noisy pub-crawlers congregate in the street below; food and drinks are expensive. | Rooms from: \u20ac320 | Via Tor de' Conti 25\u201330, Foro Romano | 00184 | 06\/6792446 | www.hotelforumrome.com | 80 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nHotel Lancelot.   \n$$ | HOTEL | This home away from home in a quiet residential area close to the Colosseum has been run by the same family since 1970 and is quite popular: its carefully and courteously attentive staff go the extra mile for their guests, and the clean and comfortable rooms tend to have big windows, so they're bright and airy, some have terraces or balconies as well, and they have air-conditioning, en suite bathrooms, TVs, and Wi-Fi. In the restaurant, where hearty breakfasts and dinners are served, guests sit at Lancelot's \"round tables\"\u2014partly a play on the knight's tale and partly an effort to encourage communal dining among guests from around the world. And these round tables seem to be a big hit, since Hotel Lancelot boasts that most of their guests are either return visitors or new guests recommended by others who've spent vacations here. Pros: hospitable staff; secluded and quiet; very family-friendly; Wi-Fi included. Cons: some of the bathrooms are on the small side; no refrigerators in the rooms; thin walls mean you can sometimes hear your neighbors. | Rooms from: \u20ac190 | Via Capo d'Africa 47, Colosseo | 00184 | 06\/70450615 | www.lancelothotel.com | 60 rooms | Breakfast.\n\nNerva.   \n$$ | HOTEL | Step out of this charming hotel and you'll feel like you're literally in the middle of an ancient imperial stomping ground: strategically located a stone's throw from the Forum, it's surrounded by the breathtaking splendor of ancient ruins and relics, and the hotel itself is clean and well run, with air-conditioning, soundproofed rooms, and orthopedic beds. Guest rooms are on the small side, but some of them still have original wooden ceiling beams overhead. If you pay in cash, the hotel will sometimes give you a discount. Pros: a stone's throw from the Forum; friendly staff; orthopedic beds; and a great pizzeria (La Base) nearby that's open into the wee hours. Cons: showers are tiny; a wall blocks what would otherwise be a fantastic view of Rome's ancient Forum. | Rooms from: \u20ac180 | Via Tor de' Conti 3\/4, Foro Romano | 00184 | 06\/6781835 | www.hotelnerva.com | 19 rooms | Breakfast.\n\n##  Beyond the City Center\n\nLord Byron.   \n$$$ | HOTEL | In the '90s this was a favorite among money movers and shakers, top businesspeople, and yacht brokers, and today, the Art Deco retreat upholds its chicness\u2014it was Rome's first boutique hotel and still retains much of that jewel-like charm inside, where the design is marble meets modern\u2014while serving up a presidential clientele: surrounded by the twittering of birds in the posh and pricey Parioli district, the Lord Byron feels like a small country hotel, or better, a small country manor where you are the lord. The downstairs bar\u2014a magnificent piece of cabinetry\u2014is a conversation piece. Upstairs, modern and antique styles combine to create highly polished opulence in the guest rooms. Pros: luxury bathrobes and slippers; friendly and helpful staff; free shuttle to some of the major tourist attractions. Cons: too far to walk to sights; not many caff\u00e8 and shops in the area; cabs between the hotel and centro are expensive. | Rooms from: \u20ac290 | Via Giuseppe de Notaris 5, Parioli | 00197 | 06\/3220404 | www.lordbyronhotel.com | 23 rooms, 9 suites | Breakfast.\n\nRome Cavalieri.   \n$$$$ | RESORT | Though the Cavalieri is outside the city center, distance has its advantages, one of them being the magnificent view over Rome (ask for a room facing the city), and another\u2014that elusive element of more central Roman hotels\u2014space: occupying a vast area atop modern Rome's highest hill, this oasis of good taste often feels more like a ritzy resort than a city hotel, with a terraced garden that spreads out from an Olympic-size pool, a smart poolside restaurant and caff\u00e8, and legions of white-clothed cushioned lounge chairs scattered throughout the greenery. Inside, spacious rooms, often with large balconies, are done up in striped damask, puffy armchairs, and Waldorf-Astoria amenities, such as a \"pillow menu.\" Don't let the lush amenities distract you from the real reason you're here: to see the sights of Rome. A complimentary shuttle awaits. The strawberry on top: rooftop La Pergola restaurant, with three Michelin stars, is renowned as one of Rome's very best. Pros: beautiful bird's-eye view of Rome; shuttle to the city center; three-Michelin-star dining. Cons: you definitely pay for the luxury of staying here\u2014everything is expensive; outside the city center; not all rooms have the view. | Rooms from: \u20ac500 | Via Cadlolo 101, Monte Mario | 00136 | 06\/35091 | www.romecavalieri.com | 357 rooms, 17 suites | Breakfast.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Margutta 54.   \n$$$$ | B&B\/INN | Like your very own hip, New York\u2013style loft in the center of old-world Rome, tucked away on a quiet, leafy street known for its art galleries, this four-suite property with top-drawer amenities and cool, contemporary design is a cross between a boutique hotel and an apartment. On a quiet street, with an ivy-draped courtyard, Margutta 54 once held studio lofts used by Picasso and other great painters. Amenities include iPod charging docks, Nespresso coffee makers, and flat-screen TVs, some of which rise from the dresser at the foot of the bed at the push of a button. Travelers looking for a little more privacy or space can rent the entire top or bottom floor as the adjoining rooms connect. Pros: complete privacy; deluxe furnishings. Cons: breakfast is an additional \u20ac20 and is delivered to your room; no staff available on-site after 4 pm. | Rooms from: \u20ac350 | Via Margutta 54, Popolo | 00187 | 06\/69921907 | www.romeluxurysuites.com\/margutta | 4 suites.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\n_Main Table of Contents _\n\nThe Scene\n\nNightlife and the Arts by Neighborhood\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPlanning | The Arts | Nightlife\n\nBy Erica Firpo\n\nWhether it's a romantic rooftop drink, dinner in a boisterous restaurant, or dancing into the wee hours, Roman nightlife has always been a scene set for a movie. Director Federico Fellini immortalized nocturnal Rome in his many films about life in the Eternal City. Satyricon showcased Lucullan all-night banquets (and some more naughty entertainments) of the days of the emperors, while La Dolce Vita flaunted nightclubs and paparazzi of the city's Hollywood-on-the-Tiber era. And as the director lovingly showed in Fellini's Roma, the city's streets and piazzas offered the best place for parties and alfresco dinners. Many visitors would agree with Fellini: Rome, the city, is entertainment enough.\n\nThe city's piazzas, fountains, and delicately colored palazzos make impressive backdrops for Rome's living theater. And Rome is a flirt, taking advantage of its spectacular cityscape, transforming ancient, Renaissance, and contemporary monuments into settings for the performing arts, whether outdoors in summer or in splendid palaces and churches in winter. Held at locations such as Villa Celimontana, Teatro dell'Opera, the Baths of Caracalla, or the church of Sant'Ignazio, the venue often steals the show.\n\nOf all the performing arts, music is what Rome does best to entertain people, whether it be opera or jazz or disco. The cinema is also a big draw, particularly for Italian-language speakers, and there's a fantastic array of other options. Toast the sunset with prosecco while overlooking a 1st-century temple. Enjoy an evening reading in the Roman Forum or a live performance of Shakespeare in the Globe theater in the Villa Borghese park. Top off the night in your choice of Rome's many bars and discoteches. When all else fails, there's always late-night caff\u00e8-sitting, watching the colorful crowds parade by on a gorgeous piazza\u2014it's great fun, even if you don't speak the language. Little wonder Rome inspired Fellini to make people-watching into an art form in his famous films.\n\n##  Planning\n\n### How Do I Find Out What's Going On This Week?\n\nWith its foot firmly in the 21st century, Rome has a pantheon of publications heralding its cultural events. For city-sponsored events, Rome's official website www.comune.roma.it tries to remain as au courant as any governmental entity can. A broader range of event listings can be found in the Cronaca and Cultura section of Italian newspapers, as well as in Metro, the free newspaper found at Metro stops and on trams.\n\nOn the Web, check out inromenow.com, an events site written exclusively for the English-speaking community, along with expat favorite The American (www.theamericanmag.com). Their Italian-language counterpart Roma 2night (roma.2night.it) has an even more robust selection of nightlife, along with food spots. Rome's top cultural, news, and events websites, 06blog (www.06blog.it) and RomaToday (www.romatoday.it), add postings practically hourly. The monthly English-language periodical (with accompanying website) Wanted in Rome (www.wantedinrome.com) is available at many newsstands and has good coverage of arts events.\n\n### When to Go?\n\nDiscoteche open after 10 pm, but punctuality isn't important. The scene doesn't heat up until later in the evening so never arrive before midnight.\n\nFor early evening outings, enoteche aperitivi hour, from 6:30 to 9 pm, is the quintessential scene of Roman life where Italians and non-Italians mix together for wine tasting and cocktails.\n\n### Fees and Tickets\n\nMost clubs charge a cover charge, between \u20ac10 and \u20ac20, which often includes the first drink.\n\nDepending on the venue, concert tickets can cost between \u20ac7 and \u20ac50, and as much as several hundred euro for an exclusive, sold-out event.\n\nOften, you can find seating that is unreserved (identified in Italian as posti non numerati), or even last-minute tickets. Inquire about this option when ticket shopping; you may have to arrive early to get a good seat.\n\nProcure opera and concert tickets in advance at the box office, or just before the performance.\n\nTicketOne.   \nFor blockbuster cultural performances, rock concerts, and sporting events, TicketOne is the major online ticket vendor. | www.ticketone.it.\n\nHello Ticket.   \nOne of Italy's largest ticket vendors (both online and at ticket offices), Hello Ticket covers major musical performances and cultural events in Rome and throughout Italy. | Viale Alessandro Manzoni 53, San Giovanni | 00185 | 06\/48078202 | www.helloticket.it.\n\nTicketeria.   \nTicketeria, the go-to spot for all cultural event listings and the many punta di vendita (ticket sellers) in Rome, facilitates online reservations and purchasing. | www.ticketeria.it.\n\nOrbis.   \nAn in-person ticket vendor, Orbis stocks a wide array of tickets for music, cultural, and performance events. | Piazza dell'Esquilino 37, Repubblica | 00185 | 06\/4827403.\n\n##  The Arts\n\nSince the start of the new millennium, Rome has been experiencing a cultural renaissance. In the past, Rome based its value on its vast historical buildings and Renaissance and baroque art, but with the help of international architecture competitions, contemporary art initiatives, and the Internet, the city is embracing the future. Enhanced by new buildings, such as the Auditorium, the MAXXI, MACRO, Museum of the Imperial Forums, and Ara Pacis, Rome has never before looked so good, juxtaposing the classic with the contemporary.\n\n###  Dance\n\nRome is well known for the strength of its visual arts; and though in classical and modern dance the city plays understudy to Milan, Bologna, Florence, and even Cremona, dance is flourishing in Rome. The Auditorium's dance programming has increased to include more performances, many of which showcase international performers. The annual avant-garde RomaEuropa Festival continues to host its fall event, and has extended RomaEuropa with performances throughout the year.\n\n###  Film\n\nAndiamo al cinema! Rome has dozens of movie houses, where you'll find both blockbuster and art house films. All films, unless noted \"V.O.\" in the listing, which means versione originale (original version or original language), are shown in Italian.\n\nFor show times, see the entertainment pages of daily newspapers, roma c'\u00e8, or Rome's English-language publications. Check out www.inromenow.com for the most up-to-date reviews of all English-language films or visit www.mymovies.it or www.cinemadelsilenzio.it for a list of current features and theaters. Tickets range in price from \u20ac4.50 for matinees and some weekdays, up to \u20ac10 for weekend evenings.\n\n* * *\n\nThe City of Eternal Festivals\n\nThe City of Eternal Festivals, Rome has gone from \"provincial\" to \"provocative\" thanks in large part to its bevy of internationally recognized festivals. In the fall and spring especially, you'll see the best of local and international talent in some of the most beautiful venues in the city.\n\nArt and Design\n\nRomaContemporary.   \nAn annual contemporary art fair where Rome- and Italy-based gallerists and their international colleagues showcase artists, RomaContemporary was created to put Rome on the fair circuit with Basel, Miami, and London. The three-day event is held in late spring, usually May, at MACRO Testaccio (contemporary art center). | www.romacontemporary.it.\n\nRomaEuropa.   \nFor three to six weeks in early fall, RomaEuropa is a collective and multivenue avant-garde performing and visual arts program showcasing international artists, installations, film, and performance. | www.romaeuropa.net.\n\nFilm\n\nDa Venezia a Roma Festival.   \nImmediately following the finale of the Venice Film Festival in September, Da Venezia a Roma brings the award-nominated films to Rome for a two-week review. Widely distributed films and art house specials like Melancholia make fleeting screen appearances months before international release in Italy. Films are shown in original language with Italian subtitles when necessary. The festival has grown to include lectures and appearances by directors, producers and actors. Check out the local press or the website for more details. | www.agisanec.lazio.it\/venezia.html.\n\nFestival Internazionale del Film di Roma.   \nIn October, cinephiles head to Rome for the International Festival of Film, designed to compete with Venice, London, Cannes, and New York. Two dedicated weeks see award-winning and art house films, blockbuster and experimental movies, shorts, celebrity sightings, technical lectures, and awards for best films and silver-screen icons both past and present.\n\nCasa del Cinema. Dedicated to the art of the silver screen, Casa del Cinema is Rome's most modern projection house and film library. Located in Villa Borghese, Casa del Cinema is an oasis for film buffs with its multiple screening rooms and caff\u00e8 and a resource center with DVD library and laptops for private viewings. Like its indoor counterpart, the outdoor projection screen shows both new and vintage films, sometimes in original languages, though only in the warm months. | Largo Marcello Mastroianni 1, Villa Borghese | 00187 | 06\/423601 | www.casadelcinema.it | www.romacinemafest.org.\n\nMusic\n\nIn spring and in some summer months, Rome stages fill with internationally recognized musicians of all genres.\n\nEstate Romana.   \nThe city-sponsored Estate Romana (Roman Summer) is one of Rome's most anticipated summer series. Starting out as a bunch of low-budget concerts during June and July, Estate Romana now extends through September and draws an audience from all over the peninsula to see music acts and cultural events from around the world. Many events are free and take place outdoors, in and around the city. Events include cinema, art programs, theater, book fairs, and guided tours of some of Rome's monuments by night. | www.estateromana.comune.roma.it.\n\nFiesta!.   \nJust as the name suggests, Fiesta! is a huge party\u2014a mega event of more than 4,000 hours of Latin and Caribbean music, jazz, and blues flowing through the Roman summer from mid-June through August. Fiesta! hosts stars of international stature, exhibits related to Latin American culture, and gastro-events with delectables from all over the world. | Ippodromo delle Capannelle, Via Appia Nuova 1245, Appia | 00178 | 06\/66183792 | www.fiesta.it.\n\nI Concerti nel Parco.   \nFor more than 10 years, Villa Doria Pamphilj has been organizing I Concerti nel Parco, a concert series under the stars and amid the greenery of Rome's largest park on the Janiculum Hill. Running from June through August, the concerts take place at sunset and last late into the evening, showcasing a variety of musical genres. I Concerti nel Parco has also added winter events including Christmas concerts to its programming. | Piazza Porta di San Pancrazio, Monteverde | 00152 | www.iconcertinelparco.it.\n\nRock in Roma.   \nJune through August, the Ippodromo delle Capanelle is the heart of rock and roll with summer concert series Rock in Roma. Past headliners have included Lenny Kravitz, Radiohead, Subsonica, the Cure, and the Killers. | Ippodromo delle Capannelle, Via Appia Nuova 1245, Appia | 00178 | 06\/45496350 | www.rockinroma.com.\n\nRoma Incontra il Mondo.   \nConsidered one of Europe's most impressive world-music festivals for its consistently world-class headliners and its beautiful location in Villa Ada, Roma Incontra il Mondo is an evening concert series running from late June to early August. Concerts kick off at 10 pm and are followed by dancing until 2 am. Stands sell handmade goods and ethnic cuisine from around the world. | Laghetto di Villa Ada, Parioli | 00197 | www.villaada.org.\n\nVilla Celimontana Jazz Festival.   \nFrom mid-June to early September, the longest-running jazz festival in Europe showcases the broad scope of jazz from contemporary electronic and acid to earlier, more classic styles in a romantic outdoor setting on the the lawns of the restored baroque Villa Celimontana, just behind the Colosseum. | Piazza della Navicella, San Giovanni | 00184 | 06\/5897807 | www.villacelimontanajazz.com.\n\nIl Tempietto.   \nWith the the 1st-century Teatro di Marcello as sumptious backdrop, the Tempietto concert series, featuring classical favorites as well as tango, is beautiful evening relaxation in the hot summer season. | Teatro di Marcello, Via Teatro di Marcello, Ghetto | 00186 | 06\/87131590 | www.tempietto.it.\n\n* * *\n\n###  Galleries\n\nCappuccinos and Carvaggio, and bellinis and Bernini may be what come to mind when you dream of Rome\u2014but provocative contemporary art? Not so much. Remember, Rome is never predictable, and right now, the city is setting ground as the center for contemporary art in southern Europe, with Rome's churches, palazzos, and ancient sites making unique backdrops for contemporary art exhibitions. Rome also has two of Italy's newest contemporary art museums: MAXXI and MACRO. The city's traditional exhibition spaces have joined in and are hosting modern exhibits as well as classical, Renaissance, and baroque shows. Up-to-date exhibition lists can best be found at www.exibart.com.\n\nCompleting the modern and contemporary art scene are the cultural branches of international embassies that have been actively promoting their country's artists with monthly and seasonal shows.\n\n###  Music\n\n#### Classical\n\nSince 2002 Rome finally has had its very own state-of-the art auditorium a 10-minute tram ride north of Piazza del Popolo\u2014the Parco della Musica (or Music Park), splashed over the pages of glossy magazines everywhere. However, if you prefer smaller or quirkier venues, Rome does not disappoint. Classical music concerts take place at numerous places throughout the city, and you're likely to see memorable performances in smaller halls and churches, often for free. This is true particularly at Christmas and Easter, especially busy concert seasons in Rome. Some churches that frequently host concerts are Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza, San Francesco a Ripa, and San Paolo entro le Mura. But one of the charming things about Rome is that, with all the little side streets tucked behind quiet piazzas, not to mention the nearly 1,000 churches throughout the Eternal City, it's quite easy to stumble upon a choir rehearsing, or a chorus performing for just a few churchgoers. Sometimes all it takes is some wandering around, and serendipitous luck, to trip over a memorable concert experience.\n\n#### Rock, Pop, and Jazz\n\nLocal and smaller-act rock, pop, and jazz concerts are frequent in Rome, although big-name acts come through less frequently\u2014almost exclusively during warmer weather, although even these performances may not be well advertised. Some locales are outside the city center, and sometimes as far as Tivoli, so it's worth asking about transportation before you buy your tickets. The Estate Romana (Roman Summer) program, organized by the local and regional governments, has been growing every year. The program now includes a diverse offering of well-publicized and well-organized cultural events, most set outdoors and all free or reasonably priced.\n\nEvents spread from the center of town to the periphery and run from early June to early September. They include music of every sort, as well as outdoor cinema, theater, and other events, such as book fairs and guided tours of some of Rome's monuments by night. The city administration has really made the push for important music acts to give free concerts, and the crowds at these gigs prove that music is, in fact, an international language. James Taylor gave a heartfelt free performance in lovely Piazza del Popolo, and record crowds once filled the Via dei Fori Imperiali, from Piazza Venezia down to the stage in front of a brightly lighted Colosseum, for free concerts by no less than Paul McCartney and Simon & Garfunkel, respectively.\n\n###  Opera\n\nOpera buffs know that the best performances and most exquisite surroundings for opera are to be found at Milan's La Scala, Venice's newly reconstructed La Fenice, and at Verona's Arena (outdoor amphitheater). But Rome is Italy's capital, and so although its opera company does not have the renown of the aforementioned landmarks, it has a healthy following. Rome's opera season runs from November or December to May, and then the summer welcomes open-air concerts, some set amid ancient Roman ruins.\n\n* * *\n\nOpera Alfresco\n\nOpera buffs know that the best performances and most exquisite surroundings for opera are to be found at Milan's La Scala, Venice's newly reconstructed La Fenice, and at Verona's Arena (outdoor amphitheater). But Rome is Italy's capital, and so although its opera company does not have the renown of the aforementioned landmarks, it has a healthy following. Rome's opera season runs from November or December to May, summertime exodus of many of the city's pubs, restaurants, and discos to outdoor venues, opera heads outside for its summer season. Rome's many opera companies commandeer church courtyards, ancient villas, and soccer campi (fields) with performances that range from mom-and-poperas to full-scale, large-budget extravaganzas. Quality is generally quite high, even for smaller, low-budget productions. Tickets cost \u20ac15 to \u20ac40. To find these productions, listen closely or look for the old-fashioned posters advertising classic operas like Tosca and La Traviata. The weekly roma c'e, the monthly Wanted in Rome, and the website www.inromenow.com also have complete lists of performances.\n\n* * *\n\n###  Theater\n\nFamous Italian film director Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita showed off Rome's nightclubs and paparazzi and introduced the Eternal City as Hollywood-on-the-Tiber. Though its cinematic dominance has diminished since the 1960s, Rome's film industry has undergone a small revival.\n\nHome to Cinecitt\u00e0\u2014one of the world's largest film studios in one of the most delightful climates\u2014Rome is often the choice location for international film productions, such as Woody Allen's Nero Fiddled, Wes Anderson's Life Aquatic, JJ Abrams' Mission Impossible III, Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Twelve, and Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York, not to mention the HBO\/BBC Production's series Rome. What's more, the presence of so many actors in the city has also reinvigorated its theater productions.\n\nAuditorium Parco della Musica.   \nRome grabbed a front-row seat on the world music scene in 2002 thanks to the futuristic, Renzo Piano\u2013designed Auditorium. Also known as the Parco della Musica, the auditorium is in fact a complex of three enormous pod-shaped concert halls. These halls have become familiar friends of musical greats from Luciano Pavarotti and Philip Glass to Tracy Chapman and Burt Bacharach. The not-just-music programming including specialized festivals, caff\u00e8, restaurants, a bookstore, outdoor amphitheater, winter skating rink, archaeological site, and children's playground realizes Piano's dream of the space as a \"cultural factory.\"\n\nThe Auditorium is in the Flaminio\/Villaggio Olimpico neighborhood, 10 minutes from the city center.\n\nLikened to anything from beetles to computer \"mice,\" the musical pods are consistently jammed with people: the Sala Santa Cecilia is a massive hall for grand orchestra and choral concerts; the Sala Sinopoli is more intimately scaled for smaller troupes; and the Sala Petrassi was designed for alternative events. All three are arrayed around the \"Cavea,\" the vast Greco-Roman\u2013style amphitheater. On any given day you might chance upon the Orchestra dell'Accademia di Santa Cecilia in the big hall, the Parco della Musica Jazz Orchestra in Sinopoli, and Peter Gabriel giving a rock \"chamber event\" in Petrassi. But the calendar here is not just confined to music: Rome's hot new film festival (www.romacinemafest.org) is held during the second half of October, while other festivals\u2014math, science, and philosophy\u2014highlight the spring.\n\nAuditorium Parco della Musica Tips\n\nTo get to the Auditorium from Rome's Termini train station, take Bus No. 910, which stops directly in front of the complex at Viale Pietro de Coubertin. If you're coming from the city center, walk to Piazzale Flaminio (the other side of Piazza del Popolo) and hop on Tram No. 2 for six stops. Using the Metro, take Line A to Flaminio, and above ground to Tram No. 2, again six stops. Access the Auditorium's underground parking using Viale Maresciallo Pilsudski and Via Giulio Gaudini.\n\nTo book guided tours, email: visiteguidate@musicaperroma.it. Keep in mind that a summertime visit means outdoor concerts and festivals.\n\nViale Pietro de Coubertin 30, Flaminia | 00196 | 06\/80241, 06\/6880144 information and tickets | www.auditorium.com.\n\n##  Nightlife\n\nE mo'facciamo un giro\u2014(And now let's take a spin). . . To enjoy a night out in Rome, all you need are your feet (or a motorino) because you're bound to swing by an enoteca\u2014those classic wine bars, which abound in all parts of the city and rarely disappoint. But finding great nightlife is not quite as easy as a walk around the block. Although Rome offers a cornucopia of evening bacchanalia, from ultrachic to super cheap, all that glitters is not gold. Insiders and visitors alike understand that finding \"the scene\" in Rome is the proverbial needle in the haystack: it requires patience and pursuit. Word-of-mouth may be the best source, but also look to the entertainment guides like roma c'\u00e8 and www.roma.tonight.eu. Trovaroma provides up-to-date listings of bars and clubs. Most visitors prefer to head out to one of three locations: between Piazza Navona and the Pantheon; the Campo de' Fiori and Trastevere; or Testaccio. (The Spanish Steps neighborhood is a ghost town by 9 pm.) Remember, Romans love an after-party\u2014after dinner, of course\u2014so plenty of nightlife doesn't start until midnight.\n\n###  Bars\n\nLeading off the bar scene is the enoteca, found (often with outdoor seating) in just about every piazza and on side streets throughout the city. These establishments are mostly small, and offer a smattering of antipasti to accompany a variety of wines and bubblies.\n\nIf you're looking for a beer and some telly, peppered around the city are stereotypical English and Irish pubs, complete with a steady stream of Guinness, darts, and footie and rugby on their satellite, flat-screen televisions. Lately, these pubs show American football, baseball, and basketball\u2014ideal for those who don't want to miss a playoff or Super Bowl game.\n\nLast on the list but perhaps the most impressive is the swanky lounge or hotel bar, preferably outdoors and perched on rooftops. These expensive bars have modern designs and creative cocktail lists that would compete with the posh bars of any major metropolis, and everyone dresses to impress.\n\n###  Discos and Nightclubs\n\nWhen it comes to clubs, discos, and DJs in Rome, you have two choices: Testaccio\u2014considered mecca for clubs, discotheques, and bars, and perhaps your best choice for disco roulette\u2014and everywhere else, since discoteche can be found in any Rome neighborhood. On average, drinks range between \u20ac10 and \u20ac15, and one is often included with the entrance (\u20ac10\u2013\u20ac20). In June, July, and August, many clubs relocate to the beach or the Tiber, so call ahead to confirm location and hours. Then there is Via Galvani. Rome's equivalent of the Sunset Strip, this is where hybrid restaurant-clubs largely identical in music and crowd battle for top ranking. People-watchers rejoice: evenings here are a delight, with crowds ranging from romantic twosomes to post-teen \"Beliebers\" to savant Cassanovas of all ages.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nBarberini | Campo de' Fiori | Corso | Esquilino | Flaminio | Ghetto | Monteverde | Monti | Navona | Pantheon | Parioli | Popolo | Prati | Quirinale | Repubblica | Roma Nord | Roman Forum | San Giovanni | Spagna | Testaccio | Trastevere | Vatican | Veneto | Venezia | Villa Borghese | Outside the City Center\n\n##  Barberini\n\n#### Galleries\n\nGagosian Gallery.   \nRome is one of the more recent additions to Larry Gagosian's art constellation, an international series of galleries in locations such as New York, Los Angeles, and London. Located in a 19th-century former bank, the gorgeous oval-shaped gallery hosts blockbuster exhibitions every two to three months. Superstars showcased include Damien Hirst, Cy Twombly, and Francesco Vezzoli. | Via Francesco Crispi 16 | 00186 | 06\/42086498 | www.gagosian.com.\n\n##  Campo de' Fiori\n\n#### Bars\n\nIl Goccetto.   \nA picturesque wine bar with a fabulous selection of beverages, Il Goccetto specializes in wines from smaller vineyards from Sicily to Venice. Its carefully chosen selection of Italian delicacies (meats and cheeses) represents the entire Italian peninsula. Though primarily an indoor venue, Il Gocetto is a popular meeting place where patrons often overflow into the street. | Via dei Banchi Vecchi 14 | 00186 | 06\/6864268 | ilgoccetto.com.\n\nL'Angolo Divino.   \nHidden on a back alley, this quiet enoteca with wood-paneled walls showing off more than 700 bottles of wine (over 1,000 labels overall), delicious homemade pastas, and local antipasti offers a nice respite from the chaotic, adjacent Campo de' Fiori. | Via dei Balestrari 12 | 00186 | 06\/6864413.\n\nRoof Top Lounge Bar at the St. George Hotel.   \nThe latest front-runner in Rome's ever-growing list of rooftop sweet spots has a delicious oyster selection headlining its seafood-based menu and a dizzying drink selection that includes cocktails, beer, and many ros\u00e9s\u2014from pink champagnes to Italian rosati. The St. George's Wine Bar and Cigar Room make an excellent substitute in the non-summer months when the rooftop is closed. | Via Giulia 62 | 00186 | 06\/686611 | www.stgeorgehotel.it.\n\nVineria Reggio.   \nThe quintessential Roman wine bar, at the Vineria the first focus is whetting one's whistle and the last is style. The crowd ranges from grandfathers to glitterati. | Campo de' Fiori 15 | 00186 | 06\/68803268.\n\n#### Concerts\n\nOratorio del Gonfalone.   \nA small concert hall with an internationally recognized music series of baroque classics, the Oratorio del Gonfalone has highly decorated walls of beautiful mannerist frescoes representing the very best of the mid-16th century. | Via del Gonfalone 32\/a | 00186 | 06\/6875952 | www.oratoriogonfalone.com.\n\n#### Theater\n\nTeatro Argentina.   \nThe opulence of Rome's beautiful turn-of-the-century theater\u2014burgundy velvet upholstery and large crystal chandeliers\u2014evokes belle epoque glamour. Most productions are in Italian; however, it occasionally showcases some dance performances, which don't require subtitles. | Largo di Torre Argentina 52 | 00186 | 06\/68400015 | www.teatrodiroma.net.\n\n##  Corso\n\n#### Bars\n\nAntica Birreria Peroni.   \nFor beer lovers, the art nouveau\u2013style halls of Antica Birreria Peroni will enchant you with their turn-of-the-century atmosphere, not to mention the always-flowing taps. Expect filling canteen-style meals and big steins, with several taps featuring Peroni favorites. Best place for hot dogs in Rome, though presentation may be a bit tasteless. | Via di San Marcello 19 | 00187 | 06\/6795310 | www.anticabirreriaperoni.net.\n\n##  Esquilino\n\n#### Bars\n\nFiddler's Elbow.   \nProud of its status as the oldest Irish pub in Rome, Fiddler's Elbow maintains a scruffy appearance in contrast to the fancy pub usurpers that have opened all over town. Singing is encouraged. | Via dell'Olmata 43, Esquilino | 00184 | 06\/4872110 | www.thefiddlerselbow.com.\n\n#### Nightclubs\n\nMicca Club.   \nIn a former warehouse, this multi-genre performance venue has DJs spinning in its many rooms and live music that might include anything from swing and easy listening to burlesque and hip-hop. | Via Pietro Micca 7a, Termini | 00185 | 06\/87440079 | www.miccaclub.com.\n\n##  Flaminio\n\n#### Concerts\/Theater\n\nAccademia di Santa Cecilia.   \nThe Accademia di Santa Cecilia is part of Rome's amazing and well-versed musical circuit with a program of performances from classical to contemporary and a lineup of world-renowned artists. The futurist Auditorium Parco della Musica hosts Santa Cecilia's concerts.\n\nTeatro Eliseo. Hosting musical performances and the work of historical and contemporary playwrights throughout the year, Teatro Eliseo also offers innovative programming for children, including English-language programs. | Via Nazionale 183, Repubblica | 00187 | 06\/488721, 06\/48872222 | www.teatroeliseo.it | Concert hall and box office, Via Pietro de Coubertin 34 | 00196 | 06\/8082058 | www.santacecilia.it.\n\nAccademia Filarmonica Romana.   \nNearly two centuries old, the Accademia Filarmonica Romana is one of Rome's historic concert venues featuring classical music. The garden hosts occasional outdoor performances. | Via Flaminia 118, Flaminia | 001866 | 06\/3201752 | www.filarmonicaromana.org.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Auditorium Parco della Musica.   \nDesigned by famous architect Renzo Piano, the Auditorium Parco della Musica is the place to perform in Rome. The amazing space features three halls with nearly perfect acoustics, and a large courtyard for outdoor classical, jazz, and pop concerts. In addition, it hosts dance troupes and cultural festivals. The venue is a 10-minute tram ride north of Piazza del Popolo. | Viale Pietro de Coubertin 30 | 00196 | 06\/80241, 06\/68801044 information and tickets | www.auditorium.com.\n\n#### Cultural Institutions\n\nGalleria Nazionale di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea.   \nWith new renovations, a strong permanent collection and invigorating curatorial programming, Galleria Nazionale di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (GNAM) is presenting itself as a prominent force on Italy's art scene. The collection includes modern Italian masters from the noted Macchiaioli and Futurists like Severini and Balla to Transavanguardia, Arte Povera, and contemporary with Fontana, Manzoni, Chia, and Clemente. TIP Make sure to mix coffee and culture at the art nouveau Caff\u00e8 delle Arti in the columned alcove of the museum. | Viale Belle Arti 131 | 00196 | 06\/322981 | www.gnam.beniculturali.it.\n\nFodor's Choice |  MAXXI (Museo Nazionale delle Arte del XXI Secolo, or National Museum of 21st-Century Art). Finally open, Zahid Hadid's award-winning MAXXI is Rome's latest locale for artsy chic. The permanent collection includes a large range of Italian artists from the mid-20th century to the present, focusing mainly on the contemporary. Major exhibitions of artists and architects encourage temporary outdoor architectural installations. The MAXXI also has strong educational programming for children and occasional concerts. | Via Guido Reni 2f | 00196 | 06\/39967350 | www.fondazionemaxxi.it.\n\n#### Dance\n\nTeatro Olimpico.   \nThis is the venue for contemporary dance companies, visiting international ballet companies, and touring Broadway shows and Off-Broadway shows like Stomp. | Piazza Gentile da Fabriano 17 | 00196 | 06\/3265991 | www.teatroolimpico.it.\n\n##  Ghetto\n\n#### Concerts\n\nIl Tempietto.   \nIl Tempietto organizes music festivals and concerts throughout the year in otherwise inaccessible sites such as the Teatro di Marcello. Music ranges from classical to contemporary. | Piazza Campitelli 9, Ghetto | 00186 | 06\/87131590 | www.tempietto.it.\n\n#### Music Clubs\n\nRialto.   \nAn experimental haven for DJs and artists, Rialto hosts bimonthly \"projects\" featuring local, national, and international artists in a former warehouse. | Via S. Ambrogio 4 | 00186 | 06\/68133640 | www.rialto.roma.it.\n\n##  Monteverde\n\n#### Cultural Institutions\n\nAmerican Academy.   \nThe research and artist residency for winners of the Rome Prize, the academy hosts shows and lectures by internationally renowned artists, architects, writers, and photographers, as well as scholars in residence. | Via Angelo Masina 5 , on the Janiculum Hill | 00152 | 06\/58461 | www.aarome.org.\n\n##  Monti\n\n#### Bars\n\nAi Tre Scalini.   \nThis rustic hangout\u2014think wooden walls and counters\u2014in Monti, Rome's boho 'hood, serves delicious antipasti and light entrees and has an enticing wine list. | Via Panisperna 251 | 00184 | 06\/48907495 | www.aitrescalini.org.\n\n#### Nightclubs\n\nCasa Clementina.   \n\"There's no place like home\" seems to be the motto of Rome's latest concept lounge. Casa Clementina has a truly homey vibe\u2014an ersatz home with kitchen, living room, dining room, and bedroom at your disposal, whether to enjoy live performances or cocktails and the very abundant aperitivo hour. | Via Clementina 9, Piazza Vittorio | 00184 | 39\/3927105273.\n\nCharity Caf\u00e9.   \nThis small and romantic jazz club has live sessions nightly, hosting local and international jazz musicians in an intimate and relaxed atmosphere. | Via Panisperna 68 | 00184 | 06\/47825881 | www.charitycafe.it.\n\n##  Navona\n\n#### Bars\n\nBar del Fico.   \nThe once-modest Bar del Fico, where locals reveled in cocktails and chess games, has had a face-lift and is now a fashionable evening coffee and cocktail spot. | Piazza del Fico 26 | 00186 | 06\/68892321.\n\nChiostro del Bramante.   \nA charming former cloister and art venue\/cultural center, the Chiostro has a cocktail room reminiscent of Mad Men with equally inspired 1960s cocktails. The Bramante-designed bar hosts smaller shows of modern and contemporary artists like Warhol, Balla, and Basquiat as well as classical works. | Via della Pace 5 | 00186 | 06\/68809036 | www.chiostrodelbramante.it.\n\nFluid.   \nWith excellent cocktails and slick design, Fluid lures in passersby with its looking-glass front window where the aperitivi crowd likes to be seen. | Via del Governo Vecchio 46\/47 | 00186 | 06\/6832361 | www.fluideventi.com.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Les Affiches Baguetterie.   \nNot just for the itinerant francophile, Les Affiches Baguetterie has French country-chic decor that makes it a charming spot for brunch, but its cocktails bring the crowds. | Via dell'Anima 52, Navona | 00186 | 06\/64760715.\n\nTerrace Bar of the Hotel Raphael.   \nNoted for its bird's-eye view of the campaniles and palazzos of the Piazza Navona and seemingly floating in the moonlit sky, the Terrace Bar ranks high on Rome's list of romantic views. | Largo Febo 2 | 00186 | 06\/682831 | www.raphaelhotel.com.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Vinoteca Novecento.   \nA fantastic and tiny enoteca with a very old-fashioned feel, the wine bar stocks a vast selection of wines, Proseccos, Vin Santos, and Grappas along with salami-and-cheese tasting menus. Inside is standing-room-only; in good weather, sit outside on one of the oak barriques (barrels). | Piazza Delle Coppelle 47 | 00186 | 06\/6833078.\n\n#### Caff\u00e8 (on the Chic Side)\n\nAntico Caff\u00e8 della Pace.   \nIt doesn't get any more Roman than this: a cappuccino or cocktail al fresco at a turn-of-the-20th-century-style caff\u00e8 nestled in the picturesque side streets behind Piazza Navona. Celebrities and literati hang out at the coveted outdoor tables of Antico Caff\u00e8 della Pace, also known as Bar della Pace, where the atmosphere ranges from peaceful to percolating. La Pace's location is equally enchanting, in the piazzatina (tiny piazza) of Santa Maria della Pace, by baroque architect Pietro da Cortona. The only drawbacks: overpriced table service and distracted waiters. | Via della Pace 3\/7 | 00186 | 06\/6861216 | www.caffedellapace.it.\n\n#### Film\n\nNuovo Olimpia.   \nJust off Via del Corso, Nuovo Olimpia shows classic and current films, often in original languages. Wednesday night tickets are often half-price. | Via in Lucina 16\/b | 00186 | 06\/6861068 | www.circuitocinema.com\/roma\/nuovo-olimpia.html.\n\n#### Nightclubs\n\nFodor's Choice |  La Cabala.   \nAtop the medieval palazzo, La Cabala looks over the Eternal City. Rome's version of a supper club, La Cabala is part of the Hostaria dell'Orso trio of restaurant, disco, and piano bar. Dress code is stylish. | Hostaria dell'Orso, Via dei Soldati 23 | 00186 | 06\/68301192 | www.hdo.it.\n\nLa Maison.   \nAt Rome's best after-dinner club the large dance floor plays second fiddle to the VIP room, where wanna-be models lounge in their very best DVF dresses and manicured boys vie for their attention. Depending on the evening, vibe can be chic, hipster, or clubby. Rule of thumb: head straight to the back room and grab a couch. | Vicolo dei Granari 4 | 00186 | 06\/6833312 | www.lamaisonroma.it.\n\n#### Theater\n\nEnglish Theatre of Rome.   \nThe oldest English-language theater group in town, English Theatre of Rome has a repertoire of original and celebrated plays. | Termini, Via Castelfidardo 31 Int. 11 | 00185 | 06\/4441375 | www.rometheatre.com.\n\n##  Pantheon\n\n#### Bars\n\nFodor's Choice |  Roof Garden Bar at Grand Hotel della Minerve.   \nOpen only during the warm season (late spring through summer), the Roof Garden Bar at Grand Hotel della Minerve has perhaps the most inspiring view in Rome\u2014directly to the Pantheon's dome. Though both a restaurant and lounge bar, the cocktail hour is the best time to visit as the sun sets on the dome, the perfect setting for a surprise proposal. | Grand Hotel della Minerve, Piazza della Minerve 69 | 00186 | 06\/695201 | www.grandhoteldelaminerve.com.\n\nShari Vari.   \nOne of Rome's hybrid restaurant-clubs, Shari Vari has DJs, but its vibe is more Breakfast Club than lounge. | Via dei Nari 14, Pantheon | 00186 | 39\/3396325501 | www.sharivari.it.\n\n##  Parioli\n\n#### Cultural Institutions\n\nThe British School at Rome.   \nThe hallowed halls of the British School at Rome host special exhibitions and free, always engaging lectures by visiting professors, whose focus is promoting the humanities while living in Rome. | Via Gramsci 61 | 00197 | 06\/3264939 | www.bsr.ac.uk.\n\nIstituto Giapponese di Cultura.   \nThe Japanese Embassy's cultural branch has programming that includes film screenings, art exhibitions, lectures, conferences, and performances. The modern Heian-style building has a traditional Japanese garden open to the public in spring and summer. | Via Gramsci 74 | 00197 | 06\/3224794 | www.jfroma.it.\n\n##  Popolo\n\n#### Bars\n\nStravinskij Bar at the Hotel de Russie.   \nRome's dolce vita is usually at play here in the restaurant Le Jardin de Russie, in particular the terraced (and glorious) garden of the Stravinskij Bar, where celebrities, blue bloods, and VIPs hang out. Mixed drinks are well above par, as are the prices. | Hotel de Russie, Via del Babuino 9, Popolo | 00187 | 06\/328881 | www.hotelderussie.it.\n\n##  Prati\n\n#### Bars\n\nCaff\u00e8 Propaganda.   \nThe latest entry in the new hybrid bar\/restaurant field, where cocktails and style are just as important as dining, this stylish locale is reminiscent of Parisian brasseries of the 1930s, with a complementary cocktail menu along with creative Italian\/French cuisine. For a glimpse of Rome's super-stylish, park yourself at Propaganda's bar for a few hours. | Via Claudia 15\/19, Colosseo | 00187 | 06\/94534255 | www.caffepropaganda.it.\n\nFonclea.   \nIn a cellar close to Castel Sant'Angelo, the publike Fonclea is a live music venue every night of the week\u2014from jazz to Latin American to rhythm and blues. | Via Crescenzio 82\/a | 00193 | 06\/6896302 | www.fonclea.it.\n\n##  Quirinale\n\n#### Cultural Institutions\n\nScuderie del Quirinale.   \nFrom papal horse stalls to contemporary exhibition center, the Scuderie del Quirinale hosts shows of every genre from ancient to avant-garde, and its biannual exhibits are notoriously sold-out blockbuster events. TIP If a Scuderie show piques your interest, book your tickets in advance. | Via XXIV Maggio 16 | 00187 | 06\/39967500 | www.scuderiequirinale.it.\n\n##  Repubblica\n\n#### Bars\n\nFodor's Choice |  Champagnerie Tazio.   \nA chic Champagne bar named after the original Italian paparazzo, Tazio, has a red, black, and white lacquered interior with crystal chandeliers and a distinct '80s feel (think Robert Palmer, \"Addicted to Love\"). The favorite pastime here is sipping champagne while watching the people parade through the colonnade of the lobby. In summer, the hotel's rooftop Posh bar is the place to be, with its infinity pool and terrace view overlooking downtown. | Hotel Exedra, Piazza della Repubblica 47 | 00187 | 06\/489381 | www.boscolohotels.com.\n\nTrimani Il Winebar.   \nPerhaps Rome's best-stocked enoteca\/wine shop, the never-ending cantina proudly boasts over 4,000 labels. Its elegant, bi-level Trimani Il Winebar is a favorite for wine tasting. Sommeliers frequent Trimani daily to stock up their restaurants. | Via Cernaia 37\/b , Repubblica | 00185 | 06\/4469661 | www.trimani.com.\n\n#### Cultural Institutions\n\nPalazzo delle Esposizioni.   \nSince its 2007 reopening, the Palazzo delle Esposizioni has been bombarding Rome with singularly amazing exhibitions by artists such as Rothko and Calder and about subjects as divergent as Charles Darwin and Bulgari jewelry. The complex also hosts a high-ceiling coffee bar and Open Colonna, one of Rome's nouvelle restaurants with a late evening bar. | Via Nazionale 194 | 00184 | 06\/39967500 | www.palazzoesposizioni.it.\n\n#### Dance\n\nCorps de Ballet, Teatro dell'Opera.   \nThe Corps de Ballet of the Teatro dell'Opera performs throughout the year at the belle epoque opera house. Performances include many of the classics, often with leading international guest stars. During the summer season, the company stages ballets alfresco at the Baths of Caracalla, mixing contemporary set design with the classic structure.\n\nTeatro dell'Opera | Piazza Beniamino Gigli 8, Repubblica | 00185 | 06\/481601, 06\/48160255 tickets | www.operaroma.it. | Teatro dell'Opera, Piazza Beniamino Gigli 7, Termini | 0018 | 06\/48160255 | www.operaroma.it.\n\n#### Film\n\nThe Space Cinema Moderno.   \nPerhaps the most \"American\" of all Rome's theaters (hint: great concessions, stadium seating, and comfortable, couchlike chairs), the cinema has five screens, occasionally screening English-language and original-language films. Easy to find, the Moderno is located in the porticoes of Piazza Repubblica, next to the classic Exedra Hotel. | Piazza della Repubblica 45\u201346 | 00185 | 06\/47779202 | www.thespacecinema.it.\n\n#### Opera\n\nFodor's Choice |  Teatro dell'Opera.   \nRecently Rome has come into the spotlight for opera aficionados thanks to Maestro Riccardo Muti's 2011 Nabucco performance and his recent support of Rome's Teatro dell'Opera. Though considered a far younger sibling of Milan's La Scala and Venice's La Fenice, the company does command an audience during its mid-November to May season. Tickets are on sale in advance of the season. In the hot summer months, the company moves to the Baths of Caracalla for its outdoor opera series.\n\nTerme di Caracalla. The 3rd-century AD bath complex Terme di Caracalla doubles as backdrop for the Teatro dell'Opera's summer performance series. As can be expected, the oft-preferred performance is Aida for its spectacle, which has been known to include real elephants. The company has taken a new direction, using projections atop the ancient ruins to create cutting-edge sets. | Via Antoniniana 14, Caracalla | 00153 | 06\/481 601 | www.operaroma.it | Piazza Beniamino Gigli 8 | 00185 | 06\/481601, 06\/48160255 tickets | www.operaroma.it.\n\n##  Roma Nord\n\n#### Dance\n\nTeatro Greco.   \nAs part of Rome's rich and intense performance circuit, the Teatro Greco features international contemporary dance performances and often hosts the fall's Festa della Danza. | Via Leoncavallo 10 | 00199 | 06\/8607513 | www.teatrogreco.it.\n\n##  Roman Forum\n\n#### Theater\n\nMiracle Players.   \nLooking for a bit of English humor? With an obvious penchant for Monty Python, the Miracle Players are Rome's most vocal English-language comedy troupe performing original plays. Head to the Roman Forum on Friday afternoons in summer for their free, live performances. | www.miracleplayers.org.\n\n##  San Giovanni\n\n#### Dance\n\nMuseo Nazionale degli Strumenti Musicali.   \nA pastoral dance setting, the gardens of the Museo Nazionale degli Strumenti Musicali are the summer stage for a festival of classical and contemporary dance from June through August. | Piazza di Santa Croce in Gerusalemme 9\/a | 00185 | 06\/7014796 | www.museostrumentimusicali.it.\n\n##  Spagna\n\n#### Bars\n\nAntica Enoteca.   \nPiazza di Spagna's most celebrated wine bar literally corners the market on prime people-watching. In addition to a vast selection of wine, Antica Enoteca has delectable antipasti, perfect for a snack or a light lunch. | Via della Croce 76\/b | 00187 | 06\/6790896 | www.anticaenoteca.com.\n\nEnoteca Palatium.   \nJust down the street from the Piazza di Spagna hub is this quiet gem run by Lazio's Regional Food Authority as a chic showcase for the best of Lazio's pantry and wine cellar: from its fine vintages to olive oils, cheese, and meats to a full seasonal menu of Lazio cuisine. Located where famed aesthete and poet Gabriele d'Annunzio once lived, this is not your garden-variety corner wine bar. TIP Stop by during aperitivo hour, from 6:30 pm onward (reservations recommended) to enjoy this burst of local flavor. | Via Frattina , 94, Piazza di Spagna | 00186.\n\nFodor's Choice |  5th Floor Terrace at the Palazzetto.   \nThe prize for perfect aperitivo spot goes to the Palazzetto, with excellent drinks and appetizers and a breathtaking view of Rome's domes and rooftops, all from its rooftop overlooking the Spanish Steps. | Il Palazzetto, Piazza Trinit\u00e0 di Monti, Spagna | 00186 | 06\/699341000.\n\nGilda.   \nEvery year, Gilda reinvents herself to continue the never-ending party near the Spanish Steps. Recent incarnations have added a piano bar and restaurant just off the dance floors. | Via Mario de' Fiori 97 | 00187 | 06\/6784838 | www.gildabar.it.\n\nVictoria House.   \nVictoria House, off Via del Corso and a stone's throw from Piazza del Popolo, is Rome's very first English pub. Still considered one of the best for its beer selection and English menu, it has an authentic, worn-in feel\u2014like an old shoe. | Via Ges\u00f9 e Maria 18 | 00187 | 06\/3201698.\n\n#### Cultural Institutions\n\nFodor's Choice |  Villa Medici.   \nThe 16th-century Villa Medici is the palatial home of the French Academy of Rome, a cultural center where residents are scholars and artists. Modern and contemporary exhibitions of French artists are the focus. However, the palace itself is a permanent exhibition of mannerist architecture, ancient bas-relief, and sculpture. The maze gardens surround a lovely terrace where summertime events include evening music and film series. | Viale Trinit\u00e1 dei Monti 1 | 00187 | 06\/67611 | www.villamedici.it.\n\n##  Testaccio\n\n#### Cultural Institutions\n\nMACRO Testaccio.   \nRome's MACRO (Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome) has converted Testaccio's former slaughterhouse into a multispace venue for visual and performance art. The complex hosts exhibitions, performances, and events including RomaContemporary, the annual contemporary art fair. MACRO Pelanda is the Testaccio complex's exhibition, laboratory, residence, and artist workspace. MACRO Testacctio is open until midnight. | Piazza Orazio Giustiniani 4 | 00153 | 06\/671070400 | www.macro.roma.museum.\n\n#### Nightclubs\n\nHulala.   \nStill considered a designer discoteca and magnet for fashionistas, Hulala is evolving as the crowd diversifies into a younger generation. Decor is 1960s mod. | Via dei Conciatori 7 | 00154 | 06\/57300429.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Joia.   \nJoia has reigned as the gem of Testaccio's Via Galvani for several years now, thanks to its excellent DJs and bartenders. Doors don't open until 11 pm, but lines are always elbow-room-only; try calling ahead to get on the list. | Via Galvani 20 | 00153 | 06\/5740802, 39\/3290370784.\n\nKetum Bar.   \nExcellent for people-watchers, and even better if you want to mix a bit of culture with your clubbing. The glass-covered walls show off shards of 1st-century amphorae to remind you that Ketum Bar was carved out of a mountain of pottery. | Via Galvani 24 | 00153 | 06\/57305338 | www.ketumbar.it.\n\nL'Alibi.   \nOne of Testaccio's longest-running clubs, L'Alibi hosts parties daily including its much-anticipated Thursday Gloss Party. The crowd crosses all boundaries and the music knows no limits at what is often considered Rome's most famous gay disco. In summer, the open terrace is a large dance space. | Via di Monte Testaccio 40, Testaccio | 00153 | 06\/5743448 | www.lalibi.it.\n\n#### Theater\n\nTeatro India.   \nHosting productions in English as well as Italian, Teatro India occupies a former soap factory\u2014it's funky but does not have the most comfortable seating. | Lungotevere Vittorio Gassman 1, Trastevere | 00146 | 06\/684000314 | www.teatrodiroma.net.\n\n##  Trastevere\n\n#### Bars\n\nArt\u00f9.   \nThe wood-panel walls and fireplace provide a cozy mood at Art\u00f9, a popular hangout with an ample selection of beer, wine, and tasty snacks and bar food hidden behind Piazza Santa Maria. | Largo F. Biondi 5 | 00153 | 06\/5880398.\n\n#### Caff\u00e8 (on the Chic Side)\n\nFodor's Choice |  Freni e Frizioni.   \nHipster hangout Freni e Frizioni's has a cute artist vibe great for coffee, tea, aperitifs, and late-night hanging out. In warmer weather, the crowd overflows the large terrazzo overlooking the Tiber and the side streets of Trastevere. | Via del Politeama 4 | 00153 | 06\/45497499 | www.freniefrizioni.com.\n\n#### Concerts\n\nOrto Botanico.   \nThe historic botanical garden spans over 30 acres at the base of the Janiculum Hill in Trastevere. In this redolent and verdant setting, the spring and summer seasons promote art and summer concert series. | Largo Cristina di Svezia 23\/a | 00152 | 06\/49917107 | sweb01.dbv.uniroma1.it\/orto\/index.html.\n\n#### Film\n\nAlcazar.   \nThe small Cinema Alcazar in Trastevere is known for its more international, art house films. Programming includes dubbed and also original language (with Italian subtitles). Best to contact the Alcazar in advance to confirm original language programming. | Via Merry del Val 14 | 00152 | 06\/5880099 | www.mymovies.it\/cinema\/roma.\n\n#### Nightclubs\n\nBig Mama.   \nRecently renovated, Big Mama is a Roman institution of live music including jazz, blues, rhythm and blues, international, and rock. | Vicolo San Francesco a Ripa 18 | 00153 | 06\/5812551 | www.bigmama.it.\n\n##  Vatican\n\n#### Music Clubs\n\nAlexanderplatz.   \nThe black-and-white checkered floors of Alexanderplatz, Rome's most important live jazz and blues club, are reminiscent of Harlem's 1930s jazz halls, and Alexanderplatz loves to promote this image with excellent jazz programming of Italian and international performers. The bar and restaurant are always busy, so reservations are suggested. | Via Ostia 9 | 00192 | 06\/39742171 | www.alexanderplatz.it.\n\nThe Place.   \nThis live music venue has an exceptional and ever-increasing program of funk, Latin, and jazz accompanied by excellent fusion cuisine. | Via Alberico II 27\u201329 | 00193 | 06\/68307137 | www.theplace.it.\n\n##  Veneto\n\n#### Caff\u00e8 (on the Chic Side)\n\nh club> doney at the Westin Excelsior.   \nNattily dressed businesspeople and harried tourists enjoy fresh-fruit aperitifs at the street-side h club> doney, Via Veneto's grand dame of outdoor caff\u00e8, in front of the Westin Excelsior. The indoor Orvm bar is a return to the Jazz Age and Roaring Twenties in decor, with excellent cocktails served all day. | Westin Excelsior, Via Vittorio Veneto 145 | 00187 | 06\/0647082805 | www.restaurantdoney.com.\n\n#### Cultural Institutions\n\nIstituto Svizzero di Roma.   \nThe Swiss embassy cultural branch, in the beautiful, turn-of-the-century Villa Maraini, just off Via Veneto, programs innovative art exhibitions, conferences, and film and lecture series throughout the year. | Via Ludovisi 48 | 00187 | 06\/420421 | www.istitutosvizzero.it.\n\n#### Nightclubs\n\nFodor's Choice |  Jackie O'.   \nA dip into Rome's dolce vita is not complete without a visit to the historic Jackie O', a retro-hip disco and restaurant off Via Veneto. The small lounge area is where you want to be, and don't arrive before 11 pm. | Via Boncompagni 11, Veneto | 00187 | 06\/42885457 | www.jackieoroma.com.\n\n##  Venezia\n\n#### Cultural Institutions\n\nPalazzo Venezia.   \nA former fortress, Venetian embassy, and fascist headquarters, Palazzo Venezia has a rich history of popes, dictators, and architects (courtyard conceived by Leon Battista Alberti), and thus its incarnation as national museum is not surprising. Its permanent collection includes works by Bernini, Giorgione, and Guercino, and the piano nobile (noble floor) hosts private exhibitions of international acclaim. Shows have included Sebastiano del Piombo, Julian Schnabel, and Caravaggisti (followers of Caravaggio). | Via del Plebiscito 118 | 00186 | 06\/69994284 | museopalazzovenezia.beniculturali.it.\n\nVittoriano.   \nPart of the Complesso del Vittoriano, incorporated into the Altare della Patria\u2014fondly known as the Wedding Cake\u2014the exhibition hall has showcased world masters including Giotto, Renoir, Gauguin, Picasso, Chagall, and most recently, Mondrian. The complex includes a panoramic rooftop terrace, exhibition hall, and three museums: Risorgimento (post 1870), Italian Immigration, and Armed Forces. | Via i San Pietro in Carcere | 00186 | 06\/6780664.\n\n##  Villa Borghese\n\n#### Cultural Institutions\n\nMuseo Carlo Bilotti.   \nA tiny modern-art collection hidden in Villa Borghese, the museum has a permanent collection comprised of modern and pop art favorites including Giorgio di Chirico and Roy Lichtenstein, while its temporary shows focus on international icons such as Willem de Kooning, Damien Hirst, Carla Accardi, and Philip Guston. | Viale Fiorello La Guardia | 00197 | 06\/82059127 | www.museocarlobilotti.it.\n\n#### Film\n\nFodor's Choice |  Casa del Cinema.   \nDedicated to the art of the silver screen, Casa del Cinema is Rome's most modern projection house and film library. Located in Villa Borghese, this oasis for film buffs has multiple screening rooms, a caff\u00e8, and a resource center with DVD library and laptops for private viewings. They show many new and retro films and often showcase the original language films from the fall's Venice Film Festival and Roma Cinema Fest (|www.romacinemafest.it). Like its indoor counterpart, the outdoor projection screen shows both new and vintage films, sometimes in original languages, though only in the warm months. | Largo Marcello Mastroianni 1, Villa Borghese | 00186 | 06\/423601 | www.casadelcinema.it.\n\n##  Outside the City Center\n\n#### Concerts\n\nPalaLottomatica.   \nBuilt for the 1960 Rome Olympics for basketball and boxing events, the PalaLottamatica now hosts concerts by heavy hitters such as Italian favorites Zucchero and Renato Zero, as well as international superstars like Bruce Springsteen and Elton John. It's in the EUR neighborhood (about 15 minutes out of the city center), which means bring extra cab fare. | Palazzetto dello Sport, Piazzale dello Sport, EUR | 00144 | 06\/540901 | www.forumnet.it.\n\n#### Dance\n\nPalladium.   \nA historic theater in the Garbatella area of the Ostiense neighborhood, the Palladium has an intense music and performing arts program, especially for contemporary dance. It also participates in the annual RomaEuropa festival in the fall. | Via dei Magazzini Generali 20, Ostiense | 00154 | 06\/45553050 | www.romaeuropa.net.\n\n#### Film\n\nCinecitt\u00e0 Studios.   \nEveryone who is anyone has shot or been filmed at Cinecitt\u00e0. The historic 1960s studio has been home to celluloids stars and their directors from Elizabeth Taylor and Marcello Mastroianni to Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen. Still a functioning studio, Cinectt\u00e0 also offers organized tours to visitors who wish to walk through pre-skyscraper New York, hang out at the Roman Forum, inside the Sistine Chapel, or in medieval Florence. | Via Tuscolana 1055, Cinecitt\u00e0 | 00173 | 06\/58334360 | www.cinecittastudios.it.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\n_Main Table of Contents _\n\nThe Scene\n\nShopping by Neighborhood\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPlanning | Shopping Districts | Department Stores | Markets | Specialty Shops | Piazza di Spagna Spotlight | Piazza Navona Spotlight\n\nIn Rome shopping is an art form. Perhaps it's the fashionably bespeckled Italian wearing Giorgio Armani as he deftly zips through traffic on his Vespa or all those Anita Ekberg, Audrey Hepburn, and Julia Roberts films that make us want to be Roman for a day. But with limited time and no Hollywood studio backing you, the trick is to find what you're looking for and still not miss out on the city's museums and monuments\u2014and have enough euros left to enjoy the rest of your trip.\n\nThese days, many shop-till-you-droppers heading over to the Trevi Fountain may be forgiven for humming that immortal song, \"Three Coins in a Cash Register.\" Yes, the Eternal City is awash in fountains and iconographic Roman rituals: gazing at Saint Peter's Basilica through a secret keyhole on the Aventine; putting your hand inside the Bocca della Verit\u00e0, the city's ancient lie detector; and tossing that fateful coin over your shoulder into the Fontana di Trevi. All are customs that will buy you a classic photo opportunity, but none will bring you as much pleasure or stay with you longer than the purchases you make in Rome's appealing and overflowing emporia.\n\nThere may be no city that takes shopping quite as seriously as Rome, and no district more worthy of your time than Piazza di Spagna, with its abundance of shops and designer powerhouses like Fendi and Armani. The best of them are clumped tightly together along the city's three primary fashion arteries: Via dei Condotti, Via Borgognona, and Via Frattina. From Piazza di Spagna to Piazza Navona and on to Campo de' Fiori, shoppers will find an explosive array of shops within walking distance of one another. A shop for fine handmade Amalfi paper looks out upon the Pantheon, while slick boutiques anchor the corners of 18th-century Piazza di Spagna. Across town in the colorful hive that is Monti, a second-generation mosaic-maker creates Italian masterpieces on a street named for a pope who died before America was even discovered. Even in Trastevere, one can find one of Rome's rising shoe designers creating next-century nuovo chic shoes nestled on a side street beside one of the city's oldest churches.\n\nThis chapter will help shopaholics choose the perfect souvenir for someone back home, find a vintage poster, choose a boutique for those molto chic Versace sandals, or rustle up truffles. When we're done filling your bags with memories of Mamma Roma, you can be sure of two things: that you'll be nostalgic for Caput Mundi long after you arrive back home, and that we will have saved you a few coins\u2014to throw into that fabulous famous fountain.\n\n##  Planning\n\n### Opening Hours\n\nStore hours in Rome can be frustratingly fickle, so it's best to remain flexible. Small, family-run businesses may close a few hours for lunch and close one day per week so folks can have a day off. Major Rome retailers in the heart of the shopping district open their doors between 9 and 9:30 am and stay open until 7:30 or 8 pm. Most clothing stores adhere to the general operating hours listed above but close Sunday and Monday mornings. Banks are generally open weekdays from 8:30 to 1:30 and from 2:30 to 3:30. Summer travelers should be aware that most small shops close for two to three weeks just before or after August's Ferragosto holiday.\n\n### Sizing It Up\n\nItalian sizes are not uniform, so always try on or measure items. If you wear a size small, you may be surprised to learn that the shirt you like needs to be a medium. Children's sizes are all over the place and though they usually go by age, sizes are calibrated to Italian children. (Average size-per-age standards vary from country to country.) Check washing instruction labels on all garments as many are dry-clean-only or not meant for the dryer. When in doubt about the proper size, ask the shop attendant; most will have an international size chart handy.\n\n### Counterfeits\n\nPiracy, in any form, is now considered a serious offense in Italy. This not only applies to citizens, but also to tourists visiting the country. According to Italian law, anyone caught buying counterfeit goods\u2014DVDs, CDs, sunglasses, or those impossibly discounted \"Fendi\" and \"Gucci\" bags\u2014sold by sidewalk vendors is subject to a fine of no less than \u20ac1,000. While the police in Rome enforce this law to varying degrees, travelers are advised to purchase products only from stores and licensed retailers to avoid unknowingly buying counterfeit goods.\n\n### Duty-Free Shopping\n\nValue-added tax (IVA) is 23% on clothing and luxury goods, but is already included in the amount on the price tag for consumer goods. All non-EU citizens visiting Italy are entitled to a reimbursement of this tax when purchasing nonperishable goods that total more than \u20ac180 in a single transaction. If you buy goods in a store that does not participate in the \"Tax-Free Italy\" program, ask the cashier to issue you a special invoice known as a fattura, which must be made out to you and includes the phrase Esente IVA ai sensi della legge 38 quater. The bill should indicate the amount of IVA included in the purchase price. Present this invoice and the goods purchased to the Customs Office on your departure from Italy to obtain your tax reimbursement.\n\n### Sales\n\nSaldi (end-of-season sales) can mean real bargains in clothing and accessories and occur twice a year in Italy. Rome's main sale periods run January 7 through February and late July to mid-September. Unlike in many other countries, most stores adopt a no-exchange, all-sales-final policy on sale goods. At other times of year, a liquidazione sign indicates a close-out sale, but take a hard look at the goods; they may be bottom-of-the-barrel or may carry stipulations that preclude the shopper from trying them on first.\n\n### Bargaining\n\nIf you're a bargain shopper, know that the notice _prezzi fissi_ (fixed prices) posted in some stores means just that. In shops displaying this sign it is a waste of time, and could also be perceived as rude, to ask for discounts. In those increasingly rare shops that do offer discounts, shopkeepers tend to offer discounts only on a sizable quantity of merchandise. You can always try your hand in bargaining at outdoor markets. Remember that Italian stores generally will not give refunds and often cannot exchange goods because of limited stock.\n\n##  Shopping Districts\n\n### Campo\n\nCampo de' Fiori is one of Rome's most captivating piazzas and a perfect starting point for exploring the heart of the city. By the 16th century, this neighborhood was already a bustling commercial area as well as a gathering place for the citizens of Rome. The piazza takes center stage early in the morning as an extraordinary spectacle unfolds with the arrival of the bancarellari (the moveable cart vendors) just before sunrise. Imbuing the square with a village atmosphere, these hardworking merchants ply their wares six days a week, tables filled to overflowing with a cornucopia of such goods as freshly picked chicory, blood oranges, artichokes, and lavender honey.\n\nUnder the billowing white umbrellas, visitors should be sure to take a moment to hunt for an Italian espresso pot or to snap a photo of the pyramids of dried spice where the vendors cheerfully boast\u2014often with exaggerated comedy\u2014the quality of their goods.\n\nDon't forget to explore the labyrinth of narrow streets named for the merchants that once populated the area: Via del Giubbonari (Street of the Jacket Makers), Via dei Cappellari (Street of the Hat Makers), and Via degli Specchi (Street of Mirrors). These meandering lanes have an abundance of shops and boutiques sure to please everyone's budget. Getting here is easy, as many buses pass through Torre Argentina (a short walk away), though the most direct are buses 44, 63, 81, and 95.\n\n### Monti\n\nNestled beside the Roman Forum is Rome's first and oldest quarter. In ancient times Monti was known as the Suburra, a place filled to overflowing with steamy bordellos and taverns and an atmosphere of naughty risk. Even Nero disguised himself to partake of its plentiful \"wares.\" Today the zone is becoming gentrified, with Armani building designer apartments just up the street.\n\nBut Monti has managed to maintain its yesteryear feel, and its narrow streets and picturesque palazzos make it Rome's boho neighborhood of choice. With that popularity, hedonistic pleasures can still be found, though they center mostly on sumptuous food and wine. Everywhere you turn you'll see a plethora of new boutiques, some with patrons still holding celebratory Proseccos at inaugural grand openings. Shops in this area sell chocolate, tea, designer and discount clothing, home interiors, antiques, gourmet and ethnic food, books, artisanal pasta, and more. We won't tell you all of them: some surprises are worth discovering all on your own. To get here, take Metro B to the Cavour Metro stop.\n\n### Barberini\n\nNamed after one of Rome's most powerful families, bustling Piazza Barberini is home to Brioni's flagship store. Flanked by noble residences and smaller shops, Brioni dominates not only the piazza but gentlemen's bespoke fashion in general. Step inside and you'll likely drop your entire shopping allowance in one centro storico location, but you will walk out smiling. The streets nearby are studded with other great places to shop; just keep in mind that a stroll along the winding tree-lined Via Veneto means putting on the Ritz: this is no place for your casual Friday blue jeans. Immortalized in Fellini's classic La Dolce Vita, the boulevard is famous for posh hotels and elite shopping for the rich and famous who want to avoid the Spagna throngs. Can't afford to indulge? Head up Via del Tritone for posh without the dosh (as Brits refer to money) and a great selection of shops offering midprice clothing, shoes, and leather apparel. To get to the area take the Metro (Line A) to Piazza Barberini, or any of a number of buses, including the 116.\n\n### Via del Corso\n\nSomeone once said dancing is dreaming with your feet, and a walk along Via del Corso will give you the same effect. Stretching from Piazza Venezia all the way to Piazza del Popolo, this remarkably straight street in a city famous for its winding alleys marks the perfect beginning and end points for a shopping-inspired afternoon stroll. Traditionally home to mainstream, upscale international brands like Levi's, Benetton, H&M, and Zara, the street also has jewels like Yamamay and Frette, as well as fashion giants like the iconic House of Fendi.\n\nYoung Romans come here for jeans and inexpensive, trendy wear, some of which is sold in the 17th- and 18th-century mansions that line the street. In the chic area tucked next to Piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina, smart and expensive specialty shops cater to the people who live in the palaces nearby. Piazza della Fontanella Borghese, flanking the palace once inhabited by the uninhibited Pauline Borghese (she posed nude for Canova), has a picturesque street market of permanent stalls selling prints and old books.\n\nHere you will also find the palatial pink-marble Galleria Alberto Sordi at Piazza Colonna, Rome's most elegant shopping mall. Recently restored, and a good place to take a coffee break and enjoy a bit of people-watching under the soaring Stil Liberty (Art Nouveau) glass roof.\n\nStretching 1\u00bd km (1 mile) with interesting shops along its side streets, knowing which to choose can be tiring as well as time consuming. Opening hours vary enormously and with flagship stores hiring elegant staff to watch you, it can seem a bit daunting. If your trip is truly a shopping holiday or time is of the essence, consider scheduling your own personal shopping assistant through Context Rome (06\/96727371 | www.contexttravel.com).\n\nVia del Corso is the dividing line between the designer-centric fancy shops of the Spagna district and the more reasonably priced emporia near the Pantheon. If you don't feel like walking\u2014though this area is very central\u2014take Bus 62, 63, 117, 199, or 492.\n\n### Trastevere\n\nAcross the Tiber from the city center is must-see Trastevere, filled with irregular streets and lanes, soaked with atmosphere and character dating back to the Middle Ages. Take in the stark contrast of buildings that have never changed tucked in among newer apartments, creative and funky shops, and the Porta Portese flea market. Open up your senses as you revel in a foodie paradise of old-world open-air markets and wine shops, where you'll likely happen upon a stool-perched owner scribbling daily accounts in an old ledger book. Teenagers and college students flock to this happening part of town full of clubs and pubs. While there are not as many cultural sights in this area, there is a plethora of historical buildings, gorgeous fountains, parts of the old Aurelian wall, statues, and more. Be sure to look up Dermot O'Connell, owner of the Almost Corner Bookshop in Via del Moro 45, who will be happy to chat for a while and share his insights into life here. During the summer months, the area comes alive after sunset. Trastevere can also be reached with Tram 8 three stops from Largo Argentina.\n\n### San Lorenzo\n\nA little off the beaten tourist path, San Lorenzo is most often explored more by visitors staying near Stazione Termini, but its out-of-the-way location is more than made up for by its liveliness and avant-garde vibe. Famous for its youth-friendly shopping, the zone is filled with eateries, pubs, jewelry shops, bookstores, and vintage boutiques, making it the preferred hangout for Italian university students. That said, San Lorenzo's raw earthiness isn't for everyone.\n\nThe district has a certain inner-city sophistication that can be lost on those used to Rome's elegant Baroque monuments and statuary and, much like certain neighborhoods in New York or Rio, you have to know where to look. If you are one to go against conventional Roman shopping wisdom, be sure to visit the buzzing L'Anatra all'Arancia, with its captivating pr\u00eat-\u00e0-porter window displays. Less than a block away, Pifebo is a sensational vintage-clothing emporium where you can rummage like a Roman and come out with a groovy ensemble worthy of any Davy Jones groupie.\n\n##  Department Stores\n\n### Budget\n\nBoth the Oviesse and Upim department store chains are good places for families to shop for bargain sportswear, bathing suits, underwear, and scarves\u2014where quality doesn't break the bank. Both no-frills franchises have multiple locations throughout Rome where you can also pick up toiletries, makeup, hair-care supplies, and home decor with that Italian sense of style. Some even have invaluable while-you-wait shoe-repair counters. There's a large central Upim store in Stazione Termini and another nearby at Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore. Oviesse has a store at Viale Trastevere 62\/64.\n\n##  Markets\n\n### Flea Markets\n\nTreasure-seekers and bargain-hunters alike will appreciate Rome's open-air markets. Well supplied and oh-so-Roman, these markets are great spots to gain insight into the thrift shopping spirit of the capital. Every Sunday it seems that all of Trastevere comes out for the bustling Porta Portese flea market, where tents overflow with cheap luggage, vintage World War II memorabilia, and old books of Puccini opera lyrics, and folks haggle in the rapid-fire staccato of Roman dialect. Just watch out for pickpockets and tricksters inviting you to play their card games: they always win the bets!\n\n### Food Markets\n\nStill shadowed by the massive 16th-century Orsini palazzo and a statue of the famed philosopher Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake here on accusations of heresy in 1600, the Campo de' Fiori (near Piazza Navona) is Rome's oldest food market, situated just south of Rome's Renaissance\/Baroque quarter and the Piazza Farnese. If you are staying near the Vatican don't miss the Mercato Trionfale, located at Via La Goletta 1 between the Cipro and Ottaviano (Vatican) Metro stops. In its newly renovated building, this food-lovers' market offers one of the most extensive selections in Rome and like Campo is opened Monday to Saturday. For those looking for high-quality organic and local products and produce, the small Mercato di Campagna Amica del Circo Massimo has a select range of vegetables, meats, honey, and cheese that's to die for; it's open weekends only.\n\n##  Specialty Shops\n\n### Antiques and Prints\n\nRome is one of Italy's happiest hunting grounds for antiques and bric-a-brac. Here you'll find streets lined with shops groaning with gilded Rococo tables, charming Grand Tour memorabilia, fetching 17th-century veduti (view) engravings, and curios, perhaps even Lord Byron's snuff spoon. Via dei Coronari is Rome's traditional center of antiques but other top prestigious dealers are concentrated around Via del Babuino. The street's focal point is the time-weathered statue of the \"baboon\" (actually a satyr) that gave it its name. Right next to the baboon is the charmingly picturesque Museum Atelier Canova-Tadolini, where the great 18th-century Neoclassical sculptor worked. Inside the museum, there's also a coffee bar and restaurant. What better place to stop and have lunch?\n\n### Bookstores\n\nEnglish-language books are widely available in Rome. Many of the larger booksellers dedicate at least a few shelves of books for English-speaking patrons, and three English-language-centric bookstores are noteworthy: the Almost Corner Bookstore in Trastevere and the Anglo American and Lion bookstores near Piazza Spagna.\n\n### Ceramics and Decorative Arts\n\nItaly has always been beloved for its wonderful craftsmanship and decorative arts. In Rome, where museums can be overwhelming, sometimes the best treasures are found not in its galleries but in artisan shops along twisty alleyways where shoppers can find the perfect collectible, home decor accessory, and gift, hand-painted and made in Italy.\n\n### Clothing\n\n##### Children's Clothing\n\nAlthough consumers may be cutting back, visitors still can't help but indulge when it comes to the little ones. Note that sizes are completely different from U.S. children's sizes, so be sure to take measurements before you leave home and bring along your tape measure, or get a good size-conversion chart.\n\n##### Leather Clothing\n\nIn a country where quality, workmanship, exacting attention to details, and strict manufacturing specifications are standard, customers will find lots to choose from. Leather purses, wallets, jackets, coats, skirts, and pants are carefully constructed from top-quality hides. You can also find small workshops where delicious jackets, coats, and handbags can be made to measure.\n\n##### Vintage Clothing\n\nRome has a wide range of vintage shops where you can pick up some great couture from days gone by. With several shops showcased around Piazza Navona, Monti, and San Lorenzo, looking good needn't mean looking like everyone else. A favorite with designers, magazine editors, and Hollywood starlets, vintage is also environmentally friendly, and if you shop carefully you can save money and the planet and still find a suede fringe jacket worthy of Janis Joplin.\n\n### Handbags and Luggage\n\nReally good bags\u2014the classic kind that you can carry for years\u2014are not inexpensive. Almost all the leading fashion houses have their own line of bags, but there are also hundreds of small, lesser-known artisans that still make leather goods the old fashioned way, for each discerning customer.\n\n### Music and Films\n\nMost music stores have comprehensive sections of foreign music, heavy metal, retro, and Italian as well as DVD films (just make sure your player back home has the right settings)\n\n### Shoes\n\nWhen it comes to stylish slingbacks, strappy sandals, and cult-status heels, Rome has a scarpa (shoe) to fit every Cinderella. Whet your appetite in the swanky Spagna area, but you may not want to buy the first pair you fall in love with. The city has a sea of shoes for mash-up vintage, skillfully styled ensembles, and incredible, covetable elegance. Scarpe Diem!\n\n##  Spotlight: Piazza di Spagna\n\nFilled with lithe-limbed glamazons looking uber-smart and sporting sun-kissed complexions, the ultrachic zone along Via dei Condotti,Via Borgognona, and Via Frattina gathers up Armani, Bulgari, Fendi, Ferragamo, Gucci, and Valentino into one luxurious, fashionista's Shangri-La.\n\nRome has been setting fashion trends since the days of the Caesars, so it's little wonder that this is the city that gave us the Gucci \"moccasin\" loafer, the Fendi bag, and the Valentino dress Jackie O wore when she became Mrs. Onassis. While the famous double-Gs can now be found in boutiques around the world, the mother store is right here on Via Condotti, a \"shopping mall\" lined with Bulgari diamonds and Pratesi linens. A stroll along this concentrated corridor is as great for people-watching as it is for Italian haute couture and pr\u00eat-\u00e0-porter. The shops can be as intimidating as they are strikingly beautiful, but plastic is the universal equalizer so go ahead and indulge your inner celebrity.\n\n### BEST TIME TO GO\n\nVisitors with a sumptuous sense of bella figura will want to time their retail therapy for just after lunch Tuesday through Friday afternoons or during the evening passeggiata when Via Condotti becomes one gigantic catwalk.\n\n### BEAUTY AND THE BEACH\n\nFor candy-apple red polka dots or that bombshell bikini worthy of a pin-up poster, Marisa Padovan (Via delle Carrozze 81) has had the market cornered on one-of-a-kind couture swimwear\u2014ever since Audrey Hepburn and Claudia Cardinale discovered her.\n\n### BRUNCH BEFORE BROWSING\n\nShopping is a great way to work up an appetite, and what better way to satiate your hunger than with a vegetarian brunch at Il Margutta RistorArte (Via Margutta 118, Spagna, | 06\/32650577). More than just a vegetarian restaurant, Margutta takes a holistic approach to natural, locally sourced vegetarian cuisine that will nourish your body, restore your spirit, and give you a bit of art to look at all in one peaceful sitting. Check out their very original dish called \"6 different ways of eating artichokes.\"\n\n### TROPPO ELEGANTE\n\n#### Daddy Wore Bucks\n\nIf diamonds are your girl's best friend, she need look no further than Via Condotti, where two jewelry barons have breathtaking boutiques: Bulgari and Buccellati.\n\n#### Yarning for the Good Old Days\n\nWith knitting in vogue, a stop at Missoni (Piazza di Spagna 78) is an absolute must. Their handspun, hand-dyed skirts and sweaters in undulating curves and wild, chevroning colors will have you channeling your inner designer granny. (Psst...find new Missoni patterns in Vogue Knitting every year).\n\n#### There Armani Reasons\n\nWell-heeled women love Armani for his catwalk couture. Power executives prefer his black-label collection. Recessionistas should check out Armani Jeans, the designer's lovely, lower-priced line with a focus on young urban streetwear.\n\n#### Resistance is Futile\n\nFrom Cameron Diaz to Jessica Simpson, nearly every celebrity has been spotted wearing Prada. So why not join them? Can't afford a handbag? Try a strikingly smart pair of sunglasses for your \"I'm a celebrity\" disguise.\n\n##  Spotlight: Piazza Navona\n\nIn Rome, shopping and sightseeing are often hard to separate from one another. This is especially fortissimo in the Baroque quarter around Piazza Navona, queen of Roman squares. Against a backdrop of street entertainers, mime artists, and brightly lit caff\u00e8 you'll find the tempting old-world toy shop Al Sogno just down from that Bernini extravaganza, the Fountain of the Four Rivers.\n\nUp and down the length of Via del Governo Vecchio, invitingly small merchants stand shoulder-to-shoulder. On one end of this cobbled street is a string of vintage clothing shops like Maga Morgana, sure to satisfy your retro cravings. If you want world-class denim, head in the opposite direction to SBU (Strategic Business Unit). This is the zone for trendy boutiques you'll never find franchised back home. And don't forget: Via dei Coronari holds some of the best antique shops in the city.\n\n### BEST TIME TO GO\n\nFor antiques, browse the fair held by the gorgeous stores on pedestrianized Via dei Coronari during the second half of May. In December, Piazza Navona transforms into a magical winter market for Christmas. And remember: during August many smaller shops close for summer holidays.\n\n### A SPOON FULL OF MONASTIC SUGAR\n\nCreated by Italian monks in the 15th-century, 39-proof Anisetta is stocked by Ai Monasteri, Rome's 120-year-old apothecary, and this aniseed liqueur is tops as a digestif or as a pick-me-up for the jet-lagged.\n\n### NEIGHBORHOOD NIBBLES\n\nNeed an early morning nibble or an afternoon pick-me-up? For 60 years Sant'Eustachio il Caff\u00e8 has been what Starbucks only dreams of being. At this legendary Piazza Sant'Eustachio coffeehouse, you can have the best cappuccino in town and rub shoulders with an Italian politician or two, drinking at the bar Italian style. Or opt for a cup of black, bitter espresso at Tazzo d'Oro, on Via degli Orfani on the east side of Piazza del Pantheon. If ready for a more daring delight, try the white chocolate basil gelato at little Gelateria del Teatro, just off Via dei Coronari.\n\n### ONLY IN ROME\n\n#### Natural Born Thrillers\n\nDaring designer Delfina Delettrez successfully joins genius, beauty, and a taste of gothic steam punk to produce some of Rome's most unusual jewelry, complete with totemic fetishes, at her boutique near Piazza Navona.\n\n#### Den of Antiquity\n\nOn Piazza Navona, Nardecchia knows that there are three major considerations when it comes to antique prints and etchings: value, aesthetics, and rarity.\n\n#### A Brush with Class\n\nBehind the Pantheon, Ditta G. Poggi is a mecca for art supplies, brushes, and paints as it was for such artists as Morandi, De Chirico, Guttuso, and Picasso.\n\n#### Sole Food\n\nSuperga has made its iconic 2750 low-cut sneakers for 100 years. Available in more colors than there are gelato flavors, they are the ubiquitous favorite for casual city-wear and weekends at the beach. They can be found at Piazza Spagna on Via Belsiana.\n\n#### Crystal Clear\n\nFor the most selezionatissima array of crystal, silver, and china, Roman brides always go to IN.OR. dal 1952.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nBarberini | Campo | Corso | Esquilino | Monti | Navona | Repubblica | San Giovanni | San Lorenzo | Spagna | Testaccio | Trastevere | Vatican\n\n##  Barberini\n\n#### Ceramics and Decorative Arts\n\nMarmi Line Gifts.   \nFor a wide variety of marble and alabaster objets d'art, Marmi Line offers three locations in central Rome. Beautifully worked into familiar shapes, their mesmerizing pieces of fruit make centerpieces that would make Caravaggio proud. If you want something distinctly Roman, choose a practical or whimsical item made from travertine, the stone used to build the Colosseum and Bernini's St. Peter's Colonnade. | Via del Lavatore 28, Trevi | 00187 | 06\/6786347.\n\n#### Landmark Stores\n\nAntica Farmacia Pesci dal 1552.   \nLikely Rome's oldest pharmacy, the Antica Farmacia is run by a family of pharmacists. The shop's 18th-century furnishings, herbs, and vases evoke Harry Potter's Diagon Ally; and while they don't carry Polyjuice Potion, the pharmacists can whip up a just-for-you batch of composite powders, syrups, capsules, gels, and creams to soothe what ails you. | Piazza Trevi 89, Trevi | 00187 | 06\/6792210.\n\n#### Men's Clothing\n\nFodor's Choice |  Brioni.   \nFounded in 1945 and hailed for its impeccable craftsmanship and flawless execution, the Brioni label is known for attracting and keeping the best men's tailors in Italy where the exacting standards require that custom-made suits are designed from scratch and measured to the millimeter. For this personalized line, the menswear icon has 5,000 spectacular fabrics to select from. As thoughtful as expensive, one bespoke suit made from wool will take a minimum of 32 hours to create. Their pr\u00eat-\u00e0-porter line is also praised for peerless cutting and stitching. Past and present clients include Clark Gable, Donald Trump, Barack Obama and, of course, James Bond. And they say clothing doesn't make the man? | Via Barberini 79 | 00187 | 06\/484517 | www.brioni.it | Via Condotti 21\/A, Piazza di Spagna | 00187 | 06\/485855.\n\n##  Campo\n\n#### Children's Clothing\n\nRachele.   \nRachele is a small, charming shop tucked down a small alley not far from the Campo de' Fiori piazza. Most of the items of clothing are handmade by Rachele herself. Choose from whimsical crocheted hats and a cute selection of pants, skirts, and rainbow-colored tops for tykes up to age nine. | Vicolo del Bollo 6\u20137 | 00186 | 06\/6864975.\n\n##  Corso\n\n#### Bookstores\n\nEx Libris.   \nFounded in 1931 and one of the oldest antiquarian bookshops in Rome, Ex Libris has a distinctive selection of scholarly and collectible books from the 16th to 21th centuries that will make bookworms drool. The selection includes rare editions on art and architecture, music and theater, and literature and humanities, as well as maps and prints. | Via dell' Umilt\u00e0 77\/a | 00187 | 06\/6791540 | www.exlibrisroma.it.\n\nMondadori.   \nConveniently located close to the Trevi Fountain and pleasantly air-conditioned, Mondadori has a small English-language department on the ground floor near the caff\u00e8. The top floor has a generous selection of computer software and accessories, printers, mobile phones, and digital cameras. Mondadori remains one of the most prestigious Italian publishers and carries books of every genre for all readers. | Via San Vincenzo 10 | 00187 | 06\/6976501 | www.mondadori.it.\n\n#### Ceramics and Decorative Arts\n\nLe IV Stagioni.   \nLe IV Stagioni stocks a colorful selection of traditional Italian pottery from well-known manufacturers like Capodimonte, Vietri, Deruta, Caltagirone, and Faenza. If you're looking for something alla Romana, opt for the brown glazed pots with a lacy white border and charming flower basket wall ornaments, made in the Rome area. | Via dell' Umilt\u00e0 30\/b | 00187 | 06\/69941029.\n\n#### Children's Clothing\n\nBonpoint.   \nBonpoint brings a little of Paris to Rome in fine French children's wear. The cr\u00e8me de la cr\u00e8me when it comes to styling, refinement, and price, Bonpoint's casual and classic children's clothing are both picture-perfect and fashion-forward. Well-heeled mums will appreciate their soft, cuddly onesies, and hand-stitched party dresses. | Piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina 25 | 00186 | 06\/6871548.\n\n#### Men's Clothing\n\nBorsalino Boutique.   \nBorsalino fedoras and Panama hats have donned the heads of many silver screen icons including Humphrey Bogart and Gary Cooper. They may be expensive, but there is a reason for the exorbitant prices. Considered by many to be the Cadillac of fedoras, the dashing Borsolino has been a staple of the fashionable Italian man since 1857. Today, Borsalino retains its unmistakable class, style, and elegance. Few hats are made with such exacting care and attention, and the company's milliners still use machines that are more than 100 years old. | Piazza del Popolo 20 | 00186 | 06\/32650838 | www.borsalino.it | Piazza Fontana di Trevi 83, Trevi | 00187 | 06\/6781015 | Via Campo Marzio 72\/a, Pantheon | 00186 | 06\/6783945.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Fratelli Vigan\u00f2.   \nIf you are a Mad Men wannabe hipster or just maintain a particular fondness for classically styled Italian millinery, this store will have you drooling. Fratelli Vigan\u00f2 was founded in 1873 and has been producing handsome handmade hats ever since. Even if you aren't planning a tribute to Don Draper, the shop is sure to impress with its artisans' painstaking attention to detail. With hundreds of hats arranged in perfect order, you will surely find one to strike your fancy. Roman poet Trilussa and even Mussolini preferred their top hats, but their signature pieces are the sporty fedoras and debonair brown derbies. | Via Marco Minghetti 7, Spanga | 00187 | 06\/6795147.\n\n#### Music Stores\n\nRemix.   \nAn underground favorite for famous producers and distributors of legendary Roman vinyl labels like Sounds Never Seen, ACV, and many others, Remix specializes in techno. The shop also has a great back catalogue\u2014all at prices that will make new collectors smile. | Via del Fiume 8\/9 | 00186 | 06\/3216514 | www.re-mix.it.\n\n#### Stationery\n\nCartoleria Pantheon dal 1910.   \nAn absolute Aladdin's cave for scribblers and those inspired by the blank page, the simply sumptuous Cartoleria Pantheon dal 1910 has unique leather journals and fine handmade paper to write a special letter. Writers and artists can choose from simple, stock paper to artisanal sheets of handcrafted Amalfi paper and from among hand-bound leather journals in an extraordinary array of colors and sizes. | Via della Rotonda 15 | 00186 | 06\/6875313 | www.pantheon-roma.it.\n\n##  Esquilino\n\n#### Antiques\n\nOrologi e Design.   \nOrologi e Design specializes in nostalgic mechanical watches and chronographs from the 1900s through the 1970s. Whether you are looking for a solid gold dress watch or a vintage World War II military pilot's chronograph, chances are you'll find the piece you are looking for here. Have an heirloom piece that has stopped working or that needs a little tuning? Two expert watchmakers have the parts and skilled precision to clean, regulate, and repair your grandfather's vintage timepiece and get it tick-tocking again in no time. | Via Urbana 123, Monti | 00184 | 06\/4742284.\n\n##  Monti\n\n#### Fashion\n\nAnteprima.   \nAnteprima is filled with revolutionary ready-to-wear separates that make a bold statement. Carrying a large selection of day and evening wear constructed with lustrous fabrics, the style here is offbeat. A deliberate contradiction of colors make the clothing dazzlingly original. Friendly and helpful staff have a unique eye for putting together accessories and shoes from their ever-changing collection. | Via delle Quattro Fontane 38\u201340 | 00184 | 06\/4828445 | www.anteprimadimoda.com.\n\nHydra.   \nAn avant-garde clothing shop for older teens and twentysomethings who believe clothing should make a statement, Hydra has styles that range from voluptuous Betty Boop retro dresses to indie underground to in-your-face T-shirts that would make your grandmother blush. | Via Urbana 139 | 00184 | 06\/48907773.\n\n#### Food, Wine, and Delicacies\n\nLa Bottega del Cioccolata.   \nAt the first shop you'll smell when walking down this picturesque street, master chocolate maker Maurizio Proietti and his father before him have been making chocolates as mouthwatering and beautiful as those seen in the famous film Chocolat. | Via Leonina 82 | 00184 | 06\/4821473 | www.labottegadelcioccolato.it.\n\n#### Jewelry\n\nArt Priv\u00e9.   \nJust off Monti's principal square is the small jewelry shop where Tiziana Salzano makes multistrand torsade necklaces using the finest silverworks and a combination of boldly hued raw rubies and other semiprecious gemstones. Each piece is unique and cannot be exactly duplicated, so if you see a piece that steals your heart be sure to grab it. | Via Leonina 8 | 00184 | 06\/47826347.\n\n#### Men's Clothing\n\nMimmo Siviglia.   \nEighty-year-old Mimmo Siviglia is shirtmaking at its apex. The epitome of an old-world master tailor, he has been one of Rome's best-kept secrets for more than 50 years. To achieve a perfectly smooth look, Siviglia knows he has to cut the pattern just right, accounting for the person's shoulder to ensure there are no wrinkles around the collarbone. If you know your fine cloth, you'll enjoy discussing the merits of high-end fabrics such as Alumo, Albini, or Riva. Dress-shirt aficionados will be impressed by his attention to each customer and precise dedication to each order. Once his daughter has your size in the computer, future orders can be shipped anywhere in the world. | Via Urbana 14a | 00184 | 06\/48903310 | www.mimmosiviglia.com.\n\n#### Vintage Clothing\n\nLe Gallinelle.   \nLe Gallinelle is a tiny boutique in a former butcher's shop\u2014hence the large metal hooks. Owner Wilma Silvestri transforms vintage, ethnic, and contemporary fabrics into retro-inspired clothing with a modern edge without smelling like mothballs from your great aunt Suzie's closet. | Via del Boschetto 76 | 00184 | 06\/48907175 | www.legallinelle.it.\n\n##  Navona\n\n#### Accessories\n\nSpazio IF.   \nIn a tiny piazza alongside Rome's historic Via dei Coronari, designers Irene and Carla Ferrara have created a tantalizing hybrid between fashion paradise and art gallery. Working with unconventional designers and artists who emphasize Sicilian design, the shop has more to say about the style of Sicily and the creativity of the island's inhabitants than flat caps, puppets, and rich pastries. Perennial favorites include handbags cut by hand in a putia (shop) in Palermo, swimsuits, designer textiles, jewelry, and sportswear. | Via dei Coronari 44a, Navona | 00186 | 06\/64760639 | www.spazioif.it.\n\n#### Antiques\n\nGalleria Biagiarelli.   \nIn a superb setting in the former chapel of the Pre-Renaissance Palazzo Capranica, where the windows still have the cardinal's coat of arms, Rome's leading antiques dealer of 18th- and 19th-century Russian icons and English watercolors has also amassed a collection of Eastern European antique china figurines as well as Soviet-era artwork. | Piazza Capranica 97 | 00186 | 06\/6784987 | www.biagiarelli.it.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Nardecchia.   \nIn the heart of Piazza Navona, in front of Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers, Nardecchia knows there are three major considerations when it comes to antique prints and etchings: value, aesthetics, and rarity. The shop showcases some of its beautiful 19th-century prints, old photographs, and watercolors, giving browsers a hint at what Rome looked like in centuries past. Can't afford an 18th-century etching? They have refined postcards, too. | Piazza Navona 25 | 00186 | 06\/6865318 | www.nardecchia.it.\n\nQuattrocolo.   \nThis historic shop dating to 1938 showcases exquisite antique micro-mosaic jewelry painstakingly crafted in the style perfected by the masters at the Vatican mosaic studio. You'll also find 18th- and 19th-century cameos and beautiful engraved stones. Their small works were beloved by cosmopolitan clientele of the Grand Tour age and offer modern-day shoppers a taste of yesteryear's grandeur. If you are a fan of archaeology, don't miss their Etruscan-style jewelry. | Via della Scrofa 48 | 00186 | 06\/68801367 | www.quattrocolo.com.\n\n#### Casual Chic\n\nReplay.   \nA typical example of young Italians' passion for American trends, Replay has jeans and T-shirts with American sports teams emblazoned on them that have that little extra kiss of Italian styling that transforms sloppy hip into fashionable casual chic. Styles range from punk to hip-hop. Strictly for those under 30, with cash to spend. | Via della Rotonda 24 | 00186 | 06\/97602555 | www.replay.it.\n\nTaro.   \nDesigned by owners Marisa Pignataro and Enrico Natoli, Taro's chic handmade knitwear in unusual yarns and striking colors is handmade in Rome. Selections from their casual, easy-to-wear line include luxuriously textured tunics, loose sleeveless jackets, and shawls and pants. | Via della Scrofa 50 | 00186 | 06\/6896476.\n\nVestiti Usati Cinzia.   \nThere's a fun, unique, and diverse inventory of 1960s- and '70s-style apparel and googly sunglasses at Vestiti Usati Cinzia, beloved by private clients, costume designers, and fashion designers and stylists alike. You'll find lots of flower power, embroidered tops, and psychedelic clothing here, along with trippy boots and dishy bubblegum pink shoes that Twiggy would have loved. | Via del Governo Vecchio 45 | 00186 | 06\/6832945.\n\n#### Ceramics and Decorative Arts\n\nArte del Vetro Natolli Murano.   \nSpecializing in handblown Venetian art glass pieces, including Murano glass jewelry (necklaces and pendants), tableware, glass vases, and extravagant chandeliers, at Arte del Vetro Natolli Murano every individual piece is handcrafted from the furnaces of master glassmakers using ancient techniques kept alive by the island's artisans since 1291. Some limited-edition designs show not only the craftsman's mastery of the art form but the artisan's love for the vibrant aesthetic of the glassmaking tradition. | Corso Rinascimento 53\/55 | 00186 | 06\/68301170.\n\nIN.OR. dal 1952.   \nFor more than 50 years, Romans have registered their bridal china and gifts under the frescoed ceilings of IN.OR. dal 1952, a grand silver and china store occupying the piano nobile of an 18th-century palazzo in the characteristic Campo Marzo area, in hopes of receiving something elegant. With seven rooms for browsing, the shop specializes in work handcrafted by the silversmiths of Pampaloni in Florence and Bellotto of Padua. | Via della Stelletta 23 | 00186 | 06\/6878579 | www.inor.it.\n\n#### Fashion\n\nArsenale.   \nArsenale has a sleek layout and a low-key elegance that stands out, even in Rome. Rest your feet awhile in an overstuffed chair before sifting through the racks. Whether you are looking for a wedding dress or a seductive bustier, you are bound to find something unconventional here. Designer and owner Patriza Pieroni creates many of the pieces on display, all cleverly cut and decidedly captivating. | Via del Pellegrino 172 | 00186 | 06\/6880242 | www.patriziapieroni.it.\n\nLe Tartarughe.   \nDesigner Susanna Liso, a Rome native, adds suggestive elements of playful experimentation to her haute couture and ready-to-wear lines, which are much loved by Rome's aristocracy and intelligentsia. With intense and enveloping designs, she mixes raw silks or cashmere and fine merino wool together to form captivating garments that are a mix of seduction and linear form. Le Tartarughe can be found at two locations close to the Pantheon. | Via Pi\u00e8 di Marmo 17 | 00186 | 06\/6792240 | www.letartarughe.eu.\n\nMaga Morgana.   \nMaga Morgana is a family-run business where everyone's nimble fingers contribute to producing the highly original clothes and accessories. From hippie-chick to bridal-chic, designer Luciana Iannace creates lavishly ornate clothes that are as inventive as they are distinguished. In addition to her own designs, she also sources inventive items from Paris and Florence. | Via del Governo Vecchio 27 | 00186 | 06\/6879995.\n\n#### Food, Wine, and Delicacies\n\nEnoteca al Parlamento Achilli.   \nThe tantalizing smell of truffles from the snack counter, where a sommelier waits to organize your wine-tasting session, is enough alone to lure you into Enoteca al Parlamento Achilli, filled with gastronomic treasures. The proximity of this traditional enoteca to Montecitorio, the Italian Parliament building, makes it a favorite with journalists and politicos, who often stop in for a glass of wine after work, making its prices not for the faint of heart. Ask to take a look at the wine shop's most prized possessions: bottles of the Brunello di Montalcino vintages 1891 and 1925, strictly not for sale. | Via dei Prefetti 15 | 00186 | 06\/6873446 | www.enotecaalparlamento.it.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Moriondo e Gariglio.   \nThe Willy Wonka of Roman chocolate factories opened its doors in 1850. The shop uses the finest cocoa beans and adheres strictly to family recipes passed down from generation to generation. Known for rich, gourmet chocolates, they soon were the favored chocolatier to the House of Savoy. In 2009, the shop partnered with Bulgari and placed 300 pieces of jewelry in their Easter eggs to benefit cancer research. While you may not find diamonds in your bonbons, marrons glac\u00e9s, or dark-chocolate truffles, you'll still delight in choosing from more than 80 delicacies. | Via Pi\u00e8 di Marmo 21 | 00186 | 06\/6990856 | www.moriondoegariglio.com.\n\n#### Household Items\n\nFodor's Choice |  Society.   \nHave decorator envy? Everything you need for do-it-yourself Italian home couture can be found at Society, the flagship store for Limonta, one of the most prestigious and historic textile brands made in Italy. With a carefully edited collection of inspiring designs, the store sports a free-spirited, lived-in bohemian interior with a multitude of innovations to dress up any area of your home. Centering on the rarest and most sought-after fabrics, their designs give the appearance they come from a different era (the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries). | Piazza di Pasquino 4, Navona | 00186 | 06\/6832480 | www.societylimonta.com.\n\nTebro.   \nFirst opened in 1867 and listed with the Associazione Negozi Storici di Roma (Associaction of Historic Shops of Rome), Tebro is a classic Roman department store that epitomizes quality. It specializes in household linens and sleepwear, and you can even find those 100-percent cotton, Italian waffle-weave bath sheets that are synonymous with Italian hotels. | Via dei Prefetti 48\u201354 | 00186 | 06\/6873441 | www.tebro.it.\n\n#### Jewelry\n\nFodor's Choice |  Delfina Delettrez.   \nWhen your great grandmother is Adele Fendi, it's not surprising that creativity runs in your genes. In her early 20s, Delfina Delettrez creates edgy, conceptual collections. Using human body\u2013inspired pieces blending skulls, wild animals, and botanical elements, she daringly merges gold, silver, bone and glass, crystals and diamonds to create gothic, edgy styles worthy of Fritz Lang's Metropolis or Blade Runner. Don't be put off by her signature goth-glam designs in the window: this dazzling emporium, with its innumerable drawers filled with baubles, has something saucy and refined for everyone's sensibilities. | Via Governo Vecchio 67, Navona | 00186 | 06\/68136362 | www.delfinadelettrez.com.\n\nMMM\u2014Massimo Maria Melis.   \nDrawing heavily on ancient Greek, Roman, and Etruscan designs, Massimo Maria Melis jewelry will carry you back in time. Working with 21-carat gold, he often incorporates antique coins acquired by numismatists or pieces of ancient bronze and polychromatic glass. Some of his pieces are done with an ancient technique much loved by the Etruscans in which tiny gold droplets are soldered together to create intricately patterned designs. | Via dell'Orso 57, Navona | 00186 | 06\/6869188 | www.massimomariamelis.com.\n\n#### Men's Clothing\n\nDavide Cenci.   \nFor the discerning shopper, Davide Cenci is a Roman classic for high-quality clothing and accessories for every occasion. For most visitors on a short holiday, purchasing custom-fitted clothing is not an option. Cenci's clothiers will adjust and tailor most anything to fit your body like a glove and have it delivered to your hotel within three days. The label is famous for its sinful cashmere, sailing sportswear, and trench coats, and you will appreciate their customer service and attention to detail. | Via Campo Marzio 1-7 | 00186 | 06\/6990681 | www.davidecenci.com.\n\nFodor's Choice |  SBU.   \nIn a city famous for classically sharp suits, it can be a challenge to find hip menswear in Rome, but SBU (Strategic Business Unit) suavely fills the void. In a 19th-century former draper's workshop, it's the place where Rome's VIPS buy their soft and supple vintage low-cut Japanese denims. Behind the old wooden counters, stacked drawer chests, and iron columns, SBU offers a sophisticated range of casual clothing, sportswear, shoes, and upscale accessories. The small hidden garden around back offers a relaxing moment between shopping sprees. | Via di San Pantaleo 68\u201369, Navona | 00186 | 06\/68802547 | www.sbu.it.\n\n#### Perfume and Cosmetics\n\nAi Monasteri.   \nAmong dark-wood paneling, choirlike alcoves, and painted angels, at Ai Monasteri you'll find traditional products made by Italy's diligent friars and monks. Following century-old recipes, the herbal decoctions, liqueurs, beauty aids, and toiletries offer a look into the time-honored tradition of monastic trade. The Elixir dell'Amore (love potion) is perfect for any well-deserving valentine, or, if it isn't true love, you can opt for a bottle of the popular Elixir of Happiness. There are myriad products, ranging from colognes for children to quince-apple and Cistercian jams, made exclusively with organic produce and Royal Jelly honey. | Corso del Rinascimento 72 | 00186 | 06\/68802783 | www.monasteri.it.\n\nAntica Erboristeria Romana.   \nComplete with hand-labeled wooden drawers holding its more than 200 varieties of herbs, flowers, and tinctures including aper, licorice, and hellbane, Antica Erboristeria Romana has maintained its old-world apothecary feel. The shop stocks an impressive array of herbal teas and infusions, more than 700 essential oils, bud derivatives, and powdered extracts. | Via Torre Argentina 15 | 00186 | 06\/6879493 | www.anticaerboristeriaromana.it.\n\n#### Shoes\n\nSuperga.   \nSuperga, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2011, sells those timeless sneakers that every Italian wears at some point, in classic white or\u2014yum\u2014a rainbow of colors. Their 2750 model has been worn by everyone from Kelly Brook to Katie Holmes. If you are a sneakerhead who has been stuck on Converse, give these Italian brethren a look. Just remember not to wear socks with them. | Via della Maddalena 30\/a , Navona | 00186 | 06\/6868737 | www.superga.com.\n\n#### Stationery\n\nIl Papiro.   \nOne of Rome's preferred shops for those who appreciate exquisite writing materials and papermaking techniques that are almost extinct, Il Papiro sells hand-decorated marbleized papers made using the 17th-century marbleized technique called a la cuve. Their stationery and card stock are printed with great care using exacting standards. Whether you are searching for unique lithography, engraving, or delicate watermarked paper, you'll find some indulgence here. They also carry a fine selection of wax seals, presses for paper embossing, Venetian glass pens, and ink stamps. | Via del Pantheon 50 | 00186 | 06\/6795597 | www.ilpapirofirenze.it.\n\n#### Toys\n\nAl Sogno.   \nIf you're looking for quality toys that encourage imaginative play and learning, look no further than Al Sogno. With an emphasis on the artistic as well as the multisensory, the shop has a selection of toys that are both discerning and individual, making them perfect for children of all ages. Carrying an exquisite collection of fanciful puppets, collectible dolls, masks, stuffed animals, and illustrated books, this Navona jewel is crammed top to bottom with beautiful and well-crafted playthings. If you believe that children's toys don't have to be high-tech, you will adore reliving some of your best childhood memories here. | Piazza Navona 53 | 00186 | 06\/6864198 | www.alsogno.com.\n\nBartolucci.   \nBartolucci attracts shoppers with a life-size Pinocchio pedaling furiously on a wooden bike. Inside is a shop that would have warmed Gepetto's heart. For more than 60 years and three generations, this family has been making whimsical, handmade curiosities out of pine, including clocks, bookends, bedside lamps, and wall hangings. You can even buy a child-size vintage car entirely made of wood, including the wheels. | Via dei Pastini 98 | 00186 | 06\/69190894 | www.bartolucci.com.\n\nBert\u00e8.   \nOne of the oldest toy shops in Rome, Bert\u00e8 carries a large selection of stuffed animals, dolls, Legos, and other collectibles. It specializes in dolls, both the crying, eating, and talking types, as well as the ribbon-bedecked old-fashioned beauties. | Piazza Navona 108 | 00186 | 06\/6875011.\n\nLa Citt\u00e0 del Sole.   \nLa Citt\u00e0 del Sole is the progressive parent's ideal store, chock-full of fair-trade and eco-friendly toys that share shelf space with retro and vintage favorites. With educational toys arranged by age, the store is a child-friendly browser's delight crammed with puzzles, gadgets, books, and toys in safe plastics and sustainable wood. The knowledgeable sales staff can help parents make the right choice. | Via della Scrofa 65 | 00186 | 06\/68803805 | www.cittadelsole.it.\n\n#### Vintage Clothing\n\nMado.   \nStill a leader in nostalgia styling, Mado has been vintage cool in Rome since 1969. The shop is funky, glamorous, and often over-the-top wacky. Whether you are looking for a robin's-egg-blue empire-waist dress or a '50s gown evocative of a Lindy Hop, Mado understands the challenges of incorporating vintage pieces into a modern wardrobe. | Via del Governo Vecchio 89\/a | 00186 | 06\/6875028.\n\n##  Repubblica\n\n#### Bookstores\n\nMel Bookstore.   \nIf you like discounts on remainder stock and secondhand books, come to Mel Bookstore. Browse through the large basement and find a treasure trove of marked-down merchandise as well as a modest selection of English-language paperbacks. Upstairs, shop for books in Italian on a variety of subjects or pick up a DVD of Roman Holiday. Afterward, relax with your purchases while you treat yourself to a coffee and dessert in the spacious art deco\u2013style caff\u00e8. | Via Nazionale 254\u2013255 | 00184 | 06\/4885433 | www.melbookstore.it.\n\n#### Ceramics and Decorative Arts\n\nFodor's Choice |  Il Giardino di Domenico Persiani.   \nNestled in a cool courtyard garden under the shade of an expansive oak tree is refreshing open-air terra-cotta shop Il Giardino di Domenico Persiani. Whether you're looking for a chubby cherub, a replica of Bacchus, or your very own Bocca della Verit\u00e0, this is your chance to bring a little piece of Rome home to your garden. With a large selection of handmade Roman masks, busts, flower pots, and vases, there is something here for anyone with a green thumb. | Via Torino 92 | 00184 | 06\/4883886.\n\n#### Food, Wine, and Delicacies\n\nTrimani Vinai a Roma dal 1821.   \nFor more than 180 years Trimani Vinai a Roma dal 1821, occupying an entire block near the Termini train station, has had the city's largest selection of wines, champagne, spumante, grappa, and other liqueurs. With more than 1,000 bottles to choose from and knowledgeable wine stewards, Trimani will give you the opportunity to explore Europe's diverse wine regions without leaving the city. | Via Goito 20 | 00185 | 06\/4469661 | www.trimani.com.\n\n#### Shopping Malls\n\nIl Forum Termini.   \nRome's handiest central shopping mall is Il Forum Termini, a cluster of shops that stay open until 10 pm (even on Sunday), conveniently located directly inside Rome's biggest train station, Stazione Termini. In a city not known for its convenient shopping hours, this \"shop before you hop\/buy before you fly\" hub is a good spot for last-minute goodies or a book for your train or airplane ride. There are more than 50 shops, including the ever-popular United Colors of Benetton, L'Occitane, Sephora, and Optimissimo, which has more than 3,000 super-stylish glasses and sunglasses by top Italian designers. There is even a supermarket for your picnic lunch on the train. | Stazione Temini | 00185 | www.grandistazioni.it.\n\n##  San Giovanni\n\n#### Flea Markets\n\nVia Sannio.   \nThough not strictly a flea market, the mercato Via Sannio is entirely without pretension and open weekdays 8\u20132 and Saturday 8\u20135. Here you can find military surplus, leather jackets, cosmetics, and many other bargains. Also expect great deals on shoes\u2014you can buy good-quality name-brand shoes that have served their time only as shop-window displays. | Near La Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano | 00183.\n\n##  San Lorenzo\n\n#### Casual Chic\n\nFodor's Choice |  L'Anatra all'Arancia.   \nRepetto ballerinas, roomy handbags, and funky dresses make L'Anatra all'Arancia one of the best local secrets of boho San Lorenzo. Its window display showcases innovative designer clothes from Marina Spadafora, Antik Batik, See by Chlo\u00e9 and Donatella Baroni (the store's owner and buyer). Leaning towards the alternative with an eclectic selection of handpicked Italian and French labels, Donatella carries sinful perfumes from L'Artisan Parfumeur and beautiful jewelry from the line of Serge Thoraval. | Via Tiburtina 105 | 00185 | 06\/4456293.\n\nRed Frame Shop.   \nA small and somewhat hard-to-find boutique that is identified only by its red-brick framed door, Red Frame Shop is open odd hours, so don't be afraid to knock if the door is locked. The shop is filled with wool and cotton sweaters and skirts, each handmade with attention to detail. If you don't find your size or color, let the owner know and they can make it for you. | Via degli Equi 70 | 00185 | 06\/4955795.\n\n#### Ceramics and Decorative Arts\n\nLe Terre di AT.   \nLe Terre di AT is a modern potters' workshop nestled in the belly of San Lorenzo, Rome's burgeoning university district. Working on the premises, artist Angela Torcivia creates vases, cups, ceramic jewelry, and necklaces. Her pieces have an otherworldly style, combining ancient shapes with fiery contrasting colors, and are modern while still paying homage to the rich history of Roman clay pottery. | Via degli Ausoni 13 | 00185 | 06\/491748 | www.leterrediat.it.\n\n#### Vintage Clothing\n\nPifebo.   \nA sensational vintage-clothing emporium packed with thousands of items, fire-engine red Pifebo has a loyal following of university students, offbeat musicians, and even the occasional costume designer. Specializing in '70s, '80s and '90s clothes and shoes, the prices are great, the feel is welcoming, and the merchandise turns over quickly. | Via dei Volsci 101 | 00185 | 06\/64870813 | Via dei Serpenti 141, Monti | 00184 | 06\/64870813.\n\n##  Spagna\n\n#### Accessories\n\nBraccialini.   \nFounded in 1954 by Florentine stylist Carla Braccialini and her husband, Braccialini\u2014currently managed by their sons\u2014makes bags that are authentic works of art in delightful shapes, such as little gold taxis or Santa Fe stagecoaches. The delightfully quirky beach bags have picture postcard scenes of Italian resorts made of brightly colored appliqu\u00e9d leather: Be sure to check out their eccentric Temi (Theme) creature bags; the opossum-shaped handbag made out of crocodile skin makes a richly whimsical fashion statement. | Via Mario De' Fiori 73 | 00187 | 06\/6785750 | shop.braccialini.com.\n\nDi Cori.   \nDi Cori packs a lot of gloves into a tiny space, offering a rainbow of color choices. Made of the softest lambskin, and lined with silk, cashmere, rabbit fur, or wool, a pair of these gloves will ensure warm and fashionable hands. They also carry a smaller selection of unlined, washable versions. | Piazza di Spagna 53 | 00187 | 06\/6784439 | www.dicorigloves.it.\n\nFurla.   \nFurla has 15 franchises in Rome alone. Its flagship store, to the left of the Spanish Steps, sells bags like hot cakes. Be prepared to fight your way through crowds of passionate handbag lovers, all anxious to possess one of the delectable bags, wallets, or watch straps in ice-cream colors. | Piazza di Spagna 22, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/69200363 | www.furla.com.\n\nGherardini.   \nIn business since 1885, Gherardini has taken over a deconsecrated church and slickly transformed it into a showplace for their label, which is known for its retro handbags and logo-stamped synthetic materials. Gherardini's leather totes, sling bags, and soft luggage have become classics and are worth the investment. Be sure to take a look at their limited edition Japanese flag bag \"Gherardini for Japan\"; proceeds will go to the Japanese Red Cross supporting those affected by the 2011 T\u014dhoku earthquake. | Via Belsiana 48\/b | 00187 | 06\/6795501 | www.gherardini.it.\n\nLa Coppola Storta.   \nLa Coppola Storta describes a type of Sicilian beret and the jaunty way it was worn by Mafiosi. They say the more the hat was twisted to the side, the more connected the wearer was to organized crime. In defiance of Mafia influence across Sicily, activist Guido Agnello helped to open a factory in San Giuseppe specializing in the manufacture of these colorful caps, giving jobs to local sewers, many of whom were previously unemployed or connected to the black market. With the help of some of Italy's best designers, they have created a line of dapper Coppola for adults, children, and even puppies, which have become a sought-after fashion accessory and an unexpected ambassador for the anti-mafia struggle all over the world. With every color and fabric imaginable, hat prices start at \u20ac55. | Via delle Croce 81\/a, Piazza di Spagna | 00186 | 06\/6785824 | www.lacoppolastorta.it.\n\nLa Perla.   \nLa Perla is the go-to for beautifully crafted lingerie and glamorous underwear for that special night, a bridal trousseau, or just to spoil yourself on your Roman holiday. In partnership with Jean Paul Gaultier, the brand has just launched a swimwear line alongside his second lingerie collection. If you like decadent finery that is both stylish and romantic, you will find something here to make you feel like a goddess. | Via Bocca di Leone 24 | 00187 | 06\/69941934 | www.laperla.com.\n\nMandarina Duck.   \nMandarina Duck appeared on the Italian design scene in 1997. Their snappy, colored MD20 bags and luggage in durable synthetic fabrics were soon a hit. Techno shoppers have begun snapping up their new \"unexpected\" bag with a plethora of pockets, including two especially for iPads and mobile phones, making it practical in form and design. Working gals will adore their smart business bag made with semirigid material and large pockets for keeping documents organized. | Via dei Due Macelli 59\/F | 00187 | 06\/6786414 | www.mandarinaduck.com.\n\nRoxy.   \nFilled with rows of silk ties in every color and pattern, Roxy carries a selection bewilderingly large and moderately priced, and the store is usually packed with customers. Be sure to take a look at this season's spotted and checked versions. | Via Frattina 115 | 00187 | 06\/6796691 | Via Barberini 112, Barberini | 00187 | 06\/4883931.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Saddlers Union.   \nReborn on the mythical artisan's street, Via Margutta, across the street from Federico Fellini's old house, Saddlers Union first launched in 1957 and quickly gained a cult following among those who valued Italian artistry and the traditional aesthetic. Jacqueline Kennedy set the trend of classical elegance by sporting Saddlers Union's rich saddle-leather bucket bag. Closed in 2004, one of Italy's finest labels is back, representing everything for which Rome leatherwork has become famous. If you're searching for a sinfully fabulous handbag in a graceful, classic shape or that \"I have arrived\" attorney's briefcase, you will find something guaranteed to inspire envy. Items are made on-site with true artistry and under the watchful eye of Angelo Zaza, one of Saddlers Union's original master artisans. The prices are high, but so is the quality. | Via Margutta 11, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/32120237 | www.saddlersunion.com.\n\nSchostal.   \nAt the end of the 19th century when ladies needed petticoats, corsets, bonnets, or white or colored stockings made of cotton thread, wool, or silk, it was inevitable for them to stop at Schostal. A Piazza di Spagna fixture since 1870, the shop still preserves that genteel ambience. Fine-quality shirts come with spare collars and cuffs. Ultraclassic underwear, handkerchiefs, and pure wool and cashmere are available at affordable prices. | Via Fontanella Borghese 29 | 00186 | 06\/6791240 | www.schostalroma.com.\n\nSermoneta.   \nSermoneta allures with its stacks of nappa leather, deerskin, and pigskin gloves in all colors. To produce one pair of gloves requires the skill and precision of at least 10 artisans. To satisfy demand, they carry a diverse selection of hand-stitched gloves (lined or unlined) for men and women. You can even find opera-length gloves for those special evenings or you can have your purchases personalized with initials, logos, and other designs. | Piazza di Spagna 61 | 00187 | 06\/6791960 | www.sermonetagloves.com.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Tod's.   \nWith just 30 years under its belt, Tod's has grown from a small family brand into a global powerhouse so wealthy that it has donated \u20ac20 million to renovate the Colosseum. Tod's has gathered a cult following among style mavens worldwide, due in large part to owner Diego Della Valle's equally famous other possession: Florence's soccer team. The shoe baron's trademark is his simple, understated designs. Sure to please are his light and flexible slip-on Gommini driving shoes with rubber-bottomed soles for extra driving-pedal grip. Now you just need a Ferrari. | Via Fontanella di Borghese 56a\/c | 00187 | 06\/68210066 | www.tods.com.\n\nYamamay.   \nSpecializing in sophisticated lingerie for the fashion-conscious woman, Yamamay designs are a perfect combination of femininity and sexiness. Branches of the store are located throughout the city. | Via del Corso 309, Corso | 00187 | 06\/6991196 | www.yamamay.it.\n\n#### Antiques\n\nFratelli Alinari.   \nThe gallery store of the world's oldest photography firm, Fratelli Alinari was founded by brothers Leopoldo, Giuseppe, and Romualdo Alinari in 1852. Patrons can browse through a vast archive of prints, books, rare collotypes, and finely detailed reproductions of historical images, drawings, and paintings. Several of the more interesting subjects re-created using this technique are Dante's Divine Comedy and both the Plan de Paris and The Origin of New York, detailed reproductions of the first recorded maps of these two cities. | Via Alibert 16\/a | 00187 | 06\/6792923 | www.alinari.it.\n\nGalleria Benucci.   \nWith carved and gilded late baroque and Empire period furniture and paintings culled from the noble houses of Italy's past, Galleria Benucci is a treasure trove. An establishment favored by professionals from Europe and abroad, this elegant gallery has a astonishing selection of objects in a hushed atmosphere where connoisseurs will find the proprietors only too happy to discuss their latest finds. | Via del Babuino 150\/C | 00187 | 06\/36002190 | www.galleriabenucci.it.\n\n#### Bookstores\n\nAnglo-American Book Co.   \nA large and friendly English-language bookstore with more than 45,000 books, Anglo-American Book Co. has been a mecca for English-language reading material in Rome for more than 25 years. Whether you are a study-abroad student in need of an art history or archaeology textbook, or a visitor searching for a light read for the train, there is something for everyone here. Among shelves stuffed from floor to ceiling and sometimes several rows deep, book lovers can find British and American editions and easily spend hours just looking. The bilingual staff pampers browsers and does not rush or hover. | Via della Vite 102, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/6795222 | www.aab.it.\n\nLa Feltrinelli.   \nAs Rome's biggest bookseller, La Feltrinelli's main attraction is the Piazza Colonna flagship store. Ensconced in the elegant 19th-century Galleria Alberto Sordi, this mega-bookstore fills three floors with books, music, postcards, holiday items, and small gifts. A great place to explore Italian-style book shopping, there are 12 branches peppered throughout the city. The Torre Argentina shop also has a ticketing office for music and cultural events and a caff\u00e8 tucked upstairs with refreshing snacks and good coffee. The Repubblica branch carries a large section of titles in many languages as well as a well-stocked foreign film selection. | Piazza Colonna 31\/35, Corso | 00187 | 06\/69755001 | www.lafeltrinelli.it | Via Vittorio Emanuele Orlando 84\/86, Repubblica | 00185 | 06\/4827878 | Largo Torre Argentina, Campo de' Fiori | 00186 | 06\/68663001.\n\nLion Bookshop.   \nFor 50 years Italy's oldest English-language bookstore, with its children's reading corner and small caff\u00e8 with American snacks and cookies, has been a welcoming haven for moms in search of that special children's book. In addition to books for kids, they also have a broad assortment of contemporary and classic fiction and nonfiction titles, as well as books on Rome and Italy in general, plus art, architecture, and cooking. | Via dei Greci 33\/36 | 00186 | 06\/32654007.\n\n#### Ceramics and Decorative Arts\n\nMusa.   \nMusa is the place to shop if you're looking for decorative ceramic accents. Be sure to pop up to the second floor, where you can find a fine array of extravagant hand-painted ceramic tiles from Vietri, a region renowned for the quality of its clays and artisanal ceramic tradition. Shipping can be arranged. Whether you're planning to tile an entire bathroom or just pick up a few pieces to use in your kitchen as hot plates, your house will have an Italian villa feel when you are done. | Via di Campo Marzio 39, Corso | 00186 | 06\/6871204 | www.ceramichemusa.it.\n\n#### Children's Clothing\n\nLa Cicogna.   \nA well-known designer children's clothier found throughout Italy with clothing for little ones from birth to age 14, La Cicogna is one-stop, name-brand shopping for antsy kids and tired parents. The stores carry clothes, shoes, baby carriages, and nursery supplies as well as child-size versions of designer names like Armani, Burberry, Guru, Timberland, Replay, Blumarine, and DKNY. | Via Frattina 138 | 00187 | 06\/6791912 | Via Cola di Rienzo 268, Vatican | 00192 | 06\/6896557.\n\nPinco Pallino.   \nFounded by Imelde Bronzieri and Stefano Cavalleri in 1980, Pinco Pallino has extraordinary clothing for boys and girls, be it a sedate tulle petal jumper or savvy sailor wear. Moms will find their latest lines for babies and tots absolutely delicious. | Via del Babuino 115, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/69190549 | www.pincopallino.it.\n\nP\u00f9re.   \nThe mothership for fashionistas in the making, P\u00f9re carries designer brands that include Fendi, Diesel, Dior, Juicy Couture, Nolita, and Miss Blumarine. The store has plush carpet to crawl on and children's clothes for newborns to age 12. | Via Frattina 111 | 00187 | 06\/6794555 | www.puresermoneta.it.\n\n#### Department Stores\n\nLa Rinascente.   \nItaly's best-known department store, La Rinascente is where Italian fashion mogul Giorgio Armani got his start as a window dresser. Recently relocated inside the Galleria Alberto Sordi, the store has a phalanx of ready-to-wear designer sportswear and blockbuster handbags and accessories. The upscale clothing and accessories are a hit with the young and well dressed, while retail turf is geared toward people on lunch breaks and the ubiquitous tourist. The Piazza Fiume location has more floor space and a wider range of goods, including a housewares department. | Galleria Alberto Sordi, Piazza Colonna | 00187 | 06\/6797691 | www.rinascente.it | Piazza Fiume, Via Veneto | 00198 | 06\/8841231 | www.rinascente.it.\n\n#### Fashion\n\nBrighenti.   \nBrighenti looks like what it is\u2014a traditional Roman shop from a gentler era, replete with a marble floor and a huge crystal chandelier suspended overhead. Sensual silk nightgowns and exquisite peignoirs that have a vintage silver screen feel are displayed downstairs. Upstairs are sumptuous vintage-inspired swimsuits that will make you feel like Marlene Dietrich. | Via Frattina 7\u201310 | 00187 | 06\/6791484 | www.brighentiboutique.it.\n\nDolce & Gabbana.   \nDolce and Gabbana met in 1980 when both were assistants at a Milan fashion atelier and opened their first store in 1982. With a modern aesthetic that screams sex appeal, the brand has always thrived on its excesses. The Rome store can be more than a little overwhelming, with its glossy glamazons but at least there is plenty of eye candy, masculine and feminine, with a spring line heavy of stars and sequins as well as enthusiastic fruits, flowers, and veggies. | Piazza di Spagna 94 | 00187 | 06\/6782990 | www.dolcegabbana.com.\n\nElena Mir\u00f2.   \nElena Mir\u00f2 is an absolutely delectable Italian atelier making its mark designing clothes specifically for those who don't have the proportions of a 14-year-old. If your DNA gave you the curves of Mad Men's Joan Holloway you will love the fact that this designer specializes in beautifully sexy clothes for curvy, European-styled women size 46 (U.S. size 12, UK size 14) and up. | Via Frattina 11\u201312 | 00187 | 06\/6784367 | www.elenamiro.com | Via Nazionale 197, Repubblica | 00184 | 06\/4823881.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Fendi.   \nFendi has been a fixture of the Roman fashion landscape since \"Mamma\" Fendi first opened shop with her husband in 1925. With an eye for crazy genius, she hired Karl Lagerfeld, who began working with the group at the start of his career. His furs and runway antics have made him one of the world's most influential designers of the 20th century and brought international acclaim to Fendi along the way. Recent Lagerfeld triumphs include new collections marrying innovative textures, fabrics (cashmere, felt, and duchesse satin) with exotic skins like crocodile. Keeping up with technology, they even have an iPad case that will surely win a fashionista's seal of approval. The atelier, now owned by the Louis Vuitton group, continues to symbolize Italian glamour at its finest, though the difference in owners is noticeable. | Largo Carlo Goldoni 419\u2013421 | 00187 | 06\/696661 | www.fendi.com | Via Borgognona 39.\n\nGalassia.   \nGalassia has ingenious and avant-garde women's styles by an A-list of designers including Gaultier, Westwood, Issey Miyake, and Yamamoto. If you're the type who dares to be different and in need of some closet therapy, you will love the extravagant selection, which gives the store a look that cannot be found elsewhere. | Via Frattina 21 | 00187 | 06\/6797896 | www.galassiaroma.com.\n\nGiorgio Armani.   \nOne of the most influential designers of Italian haute couture, Giorgio Armani creates fluid silhouettes and dazzling evening gowns with d\u00e9collet\u00e9s so deep they'd make a grown man blush, his signature cuts made with the clever-handedness and flawless technique that you only achieve working with tracing paper and Italy's finest fabrics over the course of a lifetime. His menswear collection uses traditional textiles like wide-ribbed corduroy and stretch jersey in nontraditional ways while staying true to a clean, masculine aesthetic. It's true that exotic runway ideas and glamorous celebrities give Armani saleability, but his staying power is casual Italian elegance with just the right touch of whimsy and sexiness. Want to live la bella vita for longer than your Roman holiday? Armani is also selling luxury apartments in Rome at Cavour 220, complete with his personalized interiors. | Via Condotti 77 | 00187 | 06\/6991460 | www.giorgioarmani.com | Via Del Babuino 71a | 00187 | 06\/36001848 | Via Del Babuino 140 | 06\/3221581.\n\nGucci.   \nAs the glamorous fashion label turns 90, the success of the double-G trademark brand is unquestionable. Survival in luxury fashion depends on defining market share, and creative director Frida Giannini has proven she knows the soul of the House of Gucci. Tom Ford may have made Gucci the sexiest brand in the world, but it's today's reinterpreted horsebit styles and Jackie Kennedy scarves that keep the design house on top. And while Gucci remains a fashion must for virtually every A-list celebrity, their designs have moved from heart-stopping sexy rock star to something classically subdued and retrospectively feminine. | Via Condotti 8 | 00187 | 06\/6790405 | www.gucci.com.\n\nKrizia.   \nDesigner Mariuccia Mandelli borrowed the name Krizia from the title of Plato's unfinished dialogue on women's vanity to market her designs by. Born in 1933, she began designing dresses for her dolls at age 8. The designer's collections have gone through many top stylists and have recently returned to their original stylized roots. The current pr\u00eat-\u00e0-porter line emphasizes the use of black and dove grey, mixed with animal prints; it's dramatic, yet classy: wearing Krizia will get you noticed. | Piazza di Spagna 87 | 00187 | 06\/6793772 | www.krizia.it.\n\nLaura Biagiotti.   \nFor 40 years Laura Biagiotti has been a worldwide ambassador of Italian fashion. Considered the Queen of Cashmere, her soft-as-velvet pullovers have been worn by Sophia Loren and her snow-white cardigans were said to be a favorite of the late Pope John Paul II. Princess Diana even sported one of Biagiotti's cashmere maternity dresses. Be sure to indulge in her line of his-and-her perfumes. | Via Mario de' Fiori 26 | 00187 | 06\/6791205 | www.laurabiagiotti.it.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Marisa Padovan.   \nThe place to go for exclusive, made-to-order lingerie and bathing suits, Marisa Padovan has been sewing for Hollywood starlets like Audrey Hepburn and the well-heeled women of Rome for more than 40 years. Whether you want to purchase a ready-made style trimmed with Swarovski crystals and polished turquoise stones or design your own bespoke bikini or one-piece, their made-to-measure precision will have you looking like Rita Hayworth. | Via delle Carrozze 81 | 00187 | 06\/6793946 | www.marisapadovan.it.\n\nMariella Burani.   \nHighly wearable and never boring, Mariella Burani has classy yet sensual ready-to-wear that borrows judiciously from several of the company's other principal lines. Recently they have begun adding jewelry and accessories to complete their fashion portfolio. | Via Borgognona 29, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/6790630 | www.mariellaburani.com.\n\nMissoni.   \nNotable for its bohemian knitwear designs with now-legendary patterns of zigzags, waves, and stripes (some of which are influenced by folk art), as well as elegant eveningwear and must-have swimsuits, Missoni is unlike other Italian fashion families: in three generations there have been neither vendettas nor buyouts by huge multinational conglomerates to stain their colorful history. And while their eye-popping designs have polarized critics, they continue to deliver exquisite collections, mesmerizing the buying public. | Piazza di Spagna 78 | 00187 | 06\/6792555 | www.missoni.it.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Patrizia Pepe.   \nOne of Florence's best-kept secrets for up-and-coming fashions, Patrizia Pepe emerged on the scene in 1993 with designs both minimalist and bold, combining classic styles with low-slung jeans and jackets with oversize lapels that are bound to draw attention. Her line of shoes are hot-hot-hot for those who can walk in stilts. It's still not huge on the fashion scene as a stand-alone brand, but take a look at this shop before the line becomes the next fast-tracked craze. | Via Frattina 44 | 00187 | 06\/6781851 | www.patriziapepe.com.\n\nPrada.   \nNot just the devil, but also serious shoppers wear Prada season after season, especially those willing to sell their souls for one of their ubiquitous handbags. If you are looking for that blend of old-world luxury with a touch of fashion-forward finesse, you'll hit pay dirt here. Recent handbag designs have a bit of a 1960s Jackie Kennedy feel, and whether you like them will hinge largely on whether you find Prada's signature retro-modernism enchanting. You'll find the Rome store more service-focused than the New York City branches\u2014a roomy elevator delivers you to a series of thickly carpeted rooms where a flock of discreet assistants will help you pick out dresses, shoes, lingerie, and fashion accessories. | Via Condotti 92\/95 | 00187 | 06\/6790897 | www.prada.com.\n\nSalvatore Ferragamo.   \nOne of the top-10 most-wanted men's footwear brands, Salvatore Ferragamo has been providing Hollywood glitterati and discerning clients with unique handmade designs for years. Ferragamo fans will think they have died and followed the white light when they enter this store. The Florentine design house also specializes in handbags, small leather goods, men's and women's ready-to-wear, and scarves and ties. Men's styles are found at Via Condotti 65, women's at 73\/74. Want to sleep in Ferragamo style? Their splendid luxury Portrait Suites Hotel is on the upper floors. | Via Condotti 65 | 00187 | 06\/6781130 | www.ferragamo.com | Via Condotti 73\/74 | 00187 | 06\/6791565.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Save the Queen!.   \nA hot Florentine design house with exotic and creative pieces for women and girls with artistic and eccentric frills, cut-outs, and textures, Save the Queen! has one of the most beautiful shops in the city, with window displays that are works of art unto themselves. The store is chock-full of Baroque-inspired dresses, shirts, and skirts that are ultrafeminine and not the least bit discreet. Pieces radiate charming excess, presenting a portrait of youthful chic. | Via del Babuino 49, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/36003039 | www.savethequeen.com.\n\nTrussardi.   \nA classic design house moving in a youthful direction, Trussardi has been symbolized by its greyhound logo since 1973. Today, with Gaia Trussardi at the helm and following in her father and brother's footsteps, the line is making use of leather accent pieces like suede tunics and wider belts. Tru Trussardi (in Galleria Alberto Sordi) addresses a modern woman's need for both luxury and comfort in upscale daily wear. | Via Condotti 49\/50 | 00187 | 06\/6780280 | www.trussardi.com.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Valentino.   \nSince taking the Valentino reins a few years ago, creative directors Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli have faced numerous challenges, the most basic being keeping Valentino true to Valentino after the designer's retirement in 2008. Both served as accessories designers under Valentino for more than a decade and understand exactly how to make the next generation of Hollywood stars swoon. Spagna's sprawling boutiques showcase designs with a romantic edginess: think kitten heels and or a show-stopping pr\u00eat-\u00e0-porter evening gown worthy of the Oscars. | Via Condotti 12\u201315, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/69200618 | www.valentino.com | Via del Babuino 61, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/36001906.\n\nVersace.   \nOccupying the ground floor of a noble palazzo with wrought-iron gratings on the windows and mosaic pavement, Versace is as imaginative as the store is ostentatious. Here shoppers will find apparel, jewelry, watches, fragrances, cosmetics, and home furnishings. The designs are as flamboyant as Donatella and Allegra (Gianni's niece), drawing heavily on the sexy rocker gothic underground vibe. Be sure to check out the Via Veneto location for pret-\u00e0-porter and jewelry. | Via Bocca di Leone 23, 26\u201327, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/6780521 | www.versace.com | Via Vittorio Veneto 104, Veneto | 00187 | 06\/69925574.\n\n#### Flea Markets\n\nSoffitta Sotto i Portici.   \nHeld every first and third Sunday of the month from 9 am until sunset, Soffitta Sotto i Portici has more than 100 stands. | Piazza Augusto Imperatore | 00186 | 06\/36005345.\n\n#### Food, Wine, and Delicacies\n\nBuccone.   \nA landmark wine shop inside the former coach house of the Marquesse Cavalcabo, Buccone has 10 layers of shelves packed with quality wines and spirits ranging in price from a few euros to several hundred for rare vintages. The old atmosphere has been preserved with the original wood-beamed ceiling and an antique till. You can also buy sweets, biscuits, and packaged candy perfect for inexpensive gifts. Lunch is available daily and dinner is served Friday and Saturday (reservations essential). Book a week in advance, and they can also give you a guided wine tasting, highlighting vintages from many of Italy's important wine-producing regions. | Via di Ripetta 19 | 00187 | 06\/3612154 | www.enotecabuccone.com.\n\n#### Household Items\n\nCesari.   \nSince 1946 Cesari is where Italian brides traditionally buy their trousseaux. Precious velvets, silks, cottons, damasks, and taffeta abound and are shippable internationally. Famous for their personalized line of bedspreads, tablecloths, lingerie, and embroidered linens, they supply high-end hotels as well as old-fashioned girls of all ages. | Via del Babuino 195 | 00187 | 06\/3613456 | www.cesari.com.\n\nFrette.   \nClassic, luxurious, colorful, timeless, and fun, there is nothing like Frette's bed collections. A leader in luxurious linens and towels for the home and hotel industry since 1860, their sophisticated bed linens in cotton satine, percale, and silk are just what the doctor ordered for a great night's sleep. Be sure to look for their Dreamscapes collection, which introduces a romantic, fantastical theme seen in the surreal landscapes of Fellini films, such as 8 1\/2 and Voice of the Moon. | Piazza di Spagna 11, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/6790673 | www.frette.it | Via Nazionale 80, Repubblica | 00184 | 06\/4882641 | www.frette.it | Via del Corso 381, Corso | 00186 | 06\/6786862.\n\n#### Jewelry\n\nBulgari.   \nEvery capital city has its famous jeweler, and Bulgari is to Rome what Tiffany is to New York and Cartier is to Paris. The jewelry giant has developed a reputation for meticulous craftsmanship melded with noble metals and precious gems. In the middle of the 19th century, the great-grandfather of the current Bulgari brothers began working as a silver jeweler in his native Greece and is said to have moved to Rome with less than 1,000 lire in his pocket. Today the megabrand emphasizes colorful and playful jewelry as the principal cornerstone of its aesthetic. Popular collections include Parentesi, Bulgari-Bulgari and B.zero1. | Via Condotti 10, Piazza di Spagna | 00187 | 06\/6793876 | www.bulgari.com | Via Condotti 61, Piazza di Spagna.\n\n#### Men's Clothing\n\nEddy Monetti.   \nEddy Monetti is a conservative but upscale men's store featuring jackets, sweaters, slacks, and ties made out of wool, cotton, and cashmere. Sophisticated and pricey, the store carries a range of stylish British- and Italian-made pieces. The women's store is at Via Borgognona 35. | Via Borgognona 35 | 00187 | 06\/6794389 | www.eddymonetti.com.\n\nErmenegildo Zegna.   \nErmenegildo Zegna, of the unpronounceable name, is a 100-year-old powerhouse of men's clothing. Believing that construction and fabric are the key, Zegna is the master of both. Most of the luxury brand's suits cost in the \u20ac1,500\u2013\u20ac2,500 range, with the top of the line, known as \"Couture,\" costing considerably more. But don't despair if your pockets aren't that deep: their ready-to-wear dress shirts are suit-defining. | Via Condotti 58 | 00187 | 06\/69940678 | www.zegna.com.\n\n#### Music Stores\n\nMessaggerie Musicali.   \nCentral Rome's largest selection of music, DVDs, and concert tickets is at Messaggerie Musicali. Owned by Mondadori, the store also has a limited book section. | Via del Corso 472 | 00186 | 06\/684401 | www.mondadorishop.it.\n\n#### Perfume and Cosmetics\n\nCastelli Profumerie.   \nCastelli Profumerie is a straightforward Italian perfume shop with one distinct advantage. Besides being a perfumed paradise offering an array of perfumes like Acqua di Parma, Bois 1920, Bond No. 9, and Comme de Gar\u00e7ons, their precise and courteous staff speaks multiple languages and knows their merchandise, making the experience a lot more pleasant than a dash through duty-free. | Via Frattina 18 & 54 | 00187 | 06\/6790339, 06\/6780066 beauty salon | www.profumeriecastelli.com | Via Condotti 22 | 00187 | 06\/6790998 | Via Oslavia 5, Vatican | 00195 | 06\/3728312.\n\nPro Fvmvm.   \nThe Durante family lives by the motto that a scent can be more memorable than a photograph. Started in 1996 by the grandchildren of Celestino Durante, Pro Fvmvm is fast on its way to becoming a new cult classic in Italian fragrance design. Each of the 20 scents is designed to be unisex and comes complete with a poem that describes the intention of the artisans. Pricey but worth it, some of their top-selling perfumes are Acqva e Zvcchero, Fiore d'Ambra, Thvndra, Volo Az 686 (named after a direct flight from Rome to the Caribbean), and Ichnvsa. | Via Ripetta 10, Spagna | 00186 | 06\/3200306 | www.profumum.com.\n\n#### Shoes\n\nA. Testoni.   \nAmedeo Testoni was born in 1905 in Bologna, the heart of Italy's shoemaking territory. In 1929 he opened his first shop and began producing shoes as artistic as the Cubist and Art Deco artwork of the period. His shoes have adorned the art-in-motion feet of Fred Astaire and proved that lightweight shoes could be comfortable and luxurious and still make heads turn. Today the Testoni brand includes an extraordinary women's collection and a sports line that is relaxed without losing its artistic heritage. The soft, calfskin sneakers are a dream, as are the matching messenger bags. | Via Condotti 80 | 00187 | 06\/6788944 | www.testoni.com.\n\nBruno Magli.   \nBruno Magli has high-end, well-crafted, classically styled shoes for both men and women. Magli and his siblings Marino and Maria learned the art of shoemaking from their father and grandfather. From its humble family origins to the corporate design powerhouse it has become today, Bruno Magli footwear always has kept the focus on craftsmanship: it's not uncommon for 30 people to touch each shoe during the course of its manufacture. | Via Condotti 6 | 00187 | 06\/69292121 | www.brunomagli.it.\n\nFausto Santini.   \nFausto Santini gives a hint of extravagance in minimally decorated shoes that fashion mavens love. For almost 20 years, Santini has successfully attracted an avant-garde clientele of both men and women who flock to his preppy-hipster\/nerdy-chic shoes, which are bright and colorful and sport deconstructed forms in plush, supple leathers that scream to be tried on. TIP A second shop at Via Cavour 106 sells last season's shoes at a deep discount. | Via Frattina 120 | 00187 | 06\/6784114 | www.faustosantini.it.\n\nFratelli Rossetti.   \nAn old-world company with modern aspirations, Fratelli Rossetti is well known to shoe hounds for their captivatingly comfortable Jasper loafers and discreet women's pumps. Their motto has long been sophisticated yet discreet, but while continuing to offer classic power elegance with an emphasis on quality, luxury, and craftsmanship, their new line is a bit more playful. Be sure to check out their new blue suede shoes designed by a Southern California designer. | Via Borgognona 5\/a | 00187 | 06\/6782676 | www.rossetti.it.\n\n#### Sportwear\n\nRenard.   \nA leather boutique that scrupulously selects from superior quality leather hides, Renard carries leathers tanned with natural extracts\u2014not chemicals\u2014a slow and natural process that maintains the hides' original properties. Choose from classic leather blazers, trench coats, and skirts in sporty and sophisticated colors and styles. Be sure to eye their racy motorcycle styles, perfect for windswept and gutsy Ducati rides. | Via dei Due Macelli 53 | 00187 | 06\/6797004.\n\n#### Stationery\n\nFodor's Choice |  Pineider.   \nPineider has been making exclusive stationery in Italy since 1774; this is where Rome's aristocratic families have their wedding invitations engraved and their stationery personalized. For stationery and desk accessories, hand-tooled in the best Florentine leather, it has no equal. | Via di Fontanella Borghese 22 | 00187 | 06\/6878369 | www.pineider.com.\n\n##  Testaccio\n\n#### Food, Wine, and Delicacies\n\nFodor's Choice |  Volpetti.   \nA Roman institution, Volpetti sells excellent, if pricey, cured meats and salami. Its rich aromas and flavors are captivating from the moment you enter the store. Food selection includes genuine buffalo-milk mozzarella, Roman pecorino, salami, sauces, spreads, oils, balsamic vinegars, desserts, gift baskets, and much more. | Via Marmorata 47 | 00153 | 06\/5742352 | www.volpetti.com.\n\n##  Trastevere\n\n#### Bookstores\n\nAlmost Corner Bookshop.   \nThis Trastevere bookstore is a well-loved meeting point for English-speaking residents and visitors to this lively neighborhood. Owner Dermot O'Connell, from Kilkenny, Ireland, stocks an inviting selection ranging from translated Italian classics to today's latest bestsellers. With a reputation for being able to find anything a customer requests, the small shop is a good place to special order books, and it has a wonderful selection of obscura if you've got the time to poke around. | Via del Moro 45 | 00153 | 06\/5836942.\n\n#### Ceramics and Decorative Arts\n\nPolveri del Tempo.   \nThis is the place to go if you are looking for decorative timepieces. At Polveri del Tempo you will find sundials and handcrafted hourglasses\u2014including a giant 18-hour model that is quite memorable. The owner, architect and craftsman Adrian Rodriguez, will tell you how monks once used marked candles, like those on sale here, to note the passage of time. Also on offer is a selection of ancient gizmos that would make any child happy. | Via del Moro 59, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/05880704 | www.polvereditempo.com.\n\n#### Flea Markets\n\nPorta Portese.   \nRome's biggest flea market is at Porta Portese, which welcomes 100,000 visitors every Sunday from 7 am until 2 pm. Larger than the St.Ouen in Paris, this mecca of flea markets is easily accessible with Tram 8. Like one vast yard sale, the market disgorges mountains of new and secondhand clothing, furniture, pictures, old records, used books, vintage clothing, and antiques\u2014all at rock-bottom prices (especially if you're adept at haggling). There is a jovial atmosphere, with an aroma of foods wafting in the air and people crowding around the stalls, hoping to pick up a 1960s Beatles album or a rare Art Deco figurine. Just make sure you bring cash, as stallholders don't accept credit cards and the nearest available cash machine is a hike. | Via Portuense and adjacent streets between Porta Portese and Via Ettore Rolli | 00153.\n\n#### Food, Wine, and Delicacies\n\nAntica Caciara Trasteverina.   \nThe fresh ricotta cheese in the windows of this old-world Trastevere deli catches your eye, enticing you to come inside. Behind the counter you will find heaping helpings of ham, salami, Sicilian anchovies, and burrata cheese from Puglia, as well as Parmigiano-Reggiano and local wines. | Via San Francesco a Ripa 140a, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/5812815 | www.anticacaciara.it.\n\n#### Shoes\n\nJoseph DeBach.   \nThe best-kept shoe secret in Rome and open only in the evenings, when Trastevere diners begin to strut their stuff, Joseph DeBach has weird and wonderful creations that are more art than footwear. Entirely handmade from wood, metal, and leather in his small and chaotic studio, his abacus wedge is worthy of a museum. Styles are outrageous \"wow\" and sometimes finished with hand-painted strings, odd bits of comic books, newspapers, or other unexpected baubles. Individually signed and dated, his shoes are distributed, in very small numbers, in London, Paris, Tokyo, and New York. | Vicolo del Cinque 19 | 00153 | 06\/5562756.\n\n##  Vatican\n\n#### Accessories\n\nSerafini Ferruccio Pelletteria.   \nFifty years ago, there were more than 200 workshops in Rome making handmade leather handbags and shoes. Today only a handful of these saddlers remain, among them Serafini Ferruccio Pelletteria. In this subterranean emporium, both Bobby and Jack Kennedy once ordered loafers and Marlon Brando fancied the maker's doeskin moccasins. Today, the Serafini brand is managed by Francesca, Ferruccio Serafini's youngest daughter, and the laboratory continues to work the leather just as Ferrucio has since beginning his career in the 1940s. Discerning clients adore their lavish retro-styled handbags. Choose from premade stock or, if you have time, select your own style and accompanying leathers. | Via Caio Mario 14 | 00192 | 06\/3211719 | www.serafinipelletteria.it.\n\n#### Department Stores\n\nCoin.   \nA perfect place for upscale merchandise in a proper department store atmosphere, Coin has convenient locations in the center of Rome. Customers can select from trendy merchandise, including clothing separates, lingerie, and sportswear for men, women, and children. Searching for a pressure-driven espresso machine, a simpler stove-top Bialetti model, or a mezzaluna? You can find these and other high-quality, stylish cookware items that are difficult to find back home. If you are hopping a train from Termini station be sure to check out the smaller version of this store, which has a fabulous emphasis on hip fashions. | Via Cola di Rienzo 173 | 00192 | 06\/36004298 | Piazzale Appio 7, San Giovanni | 00183 | 06\/7080020 | www.coin.it.\n\n#### Food, Wine, and Delicacies\n\nCastroni.   \nThe legend over the door reads Castroni Droghe Coloniali, but for years this international food emporium has been known by the single moniker Castroni. Opening its flagship shop near the Vatican in 1932, this gastronomic paradise has long been Rome's port of call for decadent delicacies from around the globe. Jonesing expatriates and study-abroad students pop in for their Fauchon products from Paris, their Twinings teas, or tins of their special smoked Spanish paprika. Travelers will want to stock up on exquisite Italian goodies like Sardinian Bottarga, aromatic Alba white truffles, or their in-house roasted espresso. Just be sure to bring an extra suitcase: you will want to buy everything. | Via Cola di Rienzo 196 | 00192 | 06\/6874383 | www.castroni.it | Via Nazionale 71, Nazionale | 00184 | 06\/48947474 | Via Frattina 79, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/69921903.\n\n#### Religious Mementos\n\nArte Italiana.   \nArte Italiana stands out among the religious souvenir shops that line the avenue leading to St. Peter's Basilica. Whether you're looking for a unique First Holy Communion gift, rosary bracelets, or Byzantine icons, you will find something meaningful to bestow on your parish back home. The multilingual staff will help you find what you are looking for and mean to be helpful, even if they can seem pushy. The store stocks a wide variety of detailed cr\u00e8che statuettes, alabaster sculptures, tapestries, saints medals, and crucifixes handmade in Italy. The pieces aren't cheap, but they are of the highest quality and make great mementos to personalize your Vatican experience. | Via della Conciliazione 4f | 00193 | 06\/68806373.\n\nSavelli Arte e Tradizione.   \nA Roman landmark since 1878, Savelli Arte e Tradizione offers the widest selection of artwork and sacred objects available in Rome. The Savelli name belongs to an old Roman family with four popes among its ancestors: Benedict II, Gregory II, Honorius III, and Honorius IV. The shop is famous for its collection of 18th- and 19th-century\u2013style micromosaics; it's a great spot to watch artists demonstrate this ancient craft. | Via Paolo VI, 27\u201329 | 00193 | 06\/68307017 | www.savellireligious.com.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\n_Main Table of Contents _\n\nWelcome To Lazio\n\nOstia Antica\n\nTivoli\n\nThe Castelli Romani\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nUpdated by Margaret Stenhouse\n\nAll roads may lead to Rome, but today's sightseers should take a cue from imperial emperors and Renaissance popes and head fuori porta\u2014\"beyond the gates.\" In one such locale, the province known as Lazio, those privileged people built spectacular palaces and patrician villas in hopes of exchanging the overheated air of the capitol for a breath of refreshing country air. So why not follow their lead and head to the hills for a change of scenery?\n\nThe province surrounding Rome is called Lazio and it remains one of Italy's most fascinating but least known regions. Befitting the former playground of popes, princes, and prelates, it offers a spectacular harvest of sights. At Tivoli, Hadrian's Villa reveals the scale of individual imperial Roman egos\u2014an emperor's dream come true, it was the personal creation of the scholarly ruler, who, with all the resources of the known world at his command, filled his vast retreat with structures inspired by ancient monuments that had impressed him during his world travels. Moving on to Tivoli's Villa d'Este, you can see how a worldly cardinal diverted a river so that he could create a garden stunningly set with hundreds of fountains, demonstrating that the arrival of the Renaissance did not diminish the bent of the ruling classes for self-aggrandizement. To the east lies Ostia Antica, called the \"Pompeii\" of Rome; to the south, the enchanting Castelli Romani villages, dotted with great castles and lovely lakes. Obviously, if Lazio weren't so obscured by the glare and fame of nearby Rome, it would be one of Italy's star attractions.\n\nPrevious Map | Next Map | Rome Maps\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\n30 km (19 miles) southwest of Rome.\n\n#### Getting Here\n\nThe best way to get to Ostia Antica is by train. The Ostia Lido train leaves every half hour from the station adjacent to Rome's Piramide Metro B subway station, stopping off at Ostia Antica en route. The trip takes 35 minutes. By car, take the Via del Mare that leads off from Rome's EUR district. Be prepared for heavy traffic, especially at peak hours, on weekends, and in summer.\n\nPrevious Map | Rome Maps\n\n* * *\n\nA Good Walk: Ostia Antica\n\nThe Porta Romana 2, one of the city's three gates, is where you enter the Ostia Antica excavations. It opens onto the Decumanus Maximus, the main thoroughfare crossing the city from end to end. To your right, a staircase leads to a platform\u2014the remains of the upper floor of the Terme di Nettuno 3 (Baths of Neptune)\u2014from which you get a good view of the mosaic pavements showing a marine scene with Neptune and the sea goddess Amphitrite. Behind the baths are the barracks of the fire department. On the north side of the Decumanus Maximus is the beautiful Teatro 4 (Theater), built by Agrippa, remodeled by Septimius Severus in the 2nd century AD, and restored by the Rome City Council in the 20th century. In the vast Piazzale delle Corporazioni, where trade organizations had their offices, is the Tempio di Cerere 5 (Temple of Ceres)\u2014only appropriate for a town dealing in grain imports, Ceres being the goddess of agriculture. From there you can visit the Domus di Apuleio 6 (House of Apuleius), built in Pompeian style, lower to the ground and with fewer windows than was characteristic of Ostia. Next door, the Mithraeum 7 has balconies and a hall decorated with symbols of the cult of Mithras, a male-only religion imported from Persia.\n\nOn Via Semita dei Cippi, just off Via dei Molini, the Domus della Fortuna Annonaria 8 (House of Fortuna Annonaria) is the richly decorated residence of a wealthy Ostian; one of the rooms opens onto a secluded garden. On Via dei Molini you can see a molino 9 (mill), where grain was ground with stones that are still here. Along Via di Diana you come upon a thermopolium 10 (bar) with a marble counter and a fresco depicting the foods sold here.\n\nAt the end of Via dei Dipinti is the Museo Ostiense 11 (Ostia Museum), which displays sarcophagi, massive marble columns, and large statuary. (The last entry to the museum is a half hour before the Scavi closes.) The Forum 12, on the south side of Decumanus Maximus, holds the monumental remains of the city's most important temple, dedicated to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. It's also the site of other ruins of baths, a basilica (which in Roman times was a hall of justice), and smaller temples.\n\nVia Epagathiana leads toward the Tiber, where there are large horrea 14 (warehouses) erected during the 2nd century AD for the enormous amounts of grain imported into Rome during the height of the Empire. West of Via Epagathiana, the Domus di Amore e Psiche 13 (House of Cupid and Psyche), a residence, was named for a statue found here (now on display in the museum); the house's enclosed garden is decorated with marble and mosaic motifs and has the remains of a large pool. The Casa di Serapide 15 (House of Serapis) on Via della Foce is a 2nd-century multilevel dwelling; another apartment building stands a street over on Via degli Aurighi. Nearby, the Termi dei Sette Sapienti 16 (Baths of the Seven Wise Men) are named for a group of bawdy frescoes. The Porta Marina 17 leads to what used to be the seashore and the sinagoga 18, dating from the 4th century AD.\n\n* * *\n\n### Exploring\n\nFounded around the 4th century BC, Ostia served as Rome's port city for several centuries until the Tiber changed course, leaving the town high and dry. What has been excavated here is a remarkably intact Roman town in a pretty, parklike setting. Fair weather and good walking shoes are essential. On hot days, be here when the gates open or go late in the afternoon. A visit to the excavations takes two to three hours, including 20 minutes for the museum. Inside the site, there's a snack bar and a bookshop. Ostia Antica is 30 km (19 miles) southwest of Rome.\n\nCastello della Rovere.   \nBefore exploring Ostia Antica's ruins, it's worth taking a tour through the medieval borgo (town). The distinctive Castello della Rovere, easily spotted as you come off the footbridge from the train station, was built by Pope Julius II when he was the cardinal bishop of Ostia in 1483. Its triangular form is unusual for military architecture. Inside are (badly faded) frescoes by Baldassare Peruzzi and a small museum of ancient Roman and medieval pottery that was found on the site. | Piazza della Rocca | 00119 | 06\/56358013 |  www.ostiaantica.net | Free | Tues.\u2013Sat. tours at 10 and noon; Sun. tours at 10, noon, and 3.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Scavi di Ostia Antica (Ostia Antica excavations). Tidal mud and windblown sand covered the ancient port town, which lay buried until the beginning of the 20th century when it was extensively excavated. The Scavi di Ostia Antica continue to be well maintained today. A cosmopolitan population of rich businessmen, wily merchants, sailors, slaves, and their respective families once populated the city. The great warehouses were built in the 2nd century AD to handle huge shipments of grain from Africa; the insulae (forerunners of the modern apartment building) provided housing for the city's growing population. Under the combined assaults of the barbarians and the malaria-carrying mosquito, and after the Tiber changed course, the port was eventually abandoned. | Viale dei Romagnoli 717 | 00119 | 06\/56350215 |  www.ostiaantica. net | \u20ac6.50 includes Museo Ostiense | Tues.\u2013Sun. 8:30\u20131 hr before sunset.\n\n### Where to Eat\n\nCipriani.   \n$$ | ITALIAN | Tucked away in the little medieval town under the shadow of the castle, this cozy trattoria is decorated with reproductions of fresco fragments from a Roman palace. The kitchen offers a varied menu of Roman specialties and seasonal fare. Owner Fabrizio Cipriani speaks English and will be happy to guide you in your choice of dishes\u2014and wine from his comprehensive list. | Average cost: \u20ac30 | Via del Forno 11 | 00119 | 06\/56352956 |  www.ristorantecipriani.com | Closed Wed.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nGetting Oriented\n\nIn ancient times, just about anybody who was anybody had a villa in Tivoli, including Crassius, Trajan, Hadrian, Horace, and Catullus. Tivoli fell into obscurity in the medieval era until the Renaissance, when popes and cardinals came back to the town and built villas showy enough to rival those of their extravagant predecessors. Nowadays Tivoli is small but vibrant, with winding streets and views over the surrounding countryside, including the deep Aniene river gorge, which runs right through the center of town, and comes replete with a romantically sited bridge, cascading waterfalls, and two jewels of ancient Roman architecture that crown its cliffs-the round Temple of Vesta and the ruins of the rectangular Sanctuary of the Sibyl, probably built earlier. These can be picturesquely viewed across the gorge from the Villa Gregoriana park, named for Pope Gregory XVI, who saved Tivoli from chronic river damage by diverting the river through a tunnel, weakening its flow. An unexpected (but not unappreciated) side effect was the creation of the Grande Cascata (Grand Cascade), which shoots a huge jet of water into the valley below. The Villa Gregoriana is at Largo Sant'Angelo (from the Largo Garibaldi bus stop, follow Via Pacifici\u2014it changes name six times\u2014and veer left on Via Roma to the Largo). There's a small admission charge to the park, which affords a sweaty, steep hike down to the river, so you may prefer to repair to the Antico Ristorante Sibilla, set right by the Temple of Vesta. From its dining terrace, you can drink in one of the most memorably romantic landscape views in Italy, one especially prized by 19th-century painters\n\n##  Getting Oriented\n\n36 km (22 miles) northeast of Rome.\n\n#### Getting Here\n\nUnless you have nerves of steel, it's best not to drive to Tivoli. Hundreds of industries line the Via Tiburtina from Rome and bottleneck traffic is nearly constant. You can avoid some, but not all, of the congestion by taking the Roma\u2013L'Aquila toll road. Luckily, there's abundant public transport. Buses leave every 15 minutes from the Ponte Mammolo stop on the Metro A line. The ride takes an hour. Regional Trenitalia trains connect from both Termini and Tiburtina stations and will have you there in under an hour. Villa d'Este is in the town center, and a frequent bus service from Tivoli's main square goes to Hadrian's Villa.\n\n#### Visitor Information\n\nPIT (Punto Informativo Turistico) (Tivoli tourist office). | Piazzale Nazioni Unite | 00019 | 0774\/313536 |  www.comune.tivoli.rm.it | Tues.\u2013Sun. 10\u20131 and 4\u20136.\n\n### Exploring Tivoli\n\nFodor's Choice |  Villa Adriana (Hadrian's Villa). The astonishingly grand 2nd-century Villa Adriana, 6 km (4 miles) south of Tivoli, was an emperor's theme park: an exclusive retreat below the ancient settlement of Tibur where the marvels of the classical world were reproduced for a ruler's pleasure. Hadrian, who succeeded Trajan as emperor in AD 117, was a man of genius and intellectual curiosity, fascinated by the accomplishments of the Hellenistic world. From AD 125 to 134, architects, laborers, and artists worked on the villa, periodically spurred on by the emperor himself when he returned from another voyage full of ideas for even more daring constructions (he also gets credit for Rome's Pantheon). After his death in AD 138 the fortunes of his villa declined as it was sacked by barbarians and Romans alike. Many of his statues and decorations ended up in the Vatican Museums, but the expansive ruins are nonetheless compelling. It's not the single elements but the delightful effect of the whole that makes Hadrian's Villa so great. Oleanders, pines, and cypresses growing among the ruins heighten the visual impact. To help you get your bearings, maps are issued free with the audio guides (\u20ac5). A visit here takes about two hours, more if you like to savor antiquity slowly. In summer visit early to take advantage of cool mornings. | Bivio di Villa Adriana off Via Tiburtina , 6 km (4 mi) southwest of Tivoli | 00019 | 0774\/382733 reservations | \u20ac8 | Daily 9\u20131 hr before sunset.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Villa d'Este.   \nCreated by Cardinal Ippolito d'Este in the 16th century, this world-famous villa, set in the center of Tivoli, was the most amazing pleasure garden of its day: it still stuns visitors with its beauty and fabulous fountains. Este (1509\u201372), a devotee of the Renaissance celebration of human ingenuity over nature, was inspired by the excavation of Villa Adriana. He paid architect Pirro Ligorrio an astronomical sum to create a mythical garden with water as its artistic centerpiece. To console himself for his seesawing fortunes in the political intrigues of his time (he happened to be cousin to Pope Alexander VI), he had his builders tear down part of a Franciscan monastery to clear the site, then divert the Aniene River to water the garden and feed the fountains\u2014and what fountains: big, small, noisy, quiet, rushing, running, and combining to create a late-Renaissance, proto\u2013Busby Berkeley masterpiece in which sunlight, shade, water, gardens, and carved stone create an unforgettable experience. To this day, several hundred fountains cascade, shoot skyward, imitate birdsongs, and simulate rain. The musical Fontana dell'Organo has been restored to working order: the organ plays a watery tune every two hours from 10:30 to 6:30 (until 2:30 in winter). Romantics will love the night tour of the gardens and floodlit fountains, available on Friday and Saturday from July until September. Allow at least an hour for the visit, and bear in mind that there are a lot of stairs to climb. There's also a caf\u00e9 on the upper terrace leading from the palace entrance, where you can sit and admire the view. | Piazza Trento 1 | 00019 | 0774\/312070 |  www.villadestetivoli.info | \u20ac8 | Tues.\u2013Sun. 8:30\u20131 hr before sunset.\n\n### Where to Eat and Stay in Tivoli\n\nFodor's Choice |  Antico Ristorante Sibilla.   \n$$$ | ITALIAN | This famed restaurant should be included among the most beautiful sights of Tivoli. Built in 1730 beside the circular Roman Temple of Vesta and the Sanctuary of the Sybil, the terrace garden has a spectacular view over the deep gorge of the Aniene River, with the thundering waters of the waterfall in the background. Marble plaques on the walls list the royals who have come here to dine over two centuries. The food, wine, and service standards are all high, and in recent years there's been more and more emphasis placed on seasonal produce and local dishes. Be sure to sample the specialty of the house\u2014a lavish choice of antipasti served on individual triple-tiered trays that resemble old-fashioned cake stands. Dishes for the first course may include pappardelle made with spelt and dressed with garlic, olive oil and tiny datterini tomatoes. For the second course, local lamb; sucking pig; and a salad with ricotta, herbs, honey, and prunes may all make an appearance. The desserts are equally strong contenders for your attention. | Average cost: \u20ac50 | Via della Sibilla 50 | 00019 | 0774\/335281 |  www.ristorantesibilla.com.\n\nAdriano.   \n$ | B&B\/INN | At the entrance to Hadrian's Villa, this small inn\u2014actually a converted 19th-century mansion\u2014is a modest but comfortable place to overnight and a handy spot to have lunch before or after your trip around the ruins of Hadrian's Villa. The \u00e0 la carte restaurant here offers delicacies such as risotto ai fiori di zucchine (with zucchini flowers) or grilled porcini mushrooms in season, while the coffee shop offers a set lunch menu ($). There's a garden for outdoor dining in summer. Guest rooms tend to be small, with an overabundance of chintz drapes, but the view from the windows over the ruins of the Emperor Hadrian's palatial residence is ample compensation. Pros: wonderful location; peaceful garden; attentive service. Cons: busloads of tourists disembark under the windows; restaurant can be crowded. | Rooms from: \u20ac120 | Largo Yourcenar 2 , Via di Villa Adriana 194 | 00019 | 0774\/382235 |  www.hoteladriano.it | 10 rooms | Closed Mon. and from Nov\u2013mid-Feb. | Breakfast.\n\nHotel Torre Sant'Angelo.   \n$ | HOTEL | Only a hotel since 1994, this place began life as a monastery, which, in turn, became the summer residence of the Massimo princes in 1700\u2014but whether noble or today's tourist, all guests at this deluxe hotel 1 km (\u00bd mile) have always enjoyed the magnificent view of Tivoli's \"old town,\" the Aniene Falls, and the gloriously picturesque Temple of the Sybil from this site 1 km (\u00bd mile) outside town. Guest rooms now feature a Jacuzzi, minibar, air-conditioning, safe, and satellite TV. The elegant restaurant serves Italian and international cuisine. In the garden there's a swimming pool, and there's a golf course nearby. Pros: 21st-century comfort in a historic mansion house; highly competitive rates. Cons: isolated location two miles out of town. | Rooms from: \u20ac120 | Via Quintilio Varo | 00019 | 0774\/332533 |  www.hoteltorresangelo.it | 25 roTivoli | Frascati | Castelgandolfo | Ariccia | Nemi\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nFrascati | Castelgandolfo | Ariccia | Nemi\n\nThe \"castelli\" aren't really castles, as their name would seem to imply. They're little towns that are scattered on the slopes of the Alban Hills near Rome. And the Alban Hills aren't really hills, but extinct volcanoes. There were castles here in the Middle Ages, however, when each of these towns, fiefs of rival Roman lords, had its own fortress to defend it. Some centuries later, the area became given over to villas and retreats, notably the pope's summer residence at Castelgandolfo, and the 17th- and 18th-century villas that transformed Frascati into the Beverly Hills of Rome. Arrayed around the rim of an extinct volcano that encloses two crater lakes, the string of picturesque towns of the Castelli Romani are today surrounded by vineyards, olive groves, and chestnut woods\u2014no wonder overheated Romans have always loved to escape here.\n\nEver since Roman times, the Castelli towns have been renowned for their wine. In the narrow, medieval alleyways of the oldest parts, you can still find old-fashioned hostelries where the locals sit on wooden benches, quaffing the golden nectar straight from the barrel. Following the mapped-out Castelli Wine Route (www.stradadeivinideicastelliromani.it) around the numerous vineyards and wine cellars is a more sophisticated alternative. Exclusive local gastronomic specialties include the bread of Genzano, baked in traditional wood-fire ovens, the porchetta (roast suckling pig) of Ariccia, and the pupi biscuits of Frascati, shaped like women or mermaids with three or more breasts (an allusion to ancient fertility goddesses). Each town has its own feasts and saints' days, celebrated with costumed processions and colorful events. Some are quite spectacular, like Marino's annual Wine Festival in October, where the town's fountains flow with wine, or the Flower Festival of Genzano in June, when an entire street is carpeted with millions of flower petals, arranged in elaborate patterns.\n\n##  Frascati\n\n20 km (12 miles) south of Rome.\n\n#### Getting Here\n\nAn hourly train service along a single-track line through vineyards and olive groves takes you to Frascati from Termini station. The trip takes 45 minutes. By car, take the Via Tuscolano, which branches off the Appia Nuova road just after St. John Lateran in Rome, and drive straight up.\n\n#### Visitor Information\n\nFrascati Point (tourism office).   \n| Piazza G. Marconi 5 | 00044 | 06\/94015378 | frascatipoint@libero.it.\n\n### Exploring Frascati\n\nIt's worth taking a stroll through Frascati's lively old center. Via Battisti, leading from the Belvedere, takes you into Piazza San Pietro with its imposing gray-and-white cathedral. Inside is the cenotaph of Prince Charles Edward, last of the Scottish Stuart dynasty, who tried unsuccessfully to regain the British Crown, and died an exile in Rome in 1788. A little arcade beside the monumental fountain at the back of the piazza leads into Market Square, where the smell of fresh baking will entice you into the Purificato family bakery to see the traditional pupi biscuits, modeled on old pagan fertility symbols.\n\nTake your pick from the caf\u00e9s and trattorias fronting the central Piazzale Marconi, or do as the locals do\u2014buy fruit from the market gallery at Piazza del Mercato, then get a huge slice of porchetta from one of the stalls, a hunk of casareccio bread, and a few ciambelline frascatane (ring-shaped cookies made with wine), and take your picnic to any one of the numerous cantine (homey wine bars), and settle in for some sips of tasty, inexpensive vino.\n\nGrottaferrata.   \nGrottaferrata is only a couple of miles from Frascati, but it's quite different in character. The original village has expanded enormously to accommodate a vast army of commuters, and traffic can be very congested at peak hours. In compensation, the town has excellent restaurants and an interesting weekly market. Its main attraction, however, is the Abbey of San Nilo, a walled citadel founded by the 90-year-old St. Nilo, who brought his group of Basilian monks here in 1004. The order is unique in that it is Roman Catholic but observes Greek Orthodox rites.\n\nThe fortified abbey, considered a masterpiece of martial architecture, was restructured in the 15th century by Antonio da Sangallo for the future Pope Julius II. The abbey church, inside the second courtyard, is a jewel of nearly oriental opulence, with glittering Byzantine mosaics and a revered icon set into a marble tabernacle designed by Bernini. The Farnese chapel, leading from the right nave, contains a series of frescoes by Domenichino.\n\nIf you make arrangements in advance you can visit the library, which is one of the oldest in Italy. The abbey also has a famous laboratory for the restoration of antique books and manuscripts, where Leonardo's Atlantic Code was restored in 1962 and more than a thousand precious volumes were saved after the disastrous Florence flood in 1966. | Corso del Popolo 128 | 00046 | 06\/9459309 | www.abbaziagreca.it | Free | 7:30\u201312:30 and 4\u20136.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Villa Aldobrandini.   \nFrascati was a retreat of prelates and princes, who built magnificent villas on the sun-drenched slopes overlooking the Roman plain. The most spectacular of these is Villa Aldobrandini, which dominates Frascati's main square from the top of its steeply sloped park.\n\nBuilt in the late 16th century and adorned with frescoes by the Zuccari brothers and the Cavalier d'Arpino, the hulking villa is still owned by the Princes Aldobrandini. However, its park, which is open to the public, is a marvel of baroque fountains and majestic box-shaded avenues. There you can see the magnificent \"water theater\" that Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, Pope Clement VIII's favorite nephew, built to impress his guests, thinking nothing of diverting the water supply that served the entire area in order to make his fountains play. The gigantic central figure of Atlas holding up the world is believed to represent the pope. You can also see another water theater in the grounds of nearby Villa Torlonia, which is now a public park. | Via Cardinale Massaia | 00044 | 06\/9421434 | Free | Garden: weekdays 10\u20135.\n\n### Where to Eat and Stay in Frascati\n\nAl Fico Vecchio.   \n$$$ | ITALIAN | This historic coaching inn, dating to the 16th century, is on an old Roman road a couple of miles outside Frascati. It has a charming garden shaded by the old fig tree that gave the place its name. The dining room has been tastefully renovated, preserving many of the characteristic antique features. The menu offers a wide choice of local dishes, such as gnocchi with cheese and truffles. | Average cost: \u20ac50 | Via Anagnini 257 | 00044 | 06\/9459261 | www.alfico.it.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Park Hotel Villa Grazioli.   \n$$ | HOTEL | One of the region's most famous residences, this elegant patrician villa halfway between Frascati and Grottaferrata is now a first-class hotel. Modeled after Rome's Villa Farnesina, the 1580 house was owned over the centuries by the regal Borghese and Odelscalchi families, and was nearly destroyed by bombs in World War II. The vast reception rooms on the main floor\u2014covered with frescoes of landscapes, mythological figures, and garden scenes by eminent 17th-century painters\u2014survived mostly unscathed. The showpiece remains the South Gallery, frescoed by Giovanni Paolo Pannini in a swirl of trompe-l'oeil scenes, a masterpiece of Baroque decorative art. The drama ends when you get to the guest rooms, which are standard-issue, with white walls and traditional furniture; rooms found in the adjacent rustic-style lodge have lovely wood-beam ceilings. The cherry on top is the luxurious Acquaviva restaurant, where you can enjoy half- or full-board plans. Pros: wonderful views of the countryside; elegant atmosphere; professional staff. Cons: difficult to find. | Rooms from: \u20ac150 | Via Umberto Pavoni 19, | Grottaferrata | 00046 | 06\/9454001 | www.villagrazioli.com | 56 rooms, 2 suites | Breakfast.\n\n##  Castelgandolfo\n\n8 km (5 miles) southwest of Frascati, 25 km (15 miles) south of Rome.\n\n#### Getting Here\n\nThere's an hourly train service for Castelgandolfo from Termini station (Rome-Albano line). Otherwise, buses leave frequently from the Anagnina terminal of the Metro A subway. The trip takes about 30 minutes. By car, take the Appian Way from San Giovanni in Rome and follow it straight to Albano, where you branch off for Castelgandolfo (about an hour, depending on traffic).\n\n### Exploring Castelgandolfo\n\nThis little town is well known as the pope's summer retreat. It was the Barberini Pope Urban VIII who first headed here, eager to escape the malarial miasmas that afflicted summertime Rome; before long, the city's princely families also set up country estates around here.\n\nThe 17th-century Villa Pontificia has a superb position overlooking Lake Albano and is set in one of the most gorgeous gardens in Italy; unfortunately, neither the house nor the park is open to the public (although crowds are admitted into the inner courtyard for papal audiences). On the little square in front of the palace there's a fountain by Bernini, who also designed the nearby Church of San Tommaso da Villanova, which has works by Pietro da Cortona.\n\nThe village has a number of interesting craft workshops and food purveyors, in addition to the souvenir shops on the square. On the horizon, the silver astronomical dome belonging to the Specola Vaticana observatory\u2014one of the first in Europe\u2014where the scientific Pope Gregory XIII indulged his interest in stargazing, is visible for miles around.\n\nLakeside Lido.   \nLined with restaurants, ice-cream parlors, and caf\u00e9s, the waterfront stretch of Castelgandolfo is a favorite area for Roman families to relax. No motorized craft are allowed on the lake, but you can rent paddleboats and kayaks. The waters are full of seafowl, such as swans and herons, and nature trails are mapped out along both ends of the shore. All along the central part there are bathing establishments where you can rent deck chairs; you might also want to stop to eat a plate of freshly prepared pasta or a gigantic Roman sandwich at one of the little snack bars under the oak and alder trees. There's also a small, permanent fairground for children.\n\n### Where to Eat in Castelgandolfo\n\nAntico Ristorante Pagnanelli.   \n$$$$ | ITALIAN | One of most refined restaurants in the Castelli Romani, this has been in the same family since 1882. The present generation\u2014Aurelio Pagnanelli, his Australian wife, Jane, and their four sons\u2014have lovingly restored this old railway inn perched high above Lake Albano. The dining-room windows open onto a breathtaking view across the lake to the conical peak of Monte Cavo. In winter a log fire blazes in a corner; in summer you can dine on the flower-filled terrace. Many of the dishes are prepared with produce from the family's own farm. The wine cellar, carved out of the local tufa rock, boasts more than 3,000 labels. | Average cost: \u20ac70 | Via Gramsci 4 | 00040 | 06\/9361740 | www.pagnanelli.it.\n\n##  Ariccia\n\n8 km (5 miles) southwest of Castelgandolfo, 26 km (17 miles) south of Rome.\n\n#### Getting Here\n\nFor Ariccia, take the COTRAL bus from the Anagnina terminal of the Metro A underground line. All buses on the Albano-Genzano-Velletri line go through Ariccia. If you take a train to Albano, you can proceed by bus to Ariccia or go on foot (it's just under 3 km [2 miles]). If you are driving, follow the Appian road to Albano and carry on to Ariccia.\n\n### Exploring Ariccia\n\nAriccia is a gem of baroque town planning. When millionaire banker Agostino Chigi became Pope Alexander VII, he commissioned Gian Lorenzo Bernini to redesign his country estate to make it worthy of his new station. Bernini consequently restructured not only the existing 16th-century palace, but also the town gates, the main square with its loggias and graceful twin fountains, and the round church of Santa Maria dell'Assunzione (the dome is said to be modeled on the Pantheon). The rest of the village coiled around the apse of the church down into the valley below.\n\nStrangely, Ariccia's splendid heritage has been largely forgotten in the 20th century, and yet it was once one of the highlights of every artist's and writer's Grand Tour. Corot, Ibsen, Turner, Longfellow, and Hans Christian Andersen all came to stay here.\n\nFodor's Choice |  Palazzo Chigi.   \nThis is a true rarity\u2014a baroque residence whose original furniture, paintings, drapes, and decorations are still mostly intact. Italian film director Lucchino Visconti used the villa for most of the interior scenes in his 1963 film The Leopard. The rooms contain intricately carved pieces of 17th-century furniture, as well as textiles and costumes from the 16th to the 20th century. See the Room of Beauties, lined with paintings of the loveliest ladies of the day, and the Nuns' Room, with portraits of 10 Chigi sisters, all of whom took the veil. The park stretching behind the palace is a wild wood, the last remnant of the ancient Latium forest, where herds of deer still graze under the trees. Book ahead for tours in English. | Piazza di Corte 14 | 00040 | 06\/9330053 | www.palazzochigiariccia.it | \u20ac7 | Tours: Apr.\u2013Sept., Tues.\u2013Fri. at 11, 4, and 5:30; weekends at 11:30, 12:30, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7; Oct.\u2013Mar., Tues.\u2013Fri. at 11, 4, and 5:30; weekends at 11:30, 12:30, 3, 4, 5, and 6.\n\n### Where to Eat in Ariccia\n\nA visit to Ariccia is not complete without tasting the local gastronomic specialty: porchetta, a delicious roasted whole pig stuffed with herbs. The shops on the Piazza di Corte will make up a sandwich for you, or you can do what the Romans do: take a seat at one of the fraschette wine cellars that serve cheese, cold cuts, pickles, olives, and sometimes a plate of pasta. Conditions are rather rough and ready\u2014you sit on a wooden bench at a trestle table covered with simple white paper\u2014but there's no better place to make friends and maybe join in a sing-along.\n\nL'Aricciarola.   \n$ | ITALIAN | This is a great place for people-watching while you enjoy the local porchetta (whole roast pig stuffed with herbs), washed down with a carafe of local Castelli wine. It's tucked in a corner under the Galloro bridge. | Average cost: \u20ac25 | Via Borgo S. Rocco 9 | 00040 | 06\/9334103 | www.osterialaricciarola.it | No credit cards | Closed Mon.\n\nLa Locanda del Brigante Gasparone.   \n$ | ITALIAN | The first of the string of informal lodgings you find clustered under the Galloro bridge, on the right-hand side of Palazzo Chigi, this locanda (inn) has seats either inside or outside under an awning\u2014a fine place to enjoy simple, robust pasta dishes. | Average cost: \u20ac25 | Via Borgo San Rocco 7 | 00040 | 06\/9333100 | www.fraschettabrigantegasperone.com | No credit cards | No lunch weekdays.\n\n##  Nemi\n\n8 km (5 miles) west of Ariccia, 34 km (21 miles) south of Rome.\n\n#### Getting Here\n\nNemi is a bit difficult to get to unless you come by car. Buses from the Anagnina Metro A station go to the town of Genzano, where a local bus travels to Nemi every two hours. If the times aren't convenient, you can take a taxi or walk the 5 km (3 miles) around Lake Nemi. By car, take the panoramic route known as the Via dei Laghi (Road of the Lakes). Follow the Appia Nuova from St. John Lateran and branch off on the well-signposted route after Ciampino airport. Follow the Via dei Laghi toward Velletri until you see signs for Nemi.\n\n### Exploring Nemi\n\nNemi is the smallest and prettiest village of the Castelli Romani. Perched on a spur of rock 600 feet above the small crater lake of the same name, it has an eagle's-nest view over the rolling Roman countryside as far as the coast some 18 km (11 miles) away. The one main street, Corso Vittorio Emanuele, takes you to the (now privately owned) baronial Castello Ruspoli, with its 11th-century watchtower, and the quaint little Piazza Umberto 1, lined with outdoor caf\u00e9s serving the tiny wood strawberries harvested from the crater bowl.\n\nIf you continue on through the arch that joins the castle to the former stables, you come to the entrance of the dramatically landscaped public gardens, which curve steeply down to the panoramic belvedere terrace. If you enjoy walking, you can follow the road past the garden entrance and go all the way down to the bottom of the crater.\n\nMuseo delle Navi Romani (Roman Ship Museum). Nemi may be small, but it has a long and fascinating history. In ancient Roman times it was an important sanctuary dedicated to the goddess Diana: it drew thousands of pilgrims from all over the Roman Empire. In the 1930s the Italian government drained the lake in order to recover two magnificent ceremonial ships, loaded with sculptures, bronzes, and art treasures that had been submerged for 2,000 years.\n\nUnfortunately, the ships were burned during World War II. The Museo delle Navi Romani, on the lakeshore, was built to house them. Inside are scale models and photographs of the complex recovery operation, as well as some finds from the sanctuary and the area nearby. | Via del Tempio di Diana 9 | 00040 | 06\/9398040 | \u20ac3 | Daily 9\u20136:30.\n\n### Where to Eat in Nemi\n\nSpecchio di Diana.   \n$$ | ITALIAN | Halfway down the main street is the town's most historic inn\u2014Byron reputedly stayed here when visiting the area. A wine bar and caf\u00e9 are on street level, while the restaurant proper on the second floor offers marvelous views, especially at sunset. Pizzas are popular, but don't neglect Nemi's regional specialties: fettucine al sugo di lepre (fettucine with hare sauce), roasted porcini mushrooms, and the little wood strawberries with whipped cream. | Average cost: \u20ac40 | Corso Vittorio Emanuele 13 | 00040 | 06\/9368805 | www.specchiodidiana.it | Closed Mon.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\n# Italian Vocabulary\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Main Table of Contents\n\nBasics | Numbers | Useful Phrases | Dining Out\n\nENGLISH | ITALIAN | PRONOUNCIATION\n\n---|---|---\n\n* * *\n\n## Basics\n\nYes\/no | S\u00ed\/no | see\/no\n\n---|---|---\n\nPlease | Per favore | pear fa-vo-ray\n\nYes, please | S\u00ed grazie | see grah-tsee-ay\n\nThank you | Grazie | grah-tsee-ay\n\nYou're welcome | Prego | pray-go\n\nExcuse me, sorry | Scusi | skoo-zee\n\nSorry! | Mi dispiace! | mee dis-spee-ah-chay\n\nGood morning\/afternoon | Buongiorno | bwohn-jor-no\n\nGood evening | Buona sera | bwoh-na say-ra\n\nGood-bye | Arrivederci | a-ree-vah-dare-chee\n\nMr. (Sir) | Signore | see-nyo-ray\n\nMrs. (Ma'am) | Signora | see-nyo-ra\n\nMiss | Signorina | see-nyo-ree-na\n\nPleased to meet you | Piacere | pee-ah-chair-ray\n\nHow are you? | Come sta? | ko-may stah\n\nVery well, thanks | Bene, grazie | ben-ay grah-tsee-ay\n\nHello (phone) | Pronto? | proan-to\n\n## Numbers\n\none | uno | oo-no\n\n---|---|---\n\ntwo | due | doo-ay\n\nthree | tre | tray\n\nfour | quattro | kwah-tro\n\nfive | cinque | cheen-kway\n\nsix | sei | say\n\nseven | sette | set-ay\n\neight | otto | oh-to\n\nnine | nove | no-vay\n\nten | dieci | dee-eh-chee\n\neleven | undici | oon-dee-chee\n\ntwelve | dodici | doe-dee-cee\n\nthirteen | tredici | tray-dee-chee\n\nfourteen | quattordici | kwa-tore-dee-chee\n\nfifteen | quindici | kwin-dee-chee\n\nsixteen | sedici | say-dee-chee\n\nseventeen | diciassete | dee-cha-set-ay\n\neighteen | diciotto | dee-cho-to\n\nnineteen | diciannove | dee-cha-no-vay\n\ntwenty | venti | vain-tee\n\ntwenty-one | ventuno | vain-too-no\n\ntwenty-two | ventidue | vain-tee-doo-ay\n\nthirty | trenta | train-ta\n\nforty | quaranta | kwa-rahn-ta\n\nfifty | cinquanta | cheen-kwahn-ta\n\nsixty | sessanta | seh-sahn-ta\n\nseventy | settanta | seh-tahn-ta\n\neighty | ottanta | o-tahn-ta\n\nninety | novanta | no-vahn-ta\n\none hundred | cento | chen-to\n\none thousand | mille | mee-lay\n\nten thousand | diecimila | dee-eh-chee-mee-la\n\n## Useful Phrases\n\nDo you speak English? | Parla inglese? | par-la een-glay-zay\n\n---|---|---\n\nI don't speak Italian | Non parlo italiano | non par-lo ee-tal-yah-no\n\nI don't understand | Non capisco | non ka-peess-ko\n\nCan you please repeat? | Pu\u00f2 ripetere? | pwo ree-pet-ay-ray\n\nSlowly! | Lentamente! | len-ta-men-tay\n\nI don't know | Non lo so | non lo so\n\nI'm American | Sono americano(a) | so-no a-may-ree-kah-no(a)\n\nI'm British | Sono inglese | so-no een-glay-zay\n\nWhat's your name? | Come si chiama? | ko-may see kee-ah-ma\n\nMy name is . . . | Mi chiamo . . . | mee kee-ah-mo\n\nWhat time is it? | Che ore sono? | kay o-ray so-no\n\nHow? | Come? | ko-may\n\nWhen? | Quando? | kwan-doe\n\nYesterday\/today\/tomorrow | Ieri\/oggi\/domani | yer-ee\/o-jee\/do-mah-nee\n\nThis morning | Stamattina  | sta-ma-tee-na\n\nThis afternoon | Oggi pomeriggio | o-jee po-mer-ee-jo\n\nTonight | Stasera | sta-ser-a\n\nWhat? | Che cosa? | kay ko-za\n\nWhat is it? | Chee cos'\u00e9? | kay ko-zay\n\nWhy? | Perch\u00e9? | pear-kay\n\nWho? | Chi? | kee\n\nWhere is . . . | Dov'\u00e8 . . . | doe-veh\n\nthe bus stop? | la fermata dell'autobus? | la fer-mah-tadel ow-toe-booss\n\nthe train station? | la stazione? | la sta-tsee-oh-nay\n\nthe subway | la metropolitana? | la may-tro-po-lee-tah-na\n\nthe terminal? | il terminale? | eel ter-mee-nah-lay\n\nthe post office? | l'ufficio postale? | loo-fee-cho po-stah-lay\n\nthe bank? | la banca? | la bahn-ka\n\nthe . . . hotel? | l'hotel . . .? | lo-tel\n\nthe store? | il negozio? | eel nay-go-tsee-o\n\nthe cashier? | la cassa? | la kah-sa\n\nthe . . . museum? | il museo . . .? | eel moo-zay-o\n\nthe hospital? | l'ospedale? | lo-spay-dah-lay\n\nthe first-aid station? | il pronto soccorso? | Eel pron-to so-kor-so\n\nthe elevator? | l'ascensore? | la-shen-so-ray\n\na telephone? | un telefono? | oon tay-lay-fo-no\n\nthe restrooms? | il bagno? | eel bahn-yo\n\nHere\/there | Qui\/l\u00e0 | kwee\/la\n\nLeft\/right | A sinistra\/a destra | a see-neess-tra\/a des-tra\n\nStraight ahead | Avanti dritto | a-vahn-tee dree-to\n\nIs it near\/far? | \u00c8 vicino\/lontano? | ay vee-chee-no\/lon-tah-no\n\nI'd like . . .  | Vorrei . . .  | vo-ray\n\na room | una camera | oo-na kah-may-ra\n\nthe key | la chiave | la kee-ah-vay\n\na newspaper | un giornale | oon jor-nah-lay\n\na stamp | un francobollo | oon frahn-ko-bo-lo\n\nI'd like to buy . . .  | Vorrei comprare . . .  | vo-ray kom-prah-ray\n\nHow much is it? | Quanto costa? | kwahn-toe coast-a\n\nIt's expensive\/cheap | \u00c8 caro\/economico | ay car-o\/ay-ko-no-mee-ko\n\nA little\/a lot | Poco\/tanto | po-ko\/tahn-to\n\nMore\/less | Pi\u00f9\/meno | pee-oo\/may-no\n\nEnough\/too (much) | Abbastanza\/troppo | a-bas-tahn-sa\/tro-po\n\nI am sick | Sto male | sto mah-lay\n\nCall a doctor | Chiama un dottore | kee-ah-mah oon doe-toe-ray\n\nHelp! | Aiuto! | a-yoo-toe\n\nStop! | Alt! | ahlt\n\nFire! | Al fuoco! | ahl fwo-ko\n\nCaution\/Look out! | Attenzione! | a-ten-syon-ay\n\n## Dining Out\n\nA bottle of . . . | Una bottiglia di . . . | oo-na bo-tee-lee-ahdee\n\n---|---|---\n\nA cup of . . . | Una tazza di . . . | oo-na tah-tsa dee\n\nA glass of . . . | Un bicchiere di . . . | oon bee-key-air-ay dee\n\nBill\/check | Il conto | eel cone-toe\n\nBread | Il pane | eel pah-nay\n\nBreakfast | La prima colazione | la pree-ma ko-la-tsee-oh-nay\n\nCocktail\/aperitif | L'aperitivo | la-pay-ree-tee-vo\n\nDinner | La cena | la chen-a\n\nFixed-price menu | Men\u00f9 a prezzo fisso | may-noo a pret-so fee-so\n\nFork | La forchetta | la for-ket-a\n\nI am diabetic | Ho il diabete | o eel dee-a-bay-tay\n\nI am vegetarian | Sono vegetariano\/a | so-no vay-jay-ta-ree-ah-no\/a\n\nI'd like . . . | Vorrei . . . | vo-ray\n\nI'd like to order | Vorrei ordinare | vo-ray or-dee-nah-ray\n\nIs service included? | Il servizio \u00e8 incluso? | eel ser-vee-tzee-o ay een-kloo-zo\n\nIt's good\/bad | \u00c8 buono\/cattivo | ay bwo-no\/ka-tee-vo\n\nIt's hot\/cold | \u00c8 caldo\/freddo | ay kahl-doe\/fred-o\n\nKnife | Il coltello | eel kol-tel-o\n\nLunch | Il pranzo | eel prahnt-so\n\nMenu | Il men\u00f9 | eel may-noo\n\nNapkin | Il tovagliolo | eel toe-va-lee-oh-lo\n\nPlease give me . . . | Mi dia . . . | mee dee-a\n\nSalt | Il sale | eel sah-lay\n\nSpoon | Il cucchiaio | eel koo-kee-ah-yo\n\nSugar | Lo zucchero | lo tsoo-ker-o\n\nWaiter\/waitress | Cameriere\/cameriera | ka-mare-yer-ay\/ka-mare-yer-a\n\nWine list | La lista dei vini | la lee-sta day-ee vee-nee\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Main Table of Contents\n\n_Main Table of Contents _\n\nGetting Here and Around\n\nEssentials\n\nPrevious Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nAir Travel | Bus Travel | Car Travel | Moped Travel | Public Transportation: Bus, Tram, and Metropolitana | Taxi Travel | Train Travel\n\nAlmost all the main attractions in the centro storico (historic center) can be covered on foot, or by bus or Metro (subway).\n\nThe first thing you should know, especially when moving around the historic city center, is that most street names are posted on ceramiclike plaques on the side of buildings, which can be hard to see. Addresses are fairly straightforward: the street is followed by the street number. It's worth noting that the streets of Rome, even in the newer outskirts, are numbered erratically. Numbers are usually even on one side of the street and odd on the other, but sometimes numbers are in ascending consecutive order on one side of the street and descending order on the other side.\n\n##  Air Travel\n\nFlying time to Rome is 7.5\u20138.5 hours from New York, 10\u201311 hours from Chicago, 12\u201313 hours from Los Angeles, and 2.5 hours from London.\n\nAlthough the trend on international flights is to drop reconfirmation requirements, many airlines still ask you to reconfirm each leg of your international itinerary. Failure to do so may result in your reservations being canceled. When flying out of Italian airports, always check with the airport or tourist agency about upcoming strikes, which are frequent in Italy and often affect air travel.\n\nAirlines and Airports\n\nAirline and Airport Links.com. Airline and Airport Links.com has links to many of the world's airlines and airports. | www.airlineandairportlinks.com.\n\nAirline Security Issues\n\nTransportation Security Administration. Transportation Security Administration has answers for almost every question that might come up. | 866\/289\u20139673 |  TSA-ContactCenter@dhs.gov | www.tsa.gov.\n\n### Airports\n\nThe principal airport for flights to Rome is Leonardo da Vinci Airport, commonly known by the name of its location, Fiumicino (FCO). It's 30 km (19 miles) southwest of the city, on the coast. It has been enlarged and equipped with computerized baggage handling and has a direct train link with downtown Rome. Rome's other airport is Ciampino (CIA), on Via Appia Nuova, 15 km (9 miles) south of downtown. Ciampino is a civil and military airport now used by most low-cost airlines that fly both nationally and internationally. There are no trains linking the Ciampino airport to downtown Rome but there are a number of shuttle buses running daily.\n\nAirport Information\n\nCiampino. 06\/65951 | www.adr.it.\n\nLeonardo da Vinci Airport\/Fiumicino. 06\/65951 | www.adr.it.\n\n#### Transfers Between Fiumicino and Downtown\n\nWhen approaching by car, follow the signs for Rome and the GRA (the ring road that circles Rome). The direction you take on the GRA depends on where your hotel is located. If it's in the Via Veneto area, for instance, you would take the GRA in the direction of the Via Aurelia, turn off the GRA onto the Via Aurelia, and follow it into Rome. Get a map and directions from the car-rental desk at the airport.\n\nA new law implemented by the Comune di Roma requires all Rome taxi drivers to charge a fixed fare of \u20ac40, including luggage handling, if your destination is within the Aurelian walls (this covers the centro storico, most of Trastevere, most of the Vatican area, and parts of San Giovanni). To make sure your hotel falls within the Aurelian walls, ask when you book your room. If your hotel is outside of the walls, the cab ride will run you about \u20ac60 plus supplementi (extra charges) for luggage. (Of course, this also depends on traffic.) The ride from the airport to the city center takes about 30\u201345 minutes. Private limousines can be booked at booths in the Arrivals hall; they charge a little more than taxis but can carry more passengers. The Comune di Roma now has a representative in place outside the International Arrivals hall (Terminal 2), where the taxi stand is located, to help assist tourists get into a taxi cab safely (hopefully without getting ripped off). Use only licensed white or older yellow taxis. When in doubt, always ask for a receipt and write the cab company and taxi's license number down (it's written on a metal plate on the inside of the passenger door). Avoid drivers who may approach you in the Arrivals hall; they charge exorbitant, unmetered rates and are most often unauthorized taxi drivers.\n\nAirport Shuttle has shuttles that cost \u20ac25 (for one person) and \u20ac6 for each additional passenger. This fee also includes two bags per person. Airport Connection Services charges \u20ac35 (for one person) and \u20ac39 (for two people). The fee includes bags and all taxes.\n\nTwo trains link downtown Rome with Fiumicino. Inquire at the APT tourist information counter in the International Arrivals hall (Terminal 2) or train information counter near the tracks to determine which takes you closest to your destination in Rome. The 30-minute nonstop Airport-Termini express (called the Leonardo Express) goes directly to Track 25 at Termini station, Rome's main train station, which is well served by taxis and is a hub of Metro and bus lines. The ride to Termini takes about 30 minutes; departures are every half hour beginning at 6:36 am from the airport, with a final departure at 11:36 pm. Trains depart Termini from Tracks 23 and 24 to the airport starting at 5:52 am and the last train leaves at 10:52 pm. Tickets cost \u20ac11.\n\nFM1, the other airport train, leaves from the same tracks and runs to Rome and beyond, serving commuters as well as air travelers. The main stops in Rome are at Trastevere (27 minutes), Ostiense (30 minutes), and Tiburtina (45 minutes); at each you can find taxis and bus and\/or Metro connections to other parts of Rome. FM1 trains run from Fiumicino between 5:57 am and 11:27 pm, with departures every 30 minutes; the schedule is similar going to the airport. Tickets cost \u20ac8. For either train, buy your ticket at a vending machine or at ticket counters at the airport and at some stations (Termini, Trastevere, Tiburtina). At the airport, stamp the ticket at the gate. Remember when using the train at other stations to stamp the ticket in the little yellow or red machine near the track before you board. If you fail to stamp your ticket before you board, you could receive a hefty fine, as much as \u20ac100.\n\nAt night, take COTRAL buses from the airport to Tiburtina station in Rome (45 minutes); they depart from in front of the International Arrivals hall at 1:15, 2:15, 3:30, 5, 10:55 am, noon, and 3:30 pm. Buses leave Tiburtina station for the airport at 12:30, 1:15, 2:30, 3:45, 9:30, 10:30 am, 12:35 pm, and 5:30 pm. Tickets either way cost \u20ac4.50 or \u20ac7 if bought on board. The two stations are connected by Bus 40N.\n\n#### Transfers Between Ciampino and Downtown\n\nBy car, go north on the Via Appia Nuova into downtown Rome.\n\nThe new taxi fare law implemented by the Comune di Roma that affects Fiumicino applies to this airport, too. All taxi drivers are supposed to charge a fixed fare of \u20ac30, including luggage handling, if your destination is within the Aurelian walls (this covers the centro storico, Trastevere, the Vatican area, and parts of San Giovanni). If your hotel is outside the walls, the cab ride will run you about \u20ac60, plus supplementi (extra charges) for luggage. The ride takes about 20 minutes. Take only official cabs with the \"taxi\" sign on top; unofficial cabs often overcharge disoriented travelers.\n\nAirport Connection Services has shuttles that cost \u20ac35 for one person and \u20ac44 for two people. Airport Shuttle charges \u20ac25 for the first person, and \u20ac6 for each additional passenger.\n\nA COTRAL bus connects the airport with the Anagnina station of Metro Line A or Ciampino railway station, which takes you into the center of the city. Buses depart from in front of the airport terminal around 25 times a day between 6 am and 11:40 pm. The fare is \u20ac1.20 and tickets can be bought on the bus.\n\n#### Transfers Between Airports\n\nIt's not easy to move from one airport to another in Rome\u2014the airports aren't connected by a railway system or by the Metro. The only way to make the transfer is by car, taxi, or a combination of bus, Metro, and train. The latter option is not advisable because it would take you at least two to three hours to get from one airport to the other.\n\nA taxi ride from Fiumicino Leonardo Da Vinci Airport to Ciampino Airport will take approximately 45 minutes and could cost roughly \u20ac60\u2013\u20ac70, plus supplementi (extra charges) for luggage.\n\nContacts\n\nAirport Connection Services. 06\/3383221, 3921540713 emergency phone in case you cannot find the driver.,  213\/985\u20133045 from the U.S.,  44\/2071933062 from the U.K. | www.airportconnection.it.\n\nAirport Shuttle. 06\/42013469, 06\/4740451 |  airportshuttle@airportshuttle.it | www.airportshuttle.it.\n\n### Flights\n\nWhen flying internationally, you must usually choose between a domestic carrier, the national flag carrier of the country you're visiting, and a foreign carrier from a third country. You may, for example, choose to fly Alitalia to Rome. National flag carriers have the greatest number of nonstops. Domestic carriers may have better connections to your hometown and serve a greater number of gateway cities. Third-party carriers may have a price advantage.\n\nFor travel within Italy and around Europe, a number of low-cost airlines can get you where you need to go, often at cheaper rates than by train. Because there are too many of these carriers to name, the best advice is to check out a useful website called Sky Scanner (www.skyscanner.net) which will scan all the major airlines and most of the low-cost airlines for you and give you the dates and companies with the most affordable rates. Keep in mind that low-cost airlines offer no-frills service. Any extras, such as meals, fast check-ins and boarding, extra luggage, and even slightly overweight luggage will cost you. Make sure to read all the fine print when booking a flight with a low-cost airline, especially the rules pertaining to boarding and luggage.\n\nThe least expensive airfares to Rome are priced for round-trip travel and must usually be purchased in advance. Airlines generally allow you to change your return date for a fee; most low-fare tickets, however, are nonrefundable.\n\nAirline Contacts\n\nAlitalia. 89\/2910, 0870\/544\u20138259 in U.K.,  06\/65643 in Rome,  06\/65640 Lost Baggage Claim | www.alitalia.it.\n\nAmerican Airlines. 800\/433\u20137300, 06\/66053169 in Rome | www.aa.com.\n\nBritish Airways. 0845\/773\u20133377 in U.K.,  02\/69633602 within Italy,  34\/91514 1317 Lost Bags | www.britishairways.com.\n\nDelta Airlines. 800\/221\u20131212 for U.S. reservations,  800\/241\u20134141 for international reservations,  02\/38591441 within Italy | www.delta.com.\n\neasyJet. 199\/201840 within Italy,  44\/8431045454 from abroad,  0843\/1045000 from U.K. | www.easyjet.com.\n\nUnited Airlines. 800\/864\u20138331 for U.S. reservations,  800\/538\u20132929 for international reservations,  02\/69633707 within Italy | www.united.com.\n\nUS Airways. 800\/428\u20134322 for U.S. and Canada reservations,  800\/622\u20131015 for international reservations,  848\/813177 within Italy | www.usairways.com.\n\nLow-Cost Airlines\n\nBlu Express. 199\/419777 within Italy,  06\/98956677 from abroad | www.blu-express.com.\n\nMeridiana. 892\/928 call center,  718\/751\u20134499 from U.S.,  0871\/222 9319 from U.K. | www.meridiana.it.\n\nRyanair. 44\/8712460002 within the U.K.,  899\/552589 within Italy | ryanair.com.\n\nWind Jet. 89\/2020 | www.volawindjet.it.\n\n##  Bus Travel\n\nAn extensive network of bus lines that covers all of the Lazio region is operated by COTRAL (Consorzio Trasporti Lazio). There are several main bus stations. Long-distance and suburban COTRAL bus routes terminate either near Tiburtina station or at outlying Metro stops, such as Rebibbia and Ponte Mammolo (Line B) and Anagnina (Line A).\n\nFares are reasonable, especially with the BIRG (Bigiletto Integrale Regionale Giornali), which allows you to travel on all the lines (and some railroad lines) up to midnight on the day of the ticket's first validation. The cost of a BIRG depends upon the distance to your destination and how many \"zones\" you travel through. Because of the extent and complexity of the system, it's a good idea to consult with your hotel concierge or to telephone COTRAL's central office when planning a trip. COTRAL buses and other similar bus companies such as SENA are good options for taking short day trips from Rome. There are several buses that leave daily from Rome's Ponte Mammolo (Line B) Metro station for the town of Tivoli, where Hadrian's Villa and Villa D'Este are located. SENA buses leave from Rome's Tiburtina Metro and train station (Line B) and will take you to Siena and other towns in Tuscany.\n\nWhile the bus may be an affordable way of moving around, keep in mind that it's also affordable for locals trying to get to and from work. This means certain buses experience heavy commuter traffic and are often very crowded. Just because you've managed to purchase a ticket doesn't mean you're guaranteed a seat. If you don't manage to get a seat, you might have to stand for the entire ride. Hence, what may be more affordable isn't exactly more comfortable.\n\nBus Information\n\nCOTRAL. 800\/174471 | www.cotralspa.it.\n\nSENA. 0577\/208282 | www.sena.it.\n\n##  Car Travel\n\nThe main access routes from the north are A1 (Autostrada del Sole) from Milan and Florence and the A12\u2013E80 highway from Genoa. The principal route to or from points south, including Naples, is the A2. All highways connect with the Grande Raccordo Anulare Ring Road (GRA), which channels traffic into the city center. Markings on the GRA are confusing: take time to study the route you need. Be extremely careful of pedestrians and scooters when driving: Romans are casual jaywalkers and pop out frequently from between parked cars. People on scooters tend to be the worst and most careless drivers, as they tend to weave in and out of traffic.\n\nFor driving directions, check out www.tuttocitta.it.\n\n#### Gasoline\n\nOnly a few gas stations are open on Sunday, and most close for a couple of hours at lunchtime and at 7 pm for the night. Many, however, have self-service pumps that accept both currency and credit cards and are operational 24 hours a day. Most service stations have attendants that pump the gas for you, though self-service pumps are also available. After-hours at self-service stations, it is not uncommon to find someone who will pump your gas for you. While they're not official employees of the gas station, a small tip is usually expected (about \u20ac0.30\u2013\u20ac0.40 is acceptable). Gas stations on autostrade are open 24 hours. Gas costs about \u20ac1.32 per liter. Diesel costs about \u20ac1.20 per liter.\n\n#### Parking\n\nBe warned: parking in Rome can be a nightmare. The situation is greatly compounded by the fact that private cars are not allowed access to the entire historic center during the day (weekdays 8\u20136; Saturday 2 pm\u20136 pm), except for those belonging to residents with resident permits. If you dare enter these restricted areas, also called ZTL zones, without a special permit, video cameras posted on streets that border the centro will photograph your license plate and you will receive a hefty fine. Space is at a premium, and your car may be towed away if it's illegally parked. When you book your hotel, inquire about parking facilities.\n\nThere's limited free parking space in the city. Spaces with white lines are free parking, while spaces with yellow lines are for the handicapped only. Make sure to check with your hotel regarding appropriate places to park nearby. Spaces with blue lines are paid parking. All other color-coded spaces are usually reserved for residents, disabled drivers, or carpooling and require special permits. If you park in one of these spaces without a permit, your car could be ticketed or towed. Meter parking costs \u20ac1\u2013\u20ac1.20 per hour (depending on what area you're in) with limited stopping time allowed in many areas; however, if you pay for four consecutive hours, you will get eight hours of meter time for just \u20ac4. Parking facilities near the historic sights exist at the Villa Borghese underground car park (entrance at Viale del Muro Torto) and the Vatican (entrance from Piazza della Rovere).\n\n#### Road Conditions\n\nItalians drive fast and are impatient with those who don't, a tendency that can make driving on the congested streets of Rome a hair-raising experience. Traffic is heaviest during morning and late-afternoon commuter hours, and on weekends. Watch out for mopeds.\n\n#### Roadside Emergencies\n\nThere are phone boxes on highways to report breakdowns. Major rental agencies often provide roadside assistance, so check your rental agreement if a problem arises. Also, ACI (Auto Club of Italy) Service offers 24-hour road service. Dial | 803\u2013116 from any phone, 24 hours a day, to reach the nearest ACI service station. When speaking to ACI, ask and you will be transferred to an English-speaking operator. Be prepared to tell the operator which road you're on, the direction you're going, for example, \"verso (in the direction of) Pizzo,\" and the targa (license plate number) of your car.\n\nAuto Club of Italy (ACI). 803\u2013116, 39\/06491115 from abroad |  infoturismo@aci.it | www.aci.it.\n\n#### Rules of the Road\n\nDriving is on the right. Regulations are largely similar to those in Britain and the United States, except that the police have the power to levy on-the-spot fines. Although honking abounds, the use of horns is forbidden in many areas; a large sign, \"zona di silenzio,\" indicates where. Speed limits are 50 kph (31 mph) in Rome, 130 kph (80 mph) on autostrade, and 110 kph (70 mph) on state and provincial roads, unless otherwise marked. Talking on a cell phone while driving is strictly prohibited, and if caught, the driver will be issued a fine. Not wearing a seat belt is also against the law. The blood-alcohol content limit for driving is 0.5 gr\/l with fines up to \u20ac5,000 and the possibility of six months' imprisonment for surpassing the limit. Fines for speeding are uniformly stiff: 10 kph (6 mph) over the speed limit can warrant a fine of up to \u20ac500; over 10 kph, and your license could be taken away from you.\n\nWhenever the city decides to implement an \"Ecological Day\" in order to reduce smog levels, commuters are prohibited from driving their cars during certain hours of the day and in certain areas of the city. These are usually organized and announced ahead of time; however, if you're planning to rent a car during your trip, make sure to ask the rental company and your hotel if there are any planned, because the traffic police won't cut you any breaks, even if you say you're a tourist.\n\n### Car Rental\n\nWhen you reserve a car, ask about cancellation penalties, taxes, drop-off charges (if you're planning to pick up the car in one city and leave it in another), and surcharges (for being under or over a certain age, for additional drivers, or for driving across state or country borders or beyond a specific distance from your point of rental). All these things can add substantially to your costs. Request car seats and extras such as GPS when you book. Make sure to ask the rental car company if they require you to obtain an International Driver's Permit beforehand (most do). These can generally be obtained for a fee through AAA in the United States. Rates are sometimes\u2014but not always\u2014better if you book in advance or reserve through a rental agency's website. There are other reasons to book ahead, though: for popular destinations, during busy times of the year, or to ensure that you get certain types of cars (vans, SUVs, exotic sports cars).\n\nTIP Make sure that a confirmed reservation guarantees you a car. Agencies sometimes overbook, particularly for busy weekends and holiday periods.\n\nRates in Rome begin at around $75 a day for an economy car with air-conditioning, a manual transmission, and unlimited mileage. This includes the 20% tax on car rentals. Note that Italian legislation now permits certain rental wholesalers, such as Auto Europe, to drop the value-added tax (V.A.T.). All international car-rental agencies in Rome have a number of locations.\n\nIt's usually cheaper to rent a car in advance through your local agency than to rent on location in Italy. Or book ahead online\u2014you can save as much as $10 per day on your car rental. Within Italy, local rental agencies and international ones offer similar rates. Whether you're going with a local or international agency, note that most cars are manual; automatics are hard to find, so inquire about those well in advance.\n\nIn Italy your own driver's license is acceptable. An International Driver's Permit is a good idea; it's available from the American or Canadian Automobile Association and, in the United Kingdom, from the Automobile Association or Royal Automobile Club. These international permits are universally recognized, and having one in your wallet may save you a problem with the local authorities.\n\nIn Italy you must be 21 years of age to rent an economy or subcompact car, and most companies require customers under the age of 23 to pay by credit card. Upon rental, all companies require credit cards as a warranty; to rent bigger cars (2,000 cc or more), you must often show two credit cards. Debit or check cards are not accepted. Call local agents for details. There are no special restrictions on senior-citizen drivers.\n\nCar seats are required for children under three and must be booked in advance. The rental cost is \u20ac5 upward, depending on the type of car.\n\nThe cost for an additional driver is about \u20ac5\u2013\u20ac7 per day.\n\n#### Car Insurance\n\nEveryone who rents a car wonders whether the insurance that the rental companies offer is worth the expense. No one\u2014including us\u2014has a simple answer. It all depends on how much regular insurance you have, how comfortable you are with risk, and whether or not money is an issue.\n\nIf you own a car, your personal auto insurance may cover a rental to some degree, though not all policies protect you abroad; always read your policy's fine print. If you don't have auto insurance, then seriously consider buying the collision- or loss-damage waiver (CDW or LDW) from the car-rental company, which eliminates your liability for damage to the car. If you choose not to purchase the CDW coverage, you could be liable for the first \u20ac500 worth of damage. Some credit cards offer CDW coverage, but it's usually supplemental to your own insurance and rarely covers SUVs, minivans, luxury models, and the like. If your coverage is secondary, you may still be liable for loss-of-use costs from the car-rental company. But no credit-card insurance is valid unless you use that card for all transactions, from reserving to paying the final bill. All companies exclude car rental in some countries, so be sure to find out about the destination to which you are traveling.\n\nSome rental agencies require you to purchase CDW coverage; many will even include it in quoted rates. All will strongly encourage you to buy CDW\u2014possibly implying that it's required\u2014so be sure to ask about such things before renting. In most cases it's cheaper to add a supplemental CDW plan to your comprehensive travel-insurance policy than to purchase it from a rental company. That said, you don't want to pay for a supplement if you're required to buy insurance from the rental company.\n\n##  Moped Travel\n\nAs bikes are to Beijing, so mopeds are to Rome; that means they are everywhere. Riders are required to wear helmets, and traffic police are tough in enforcing this law. Producing your country's driver's license should be enough to convince most rental firms that they're not dealing with a complete beginner; but if you're unsure of exactly how to ride a moped, think twice, as driving a scooter in Rome is not like you see it in the movies. It can be very dangerous, and Roman drivers tend to be ruthless; at least ask the assistant for a detailed demonstration. If you don't feel up to braving the Roman traffic on a moped, you can hire an electric car to scoot around the city. The MELEX is a four-seater, golf-cart-style car, with battery power lasting up to eight hours. To rent the MELEX, you need a valid driver's license. Cost: \u20ac18 per hour.\n\nRental Agencies\n\nFree Rome (MELEX cars). Via Ludovisi 60, Via Veneto | 00187 | 335\/8357590 |  info@freerome.it | www.freerome.it.\n\nScoot-a-Long. Via Cavour 302, Colosseo | 00184 | 06\/6780206.\n\nTreno e Scooter. Piazza dei Cinquecento, in the parking lot in front of the train station, Termini | 00185 | 06\/48905823 | www.trenoescooter.com.\n\n##  Public Transportation: Bus, Tram, and Metropolitana\n\nAlthough most of Rome's sights are in a relatively circumscribed area, the city is too large to be seen solely on foot. Try to avoid rush hours when taking the Metro (subway) or a bus, as public transport can be extremely crowded. Midmorning or the middle of the day up until early afternoon tends to be less busy. Otherwise, it's best to take a taxi to the area you plan to visit if it is across town. You should always expect to do a lot of walking in Rome (especially considering how little ground the subway actually covers) and so plan on wearing a pair of comfortable, sturdy shoes to cushion the impact of the sampietrini (cobblestones). Get away from the noise and polluted air of heavily trafficked streets by taking parallel streets whenever possible. You can get free city and transportation-route maps at municipal information booths.\n\nRome's integrated transportation system includes buses and trams (ATAC), Metropolitana (subway, often nicknamed the Metro), and suburban trains and buses (COTRAL), and some other suburban trains (Trenitalia) run by the state railways. A ticket (BIT) valid for 75 minutes on any combination of buses and trams and one entrance to the Metro costs \u20ac1. Do note, however, that sometime during 2012 or 2013, the fare will rise to \u20ac1.50 (the amount of time that your ticket is good for will also be extended to 90 minutes rather than 75 as it is now).\n\nHowever, once you exit the Metro station even if you get off the wrong stop by mistake, you will be required to purchase and validate another ticket.\n\nTickets are sold at tobacco shops, newsstands, some coffee bars, automatic ticket machines in Metro stations, some bus stops, and at ATAC ticket booths. You can buy them singly or in quantity; it's always a good idea to have a few tickets handy so you don't have to hunt for a vendor when you need one. Time-stamp your ticket when boarding the first vehicle, and stamp it again when boarding for the last time within 75 minutes. You stamp the ticket at Metro sliding electronic doors, and in the little yellow machines on buses and trams. If you fail to validate your ticket, you could receive a fine of \u20ac51 if you pay the ticket controllers on the spot; otherwise, it'll cost you \u20ac101 to pay it later.\n\nA BIG ticket\u2014or Biglietto integrato giornaliero (integrated daily ticket)\u2014is valid for one day (only for the day it is stamped, not 24 hours) on all public transport and costs \u20ac4. A three-day pass (BTI)\u2014or Biglietto turistico integrato\u2014costs \u20ac11. A weekly ticket (settimanale, also known as CIS) costs \u20ac16 and gives unlimited travel on ATAC buses, COTRAL urban bus services, trains for the Lido and Viterbo, and subway (Metro). There's an ATAC kiosk at the bus terminal in front of Termini station.\n\nIf you're going farther afield, or planning to spend more than a week in Rome, think about getting a BIRG regional ticket or a CIRS (regional weekly ticket) from the railway station. These give you unlimited travel on all state transport throughout the region of Lazio. This can take you as far as the Etruscan city of Tarquinia or medieval Viterbo.\n\nThe Metropolitana (or Metro) is the easiest and fastest way to get around Rome. There are stops near most of the main tourist attractions (street entrances are marked with red \"M\" signs). The Metro has two lines\u2014A and B\u2014which intersect at Termini station. Line A runs from the eastern part of the city, with stops, among others, at San Giovanni in Laterano, Piazza Barberini, Piazza di Spagna, Piazzale Flaminio (Piazza del Popolo), and Ottaviano\/San Pietro, near the Basilica di San Pietro and the Musei Vaticani. Line B has stops near the Colosseum, the Circus Maximus, the Pyramid (Ostiense station and trains for Ostia Antica), and the Basilica di San Paolo Fuori le Mura. The Metro opens at 5:30 am, and the last trains leave the last station at either end at 11:30 pm (on Friday and Saturday nights the last train leaves at 1:30 am).\n\nAlthough not as fast as the Metropolitana, bus travel is more scenic. With reserved bus lanes and numerous tramlines, surface transportation is surprisingly efficient, given the volume of Roman traffic. At peak times, however, buses can be very crowded. If the distance you have to travel is not too great, walking can be a more comfortable alternative. ATAC city buses are orange, gray-and-red, or blue-and-orange; trams are orange or green. Remember to board at the rear and to exit at the middle: some bus drivers may refuse to let you out the front door, leaving you to scramble through the crowd to exit the middle or rear doors. Don't forget you must buy your ticket before boarding, and stamp it in a machine as soon as you enter. If you find the bus too crowded to get to the ticket machine, write the date and time you boarded on the ticket where you would normally validate it. The ticket is good for a transfer and one Metro trip within the next 75 minutes. Buses and trams run from 5:30 am to midnight, plus there's an extensive network of night buses throughout the city.\n\nThe bus system is a bit complicated to navigate due to the number of lines, but ATAC has a website (www.atac.roma.it) that will help you calculate the number of stops and bus route needed, and even give you a map directing you to the appropriate stops. To navigate the site, look for the British flag in the upper right-hand corner to change the website into English.\n\nInformation\n\nATAC urban buses. 06\/57003 | www.atac.roma.it.\n\nCOTRAL. 800\/174471, 06\/72057205 | www.cotralspa.it.\n\nTrenitalia suburban trains. 892021, 06\/68475475 from abroad | www.trenitalia.it.\n\n##  Taxi Travel\n\nTaxis in Rome do not cruise, but if free they will stop if you flag them down. They wait at stands but can also be called by phone, in which case you're charged a supplement. The various taxi services are considered interchangeable and are referred to by their phone numbers rather than names. Taxicabs can be reserved the night before only if you're traveling to and from the airport or the train station. Only some taxis are equipped to take credit cards. Inquire when you phone to make the booking.\n\nThe meter starts at \u20ac2.80 during the day, \u20ac5.80 after 10 pm, and \u20ac4 on Sunday and holidays.\n\nThe first piece of luggage is free, then each additional piece will incur a \u20ac1 supplement.\n\nThere's even a \u20ac2 supplement for rides originating from Termini train station. Unfortunately, these charges do not appear on the meter, causing countless misunderstandings. If you take a taxi at night and\/or on a Sunday, or if you have baggage or have called the cab by phone, the fare will legitimately be more than the figure shown on the meter. When in doubt, always ask for a receipt (ricevuta). This will encourage the taxicab driver to be honest and charge you the correct amount. After 9 pm, women traveling alone in a taxi are entitled to a sconta rosa\u2014a special 10% discount for women implemented by the city of Rome. Unfortunately, taxi drivers won't always apply the discount to the fare. You'll have to make sure to ask for it. Use only licensed, metered white or yellow cabs, identified by a numbered shield on the side, an illuminated taxi sign on the roof, and a plaque next to the license plate reading \"servizio pubblico.\" Avoid unmarked, unauthorized, unmetered gypsy cabs (numerous at Rome airports and train stations), whose drivers actively solicit your trade and may demand astronomical fares.\n\nTaxi Companies\n\nCab. 06\/6645, 06\/3570, 06\/8822, 06\/5551, 06\/4157.\n\n##  Train Travel\n\nState-owned Trenitalia trains are part of the Metrebus system and also serve some destinations on side trips outside Rome. The main Trenitalia stations in Rome are Termini, Tiburtina, Ostiense, and Trastevere. Suburban trains use all of these stations. The Ferrovie COTRAL line departs from a terminal in Piazzale Flaminio, connecting Rome with Viterbo.\n\nOnly Trenitalia trains such as Frecciarossa, Frecciargento, Eurostar, and Intercity Plus have first- and second-class compartments. Local trains can be crowded early morning and evening as many people commute to and from the city, so try to avoid these times. Be ready to stand if you plan to take one of these trains and don't arrive early enough to secure a seat. On long-distance routes (to Florence and Venice, for instance), you can either travel by the cheap (but slow) regionale trains, or the fast, but more expensive Intercity, Eurostar, Frecciarossa, or Frecciargento, which require seat reservations, available at the station when you buy your ticket, online, or through a travel agent.\n\nFor destinations within 200 km (124 miles) of Rome, you can buy a kilometrico ticket. Like bus tickets, they can be purchased at some newsstands and in ticketing machines, as well as at Trenitalia ticket windows. Buy them in advance so you won't waste time in line at station ticket booths. Like all train tickets, they must be date-stamped in the little yellow or red machines near the track before you board. Within a range of 200 km (124 miles) they're valid for six hours from the time they're stamped, and you can get on and off at will at stops in between for the duration of the ticket's validity.\n\nThe state railways' excellent and user-friendly site at www.trenitalia.it will help you plan any rail trips in the country.\n\nIn 2012, a new private railway company called NTV (Nuovo trasporto ferroviario) launched high-speed trains\u2014made by Alstom AGV, whose trains hold the world speed record\u2014that are expected to give Trenitalia some hefty competition. The new trains, called Italo, are said to be equipped with satellite TV, Wi-Fi, and even a cinema car. They service various big cities around Italy including Florence, Venice, Naples, and Bologna. In Rome, the trains stop at the newly renovated Tiburtina station.\n\nInformation\n\nItalo Treno\u2013Nuovo Trasporto Viaggiatori. 06\/0708 | www.italotreno.it.\n\nTrenitalia. 892\/2021 within Italy,  199\/892021 within Italy,  06\/68475475 from abroad | www.trenitalia.it.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nPrevious Chapter | Table of Contents\n\nCommunications | Customs and Duties | Electricity | Emergencies | Health | Hours of Operation | Mail | Money | Packing | Passports and Visas | Restrooms | Safety | Taxes | Time | Tipping | Tours and Guides | Trip Insurance | Visitor Information\n\n## Communications\n\n### Internet\n\nGetting online in Rome isn't difficult: public Internet stations and Internet caff\u00e8 are common. Prices differ from place to place, so spend some time to find the best deal. This isn't always readily apparent: a place might have higher rates, but because it belongs to a chain you won't be charged an initial flat fee again when you go to a different location of the same chain.\n\nThere are several Wi-Fi hotspots around Rome. In fact, many bars and caff\u00e8 around the city will let you connect to their wireless network for free if you purchase something. Alternatively, if you have an Italian cell phone number you can sign up to access free Wi-Fi in select public spaces and parks such as the MAXXI museum, Piazza di Spagna, Bocca della Verit\u00e0, Ponte Milvio, Villa Ada, and Villa Borghese. Register in English by accessing https:\/\/wasp.provinciawifi.it\/owums\/account\/signup. Then every time you enter one of Rome's free Wi-Fi hotspots, it should automatically pop up on your smart phone or computer screen. Another service, Roma Wireless (www.romawireless.com) gives visitors free Wi-Fi access for up to one hour a day in various spots such as Campo de' Fiori, Largo Argentina, and the Trevi Fountain. At one of these spots, the Roma Wireless network should pop up on your screen and prompt you to register with the site in order to access the network.\n\nSome hotels have free Wi-Fi or in-room modem lines, but, as with phones, using the hotel's line is relatively expensive. Always check modem rates before plugging in. You may need an adapter for your computer for the European-style plugs. As always, if you're traveling with a laptop, carry a spare battery and an adapter. Never plug your computer into any socket before asking about surge protection. IBM sells a pea-size modem tester that plugs into a telephone jack to check whether the line is safe to use.\n\nInternet Caff\u00e8\n\nCybercafes. Cybercafes lists more than 4,000 Internet caf\u00e9s worldwide. | www.cybercafes.com.\n\nMail Office. Corso Vittorio Emanuele II 274\/a, Navona | 00186 | 06\/68192051.\n\nPantheon Internet Point. Via di Santa Caterina da Siena 40, Pantheon | 00186 | 06\/69200501.\n\nTreviNet Place. Via in Arcione 103, Barberini | 00187 | 06\/69922320.\n\nCaff\u00e8 with Wi-Fi\n\nFriends Caf\u00e9. Piazza Trilussa 34, Trastevere | 00153 | 06\/5816111 | www.cafefriends.it.\n\nThe Library. Vicolo della Cancelleria 7, Piazza Navona | 00186 | 333\/3517581, 06\/97275442 | www.thelibrary.it.\n\n### Phones\n\nThe good news is that you can now make a direct-dial telephone call from virtually any point on earth. The bad news? You can't always do so cheaply. Calling from a hotel is almost always the most expensive option; hotels usually add huge surcharges to all calls, particularly international ones. Calling cards usually keep costs to a minimum, but only if you purchase them locally. In Italy, you can also place international calls from call centers. And then there are mobile phones \u2014as expensive as mobile phone calls can be, they are still usually a much cheaper option than calling from your hotel.\n\nThe country code for Italy is 39. The area code for Rome is 06. When dialing an Italian number from abroad, do not drop the initial 0 from the local area code.\n\nThe country code is 1 for the United States, 61 for Australia, 1 for Canada, 64 for New Zealand, and 44 for the United Kingdom.\n\n#### Calling Within Italy\n\nFor general information in English, dial 176. To place international telephone calls via operator-assisted service (or for information), dial 170 or long-distance access numbers .\n\nPhone numbers in Rome, and throughout Italy, don't have a set number of digits. All calls (except for cell phones) in Rome are preceded by the city code 06, with the exception of three-digit numbers (113 is for general emergencies). Emergency numbers can be called for free from pay phones (if you can find one).\n\nThroughout Italy, long-distance calls are dialed in the same manner as local calls: the city code plus the number. Rates vary, depending on the time of day, with the lowest late at night and early in the morning.\n\n#### Calling Outside Italy\n\nHotels tend to overcharge, sometimes exorbitantly, for long-distance and international calls. Use your AT&T, MCI, or Sprint card or buy an international phone card, which supplies a local number to call and gives a low rate. Or make your calls from Telefoni offices, designated \"telecom,\" where operators will assign you a booth, sell you an international telephone card, and help you place your call. You can make collect calls from any phone by dialing 800\/172444, which will get you an English-speaking AT&T operator. Rates to the United States are lowest round the clock on Sunday and 10 pm\u20138 am, Italian time, on weekdays.\n\nAccess Codes\n\nAT&T Direct. 800\/172444.\n\nMCI WorldPhone. 800\/905825.\n\nSprint International Access. From cell phones, call 892\u2013176. | 800\/172\u2013405, 800\/787\u2013986.\n\n#### Calling Cards\n\nWhen you do run into a pay phone in the city, you'll find that many no longer accept only coins. Most require schede telefoniche (phone cards). You buy the card (values vary\u2014\u20ac2.50, \u20ac5, and so on) at post offices, newsstands (called edicole), and tobacconists. Tear off the corner of the card and insert it in the slot. When you dial, its value appears in the window. After you hang up, the card is returned so you can use it until its value runs out. The best cards for calling North America or Europe are the \u20ac5 or \u20ac10 Eurocity, Eurotel, and Editel cards, which give you a local number to dial and a pin number, and roughly 180 minutes and 360 minutes, respectively, of calling time.\n\n#### Mobile Phones\n\nIf you have a multiband phone (some countries use different frequencies from those used in the United States) and your service provider uses the world-standard GSM network (as do T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon), you can probably use your phone abroad. Roaming fees can be steep, however: 99\u00a2 a minute is considered reasonable. And overseas you normally pay the toll charges for incoming calls. It's almost always cheaper to send a text message than to make a call, since text messages have a very low set fee (often less than 10\u00a2).\n\nIf you just want to make local calls, consider buying a new SIM card (note that your provider may have to unlock your phone for you to use a different SIM card) and a prepaid service plan in the destination. You'll then have a local number and can make local calls at local rates. If your trip is extensive, you could also simply buy a new cell phone in your destination, as the initial cost will be offset over time.\n\nRenting phones may seem like an inexpensive way to go, but in the end it could cost you more than using your own cell phone from home. The per-minute rates tend to be higher, and a lot of times there are hidden costs. Usually, companies ask you to leave a credit card number when renting the phone, which can be iffy, as hidden costs sneak up onto your bill at the end of the month after you've left the country, making it harder to dispute the charges.\n\nContacts\n\nCellular Abroad. Cellular Abroad rents and sells GMS phones and sells SIM cards that work in many countries. | 800\/287\u20135072, 310\/862-7100, 800\/3623-3333 toll-free within Italy | www.cellularabroad.com.\n\nMobal. Mobal rents mobiles and sells GSM phones (starting at $29) that will operate in 140 countries. Per-call rates vary throughout the world. | 888\/888\u20139162 | www.mobalrental.com.\n\nPlanet Fone. Planet Fone rents cell phones, but the per-minute rates are expensive. | 888\/988\u20134777 | www.planetfone.com.\n\n## Customs and Duties\n\nYou're always allowed to bring goods of a certain value back home without having to pay any duty or import tax. But there's a limit on the amount of tobacco and liquor you can bring back duty-free, and some countries have separate limits for perfumes; for exact figures, check with your customs department. The values of so-called \"duty-free\" goods are included in these amounts. When you shop abroad, save all your receipts, as customs inspectors may ask to see them as well as the items you purchased. If the total value of your goods is more than the duty-free limit, you'll have to pay a tax (most often a flat percentage) on the value of everything beyond that limit.\n\nOf goods obtained anywhere outside the European Union or goods purchased in a duty-free shop within an EU country, the allowances are as follows: (1) 200 cigarettes or 100 cigarillos or 50 cigars or 250 grams of tobacco; (2) 2 liters of still table wine or 1 liter of spirits over 22% volume or 2 liters of spirits under 22% volume or 2 liters of fortified and sparkling wines; and (3) 50 ml of perfume and 250 ml of toilet water.\n\nOf goods obtained (duty and tax paid) within another EU country, the allowances are (1) 800 cigarettes or 400 cigarillos (under 3 grams) or 200 cigars or 1 kilogram of tobacco; (2) 90 liters of still table wine or 10 liters of spirits over 22% volume or 20 liters of spirits under 22% volume or 110 liters of beer.\n\nInformation in Rome\n\nItalian Customs, Fiumicino Airport. Via Bragadin, | Fiumicino | 00054 | 06\/65956366, 06\/65956949.\n\nU.S. Information\n\nU.S. Customs and Border Protection. 877\/227\u20135511 from the U.S.,  703\/526\u20134200 from abroad | www.cbp.gov.\n\n## Electricity\n\nThe electrical current in Italy is 220 volts, 50 cycles alternating current (AC); wall outlets take Continental-type plugs, with two or three round prongs.\n\nConsider making a small investment in a universal adapter, which has several types of plugs in one lightweight, compact unit. Most laptops and mobile phone chargers are dual voltage (i.e., they operate equally well on 110 and 220 volts), so require only an adapter. These days the same is true of small appliances such as hair dryers. Always check labels and manufacturer instructions to be sure. Don't use 110-volt outlets marked \"for shavers only\" for high-wattage appliances such as hair dryers.\n\nNote that straightening irons from the United States don't heat up very well and tend to blow a fuse even with correct adapters\u2014as do American hair dryers.\n\nContacts\n\nHelp for World Travelers. Steve Kropla's Help for World Travelers has information on electrical and telephone plugs around the world. | www.kropla.com.\n\nWalkabout Travel Gear. Walkabout Travel Gear has good coverage of electricity under \"adapters.\" | 800\/852\u20137085 U.S. toll-free number | www.walkabouttravelgear.com.\n\n## Emergencies\n\nNo matter where you are in Italy, dial 113 for all emergencies, or find somebody (your concierge, a passerby) who will call for you, as not all 113 operators speak English; the Italian word to use to draw people's attention in an emergency is Aiuto! (Help!, pronounced ah-you-toh). Pronto soccorso means \"first aid.\" When confronted with a health emergency, head straight for the Pronto Soccorso department of the nearest hospital or dial 118. To call a Red Cross ambulance (ambulanza), dial 06\/5510. If you just need a doctor, you should ask for un medico; most hotels will be able to refer you to a local doctor (medico). Don't forget to ask the doctor for una ricevuta (an invoice) to show to your insurance company to get a reimbursement. Alternatively, the city of Rome has recently opened a medical clinic dedicated to tourists suffering from symptoms (flu, fever, minor aches and pains, etc.) that would probably have them waiting into the wee hours of the night at the emergency room. The Nuovo Regina Margherita Hospital offers a 24-hour tourist medical service and is staffed by one medical doctor and two nurses. The tourist medical service is free of charge every night 8\u20138 and on weekends. On weekdays (8\u20138), there is a charge of \u20ac20.66. Patients under six years old or over 65 are always free. The tourist service is located at the Nuovo Regina Margherita Hospital on Via Morosini 30 (Trastevere); the phone number is | 06\/58441.\n\nOther useful Italian words to use are Al fuoco! (Fire!, pronounced ahl fuh-woe-co) and Al ladro! (Follow the thief!, pronounced ahl lah-droh).\n\nItaly has a national military police force (carabinieri) as well as local police (polizia). Both are armed and have the power to arrest and investigate crimes. Always report any theft or the loss of your passport to either the carabinieri or the police, as well as to your embassy. Local traffic officers are known as vigili (though their official name is polizia municipale)\u2014they are responsible for, among other things, giving out parking tickets and clamping cars, so before you even consider parking the Italian way, make sure you are at least able to spot their white (in summer) or black uniforms (many are women). Should you find yourself involved in a minor car accident, you should contact the vigili. Call the countrywide toll-free number 113 if you need the police.\n\nMost pharmacies are open Monday\u2013Saturday 8:30\u20131 and 4\u20138; some are open all night. A schedule posted outside each pharmacy indicates the nearest pharmacy open during off-hours (afternoons, through the night, and Sunday). Farmacia Internazionale Capranica, Farmacia Internazionale Barberini (open 24 hours), and Farmacia Cola di Rienzo are pharmacies that have some English-speaking staff. The hospitals listed here have English-speaking doctors. Rome American Hospital is about 30 minutes by cab from the center of town.\n\nFor a full listing of doctors and dentists in Rome who speak English, consult the English Yellow Pages at www.englishyellowpages.it or pick up a copy at any English-language bookstore. Your embassy will also have a list of recommended medical professionals.\n\nDoctors and Dentists\n\nAventino Medical Group. Via Sant'Alberto Magno 5, Aventino | 00153 | 06\/57288349, 06\/57288329 | www.aventinomedicalgroup.com.\n\nPro Dent Medica. Via Bisagno 5, Piazza Fiume | 00199 | 06\/8605056, 339\/3602158 | prodentmedica.blogspot.com.\n\nRoma Medica (weekends, house calls). 338\/6224832 24-hour service | www.romamedica.com.\n\nGeneral Emergency Contacts\n\nEmergencies. 113.\n\nPolice. 113.\n\nAmbulance. 118.\n\nHospitals and Clinics\n\nRome American Hospital. Via Emilio Longoni 69, Tor Sapienza | 00155 | 06\/22551 | www.rah.it.\n\nSalvator Mundi International Hospital. Viale delle Mura Gianicolensi 67, Monteverde | 00152 | 06\/588961, 800\/402323 toll-free within Italy | www.salvatormundi.it.\n\nHotlines\n\nHighway Police. 06\/22101.\n\nRoad Breakdown. 116.\n\nWomen's Rights and Abuse Prevention. 06\/4882832, 800\/001122.\n\nPharmacies\n\nFarmacia Cola di Rienzo. Via Cola di Rienzo 213\/215, San Pietro | 00192 | 06\/3243130, 06\/3244476.\n\nFarmacia Internazionale Barberini. Piazza Barberini 49, Barberini | 00187 | 06\/4825456, 06\/4871195.\n\nFarmacia Internazionale Capranica. Piazza Capranica 96, Pantheon | 00186 | 06\/6794680.\n\n## Health\n\nSmoking has been banned in Italy in all public places. This includes trains, buses, offices, and waiting rooms, as well as restaurants, pubs, and discotheques (unless the latter have separate smoking rooms). If you're an unrepentant smoker, you would be advised to check with restaurants before making a booking, as very few can offer smokers' facilities. Fines for breaking the law are so stiff that they have succeeded (for the moment) in curbing the Italians' propensity to light up everywhere. Outside dining is exempt from the rule, so if smoking annoys you, you may find it better to eat indoors even in warm weather. Many restaurants are now equipped with air-conditioning. There are no smoking cars on any FS (Italian state railway) trains.\n\nIt's always best to travel with your own tried and true medicines. The regulations regarding what medicines require a prescription are not likely to be exactly the same in Italy and in your home country\u2014all the more reason to bring what you need with you. Aspirin (l'aspirina) can be purchased at any pharmacy, as can over-the-counter medicines such as ibuprofen and Aleve. Other over-the-counter remedies, including cough syrup, antiseptic creams, and headache pills, are only sold in pharmacies.\n\n## Hours of Operation\n\nBanks are typically open weekdays 8:30\u20131:30 and 2:45\u20133:45 or 3\u20134. Exchange offices are open all day, usually 8:30\u20138.\n\nPost offices are open Monday\u2013Saturday 8\u20132; central and main district post offices stay open until 8 on weekdays for some operations. You can buy stamps (francobolli) at tobacconists.\n\nOnly a few gas stations are open on Sunday, and most close during weekday lunch hours and at 7 pm for the night. Many, however, have self-service pumps that are operational 24 hours a day, and gas stations on autostrade are open 24 hours.\n\nMuseum hours vary and may change with the seasons. Many important national museums are closed one day a week, often on Monday. The Roman Forum, other sites, and some museums may be open until late in the evening during the summer. Always check locally.\n\nMost churches are open from early morning until noon or 12:30, when they close for two hours or more; they open again in the afternoon, generally around 4 pm, closing about 7 pm or later. Major cathedrals and basilicas, such as the Basilica di San Pietro, are open all day. Note that sightseeing in churches during religious rites is usually discouraged. Be sure to have some coins handy for the luce (light) machines that illuminate the works of art in the perpetual dusk of ecclesiastical interiors. A pair of binoculars will help you get a good look at painted ceilings and domes. Many churches do not allow you to take pictures inside. When permitted, use of flash is prohibited.\n\nA tip for pilgrims and tourists keen to get a glimpse of the pope: avoid the weekly general audience on Wednesday morning in Piazza di San Pietro, and go to his Sunday angelus instead. This midday prayer service tends to be far less crowded (unless beatifications or canonizations are taking place) and is also mercifully shorter, which makes a difference when you're standing.\n\nMost pharmacies are open Monday\u2013Saturday 8:30\u20131 and 4\u20138; some are open all night. A schedule posted outside each pharmacy indicates the nearest pharmacy open during off-hours (afternoons, through the night, and Sunday).\n\nShop hours vary. Many shops in downtown Rome are open all day during the week and also on Sunday, as are some department stores and supermarkets. Alternating city neighborhoods also have general once-a-month Sunday opening days. Otherwise, most shops throughout the city are closed on Sunday. Shops that take a lengthy lunch break are open 9:30\u20131 and 3:30 or 4\u20137:30 or 8. Many shops close for one half day during the week: Monday morning in winter and Saturday afternoon in summer.\n\nFood shops are open 8\u20132 and 5\u20137:30, some until 8, and most are closed on Sunday. They also close for one half day during the week, usually Thursday afternoon from September to June and Saturday afternoon in July and August.\n\nTermini station has a large, modern shopping mall with more than a hundred stores, many of which are open late in the evening. Pharmacies, bookstores, and boutiques, as well as caff\u00e8, bathrooms, ATMs, and money-exchange services, a first-aid station, and an art gallery and exhibition center can all be found here. The Drug Store here (which oddly doesn't sell medicines) is open every day between 6 am and midnight. It sells sandwiches, fresh fruit, gourmet snacks, toiletries, gifts, and things like cameras, electric razors, and bouquets of fresh flowers (useful if you get an unexpected invitation to someone's home).\n\nTraditionally the worst days to arrive in Rome, or do anything that hasn't been preplanned, are Easter Sunday, May 1 (Labor Day), Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. Expect to find many shops and businesses closed, and only a skeleton transport system working. Ferragosto (the middle weekend of August) will also be very challenging.\n\n### Holidays\n\nIf you can avoid it, don't travel at all in Italy in August, when much of the population is on the move, especially around Ferragosto, the August 15 national holiday, when cities such as Rome are deserted and many restaurants and shops are closed.\n\nNational holidays are New Year's Day; January 6 (Epiphany); Easter Sunday and Monday; April 25 (Liberation Day); May 1 (Labor Day or May Day); June 29 (Sts. Peter and Paul, Rome's patron saints); August 15 (Assumption of Mary, also known as Ferragosto); November 1 (All Saints' Day); December 8 (Immaculate Conception); Christmas Day and the Feast of Saint Stephen (December 25 and 26).\n\n## Mail\n\nThe Italian mail system has improved tremendously with the introduction of a two-tier postal system. A posta prioritaria stamp (first-class stamp) costs \u20ac0.85 and usually guarantees delivery to EEC destinations within three days. Mailing a letter or a postcard from Italy to the United States requires two of these posta prioritaria stamps. A posta prioritaria stamp within Italy costs \u20ac0.60. When you mail letters, pay attention to the mail slot on the mailbox. The red mailboxes have two slots: the slot on the left is for Rome mail, and the slot on the right is for all other destinations, including abroad. Blue mailboxes are for foreign (estero) mail only.\n\nThe Vatican postal service has a reputation for efficiency and many foreigners prefer to send their mail from there, with Vatican stamps. You can buy these in the post offices on either side of Piazza di San Pietro, one next to the information office and the other under the colonnade opposite. During peak tourist seasons a Vatican Post Office mobile unit is set up in Piazza di San Pietro. All letters with Vatican stamps can only be mailed from the Vatican Post Office or Vatican mailboxes located near San Pietro.\n\nLetters and postcards to the United States and Canada cost \u20ac1.60 for up to 20 grams and automatically go airmail. Letters and postcards to the United Kingdom cost \u20ac0.65. You can buy stamps at tobacco shops.\n\nAmerican Express also has a general-delivery service. There's no charge for cardholders, holders of American Express traveler's checks, or anyone who booked a vacation with American Express.\n\nIf you can avoid it, try not to have packages sent to you while you're in Rome or in Italy. Packages sent from abroad are notorious for being stopped by the Italian Customs Office or \"Ufficio Dogonale.\" If your package gets stuck in customs, not only will you likely have to pay hefty customs fees but it could also take weeks for you to receive it. Sending medicine and even vitamins through the mail is highly unadvisable, and if discovered it will definitely be held up in customs for inspection.\n\nMain Branches\n\nMain Rome post office. Piazza San Silvestro 19, Spagna | 00187 | 06\/6797398 | www.poste.it.\n\n## Money\n\nRome's prices are comparable to those in other major capitals, such as Paris and London. Unless you dine in the swankiest places, you'll still find Rome one of the cheapest European capitals in which to eat. Clothes and leather goods are also generally less expensive than in northern Europe. Public transport is relatively cheap.\n\nA Rome 2-km (1-mile) taxi ride costs \u20ac6. An inexpensive hotel room for two, including breakfast, is about \u20ac100; an inexpensive dinner for two is \u20ac45. A simple pasta item on the menu is about \u20ac8, and a \u00bd-liter carafe of house wine \u20ac3.50. A McDonald's Big Mac is about \u20ac4. A pint of beer in a pub is around \u20ac4.\n\nAdmission to the Musei Vaticani is \u20ac15. The cheapest seat at Rome's Opera House runs \u20ac17; a movie ticket is \u20ac7.50. A daily English-language newspaper is \u20ac2.50.\n\nThough more and more places are starting to accept credit cards as method of payment, cash is still king in Rome. This holds especially true for street markets and small mom-and-pop stores and restaurants.\n\nPrices throughout this guide are given for adults. Substantially reduced fees are almost always available for children, students, and senior citizens when it comes to entrances to monuments and museums.\n\nTIP Banks never have every foreign currency on hand, and it may take as long as a week to order. If you're planning to exchange funds before leaving home, don't wait until the last minute.\n\n### ATMs and Banks\n\nYour own bank will probably charge a fee for using ATMs abroad; the foreign bank you use may also charge a fee. Some banks, such as Citibank, which has a branch in Rome (near Via Veneto), don't charge extra fees to customers who use the Citibank ATM. Other banks may have similar agreements with Italian or foreign banks in Rome where customers won't get charged a transaction fee. Check with your bank to see if they have any agreements before your trip. Nevertheless, you'll usually get a better rate of exchange at an ATM than you will at a currency-exchange office or even when changing money in a bank. And extracting funds as you need them is a safer option than carrying around a large amount of cash.\n\nTIP PIN numbers with more than four digits are not recognized at ATMs in many countries. If yours has five or more, remember to change it before you leave.\n\nATMs are common in Rome and are the easiest way to get euros. The word for ATM in Italian is bancomat, for PIN, codice segreto. Four-digit PINs are the standard, though in some machines longer numbers will work. When using an ATM or bancomat, always use extra caution when punching in your PIN and collecting your money.\n\n### Credit Cards\n\nAlways make your credit card company and bank aware that you'll be traveling or spending some time abroad, especially if don't travel internationally very often. Otherwise, the credit-card company or even your bank might put a hold on your card owing to unusual activity\u2014not a good thing halfway through your trip. Record all your credit-card numbers\u2014as well as the phone numbers to call if your cards are lost or stolen\u2014in a safe place, so you're prepared should something go wrong. Both MasterCard and Visa have general numbers you can call (collect if you're abroad) if your card is lost, but you're better off calling the number of your issuing bank, since MasterCard and Visa usually just transfer you to your bank; your bank's number is usually printed on your card.\n\nIf you plan to use your credit card for cash advances, you'll need to apply for a PIN at least two weeks before your trip. Although it's usually cheaper (and safer) to use a credit card abroad for large purchases (so you can cancel payments or be reimbursed if there's a problem), note that some credit-card companies and the banks that issue them add substantial percentages to all foreign transactions, whether they're in a foreign currency or not. Check on these fees before leaving home, so there won't be any surprises when you get the bill.\n\nAlthough increasingly common, credit cards aren't accepted at all establishments, and some require a minimum expenditure. If you want to pay with a card in a small hotel, store, or restaurant, it's a good idea to ask before conducting your business. Visa and MasterCard are preferred to American Express, but in tourist areas American Express is usually accepted. Acceptance of Diners Club is rare.\n\nSome credit card companies require that you obtain a police report if your credit card was lost or stolen. In this case, you should go to the police station at Termini train station or at Rome's central police station on Via San Vitale 15.\n\nReporting Lost Cards\n\nAmerican Express. 800\/528\u20134800 in U.S.,  06\/72282 within Italy | www.americanexpress.com. Diners Club. 800\/234\u20136377 in U.S.,  514\/877\u20131577 collect from abroad,  800\/393939 toll-free in Italy | www.dinersclub.com.\n\nMasterCard. 800\/627\u20138372 in U.S.,  636\/722\u20137111 collect from abroad,  800\/870866 toll-free in Italy | www.mastercard.com.\n\nVisa. 800\/847\u20132911 in U.S.,  303\/967\u20131096 collect from abroad,  800\/819014 toll-free in Italy | www.visa.com.\n\n### Currency and Exchange\n\nThe euro is the main unit of currency in Italy, as well as in 12 other European countries. Under the euro system, there are eight coins: 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, and 50 centesimi (at 100 centesimi to the euro), and 1 and 2 euros. Note: The 1 and 2 euro coins look very similar. Therefore, pay close attention when using these so that you don't overpay. There are seven notes: 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 500 euros.\n\nAt this writing, the exchange rate was about \u20ac0.76 to the U.S. dollar; \u20ac0.76 to the Canadian dollar; \u20ac.83 to the pound sterling; \u20ac.80 to the Australian dollar; and \u20ac.62 to the New Zealand dollar.\n\nTIP Even if a currency-exchange booth has a sign promising no commission, rest assured that there's some kind of huge, hidden fee. (Oh...that's right. The sign didn't say no fee.) And as for rates, you're almost always better off getting foreign currency at an ATM or exchanging money at a bank.\n\nCurrency Conversion\n\nGoogle. Google does currency conversion. Just type in the amount you want to convert and an explanation of how you want it converted (e.g., \"14 Euro\"), and then voil\u00e0. | www.google.com.\n\nOanda.com. Oanda.com also allows you to print out a handy table with the current day's conversion rates. | www.oanda.com.\n\nXE.com. XE.com is a good currency conversion website. | www.xe.com.\n\n## Packing\n\nPlan your wardrobe in layers, no matter what the season. Rome generally has mild winters and hot, sticky summers. Heavy rain showers are common in spring and late fall, so bring some fashionable rain boots. Take a medium-weight coat for winter; a lightweight all-weather coat for spring and fall; and a lightweight jacket or sweater for summer evenings, which may be cool. Brief summer thunderstorms are common, so take a folding umbrella, and keep in mind that anything more than light cotton clothes is unbearable in the humid heat. Few public buildings in Rome, including museums, restaurants, and shops, are air-conditioned. Interiors can be cold and sometimes damp in the cooler months, so take woolens or flannels.\n\nDress codes are strict for visits to the Basilica di San Pietro, the Musei Vaticani, and some churches: for both men and women, shorts, scanty tops, bare midriffs, and sometimes even flip-flops are taboo. Shoulders must be covered. Women should carry a scarf or shawl to cover bare arms if the custodians insist. Those who do not comply with the dress code are refused admittance. Although there are no specific dress rules for the huge outdoor papal audiences, you'll be turned away if you're in shorts or a revealing outfit. The Vatican Information Office in Piazza di San Pietro will tell you the dress requirements for smaller audiences.\n\nMost public and private bathrooms are often short on toilet paper. Therefore, it's best to always carry a small packet of tissues with you.\n\n## Passports and Visas\n\nAll U.S., Canadian, U.K., Australian, and New Zealand citizens, even infants, need a valid passport to enter Italy for stays of up to 90 days. Visas are not required for stays under 90 days.\n\nTIP Before your trip, make two copies of your passport's data page (one for someone at home and another for you to carry separately). Or scan the page and email it to someone at home and\/or yourself.\n\nU.S. Passport Information\n\nU.S. Department of State. 877\/487\u20132778 | travel.state.gov\/passport.\n\nU.S. Passport and Visa Expediters\n\nA. Briggs Passport & Visa Expeditors. 800\/806\u20130581, 202\/338\u20130111 | www.abriggs.com.\n\nAmerican Passport Express. 800\/455\u20135166, 800\/841\u20136778 | americanpassport.com.\n\nPassport Express. 800\/362\u20138196 | www.passportexpress.com.\n\nTravel Document Systems. 800\/874\u20135100, 877\/874\u20135104 | www.traveldocs.com.\n\nTravel the World Visas. 866\/886\u20138472, 202\/223\u20138822 | www.world-visa.com.\n\n## Restrooms\n\nPublic restrooms are a rare commodity in Rome. Although there are public toilets in Piazza di San Pietro, Piazza San Silvestro, Piazza di Spagna, at the Roman Forum, and in a few other strategic locations (all with a charge of \u20ac0.50\u2013\u20ac0.70), the locals seem to make do primarily with well-timed pit stops and rely on the local bar. Most bars will allow you to use the restroom if you ask politely, though it's courteous to buy a little something\u2014such as a bottle of water or espresso\u2014in exchange for access to the facilities. Standards of cleanliness and comfort vary greatly. Restaurants, hotels, department stores like La Rinascente and Coin, and McDonald's restaurants tend to have the cleanest restrooms. Pubs and bars rank among the worst. It's a good idea to carry a packet of tissues with you, as you can't rely on most places having any toilet paper at all. There are bathrooms in all airports, train stations, and in most subway stations. In major train stations you'll also find well-kept pay toilets for \u20ac0.70 and in most museums. Carry a selection of coins, as some turnstiles do not give change. There are also free facilities at highway rest stops and gas stations: a small tip to the cleaning person is always appreciated. There are no bathrooms in churches, post offices, and public beaches.\n\n## Safety\n\nWear a bag or camera slung across your body bandolier-style, and don't rest your bag or camera on a table or underneath your chair at a sidewalk caff\u00e8 or restaurant. If you have to bring a purse, make sure to keep it within sight by wearing it toward the front. Women should avoid wearing purses that don't have a zipper or that don't snap shut. Men should always keep their wallet in one of their front pockets with their hand in the same pocket. In Rome, beware of pickpockets on buses, especially Line 64 (Termini\u2013St. Peter's train station); the Line 40 Express, which takes a faster route, and Bus 46 which takes you closer to St. Peter's Basilica; and subways\u2014and when making your way through the corridors of crowded trains. Pickpockets often work in teams and zero in on tourists who look distracted or are in large groups. Pickpockets may be active wherever tourists gather, including the Roman Forum, the Spanish Steps, Piazza Navona, and Piazza di San Pietro. Purse snatchers work in teams on a single motor scooter or motorcycle: one drives and the other grabs.\n\nGroups of gypsy children and young women (often with babies in arms and a scarf or a shawl wrapped around their shoulders) are present around sights popular with tourists and on buses and are adept pickpockets. One well-tried method is to approach a tourist and proffer a piece of cardboard with writing on it. While the unsuspecting victim attempts to read the message on it, the children's hands are busy under it, trying to make off with wallets and valuables. If you see such a group, do not even allow them near you\u2014they are quick and know more tricks than you do. The phrases Vai via! (Go away!) and Chiamo la polizia (I'll call the police) usually keep them at bay. The colorful characters dressed as Roman legionaries, who hover around the Colosseum and other monuments, expect a tip if you photograph them. A \u20ac5 tip is quite sufficient.\n\nThe difficulties encountered by women traveling alone in Italy are often overstated. Younger women have to put up with much male attention, but it's rarely dangerous or hostile. Ignoring whistling and questions is the best way to get rid of unwanted attention. Women who care to avoid uncomfortable eye contact with strangers tend to wear big sunglasses. Women should also be aware that smiling at others can sometimes be viewed as a sign of flirtation in Italy. Do be careful of gropers on the Metro and on Buses 64 and 46 (Vatican buses) and 218 and 660 (Catacombs). They're known to take advantage of the cramped space. React like the locals: forcefully and loudly. TIP Distribute your cash, credit cards, IDs, and other valuables between a deep front pocket, an inside jacket or vest pocket, and a hidden money pouch. Don't reach for the money pouch once you're in public.\n\nTransportation Security Administration (TSA). www.tsa.gov.\n\n## Taxes\n\nThe service charge and IVA, or value-added tax (V.A.T.), are included in the rate except in five-star deluxe hotels, where the IVA (15% on luxury hotels) may be a separate item added to the bill at departure.\n\nMany, but not all, Rome restaurants have eliminated extra charges for service and for pane e coperto (a cover charge that includes bread, whether you eat it or not). If it is an extra, the service charge may be 12%\u201315%. Only part, if any, of this amount goes to the waiter, so an additional tip is customary.\n\nAlways ask for an itemized bill and a scontrino, or receipt. Officially you have to keep this receipt with you for 600 feet from the restaurant, bar, or store and be able to produce it if asked by the tax police. Sound absurd? It's something of a desperate measure for the country with the highest taxes in Europe and the highest levels of tax evasion\/avoidance, and there have been cases of unwitting customers falling foul of the law, even though this practice is meant to catch noncompliant restaurants.\n\nBe advised that the vendors selling imitation knock-off purses, sunglasses, and other accessories are unauthorized street vendors. If caught buying from any of these street vendors, you could be served with a hefty fine by Italy's tax police (Guardia di Finanza). Value-added tax (IVA in Italy, V.A.T. to English-speakers) is 23% on luxury goods, clothing, and wine. On most consumer goods, it's already included in the amount shown on the price tag; on services, such as car rentals, it's an extra item. If a store you shop in has a \"euro tax free\" sign outside and you make a purchase above \u20ac155 (before tax), present your passport and request a \"Tax Free Shopping Check\" when paying, or at least an invoice itemizing the article(s), price(s), and the amount of tax.\n\nTo get an IVA refund when you're leaving Italy, take the goods and the invoice to the customs office at the airport or other point of departure and have the invoice stamped. (If you return to the United States or Canada directly from Italy, go through the procedure at Italian customs; if your return is, say, via Britain, take the Italian goods and invoice to British customs.) Once back home\u2014and within 90 days of the date of purchase\u2014mail the stamped invoice to the store, which will forward the IVA rebate to you.\n\nV.A.T. Refunds\n\nGlobal Blue. 800\/566\u20139828, 0331\/1778 000 within Italy | www.global-blue.com.\n\n## Time\n\nRome is one hour ahead of London, six ahead of New York, seven ahead of Chicago, and nine ahead of Los Angeles. Rome is nine hours behind Sydney and 11 behind Auckland. Like the rest of Europe, Italy uses the 24-hour (or \"military\") clock, which means that after 12 noon you continue counting forward: 13:00 is 1 pm, 23:30 is 11:30 pm.\n\nTime Zones\n\nTimeanddate.com. Timeanddate.com can help you figure out the correct time anywhere. | www.timeanddate.com\/worldclock.\n\n## Tipping\n\nMany Rome restaurants have done away with the service charge of about 12%\u201315% that used to appear as a separate item on your check\u2014now service is almost always included in the menu prices. It's customary to leave an additional 5% tip, or a couple of euros, for the waiter, depending on the quality of service. Tip checkroom attendants \u20ac1 per person, restroom attendants \u20ac0.50. In both cases tip more in expensive hotels and restaurants. Tip \u20ac0.05\u2013\u20ac0.10 for whatever you drink standing up at a coffee bar, \u20ac0.25 or more for table service in a caff\u00e8. At a hotel bar, tip \u20ac1 and up for a round or two of cocktails, more in the grander hotels.\n\nFor tipping taxi drivers, it is acceptable if you round up to the nearest euro. Railway and airport porters charge a fixed rate per bag. Tip an additional \u20ac0.50, more if the porter is very helpful. Not all theater ushers expect a tip; if they do, tip \u20ac0.25 per person, more for very expensive seats. Give a barber \u20ac1\u2013\u20ac1.50 and a hairdresser's assistant \u20ac1.50\u2013\u20ac4 for a shampoo or cut, depending on the type of establishment and the final bill; 5%\u201310% is a fair guideline.\n\nOn sightseeing tours, tip guides about \u20ac1.50 per person for a half-day group tour, more if they're very good. In museums and other places of interest where admission is free, a contribution is expected; give anything from \u20ac0.50 to \u20ac1 for one or two people, more if the guardian has been especially helpful. Service station attendants are tipped only for special services.\n\nIn hotels, give the portiere (concierge) about 15% of his bill for services, or \u20ac2.50\u2013\u20ac5 if he has been generally helpful. For two people in a double room, leave the chambermaid about \u20ac1 per day, or about \u20ac4\u2013\u20ac6 a week, in a moderately priced hotel; tip a minimum of \u20ac1 for valet or room service. Increase these amounts by one half in an expensive hotel, and double them in a very expensive hotel. In very expensive hotels, tip doormen \u20ac0.50 for calling a cab and \u20ac1 for carrying bags to the check-in desk, bellhops \u20ac1.50\u2013\u20ac2.50 for carrying your bags to the room, and \u20ac2\u2013\u20ac2.50 for room service.\n\n## Tours and Guides\n\n### Orientation Tours\n\nSome might consider them campy and kitschy, but guided bus tours can prove a blissfully easy way to enjoy a quick introduction to the city's top sights\u2014if you don't feel like being on your feet all day. Sitting in a bus, with friendly tour guide commentary (and even friendlier fellow sightseers, many of whom will be from every country under the sun), can make for a delightful and fun experience\u2014so give one a whirl even if you're an old Rome hand. Of course, you'll want to savor these incredible sights at your own leisure later on.\n\nAppian Line, Carrani, Vastours (in collaboration with American Express), and other operators offer half-day and full-day tours in air-conditioned buses with English-speaking guides. The four main itineraries are: \"Ancient Rome,\" \"Classic Rome,\" \"Christian Rome,\" and \"The Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel.\" Half-day tours cost around \u20ac35 and full-day tours (including lunch and entrance fees) are between \u20ac100 and \u20ac137. The Musei Vaticani tour costs \u20ac60, but offers the advantage of not having to queue (sometimes for an hour or more) at the museum doors, awaiting your turn for admission. All the companies pick you up at centrally located hotels.\n\nAll operators can provide a luxury car for up to three people, a limousine for up to seven, or a minibus for up to nine, all with an English-speaking driver, but guide service is extra. Almost all operators offer \"Rome by Night\" tours, with or without dinner and entertainment. You can book tours through travel agents.\n\nVarious sightseeing buses following a continuous circle route through the center of town operate daily. Stop-'n'-Go has eight daily departures and makes 14 scheduled stops at important sites, where you can get on and off at will. Check with the Rome tourist information kiosks or inquire at your hotel for prices and further information.\n\nThe least expensive organized sightseeing tour of Rome is that run by ATAC, the municipal bus company. Double-decker Bus 110 leaves from Piazza dei Cinquecento, in front of Termini station, but you can pick it up at any of its 10 stopover points. A day ticket costs about \u20ac18 and allows you to stop off and get on as often as you like. The price includes an audio guide system in six languages. The total tour takes about two hours and covers the Colosseum, Piazza Navona, St. Peter's, the Trevi Fountain, and Via Veneto. Tickets can be bought on board. Two-day and three-day tickets are also available. Tours leave from Termini station every 20 minutes between 9 am and 8:30 pm.\n\nThe Archeobus, which takes you to the Old Appian Way, the Catacombs, and the new Park of the Aqueducts in the open countryside, also operates with the stop 'n' go formula. Little 15-seater buses leave from Piazza della Cinquecento every hour between 10 am and 4 pm. Tickets cost \u20ac12 and are valid all day. A combined 110 and Archeobus ticket costs \u20ac25 and is valid for one day.\n\nOf course, you get a real bargain if you do your sightseeing \"tours\" of Rome by public transport. Many buses and trams pass major sights. With a single \u20ac1 ticket you can get in 75 minutes of sightseeing (or an entire day, with a \u20ac4 giornaliero ticket). Time your ride to avoid rush hours. The little electric Bus 116 scoots through the heart of Old Rome, with stops near the Pantheon, the Spanish Steps, and Piazza del Popolo, among others. The route of Bus 117 takes in San Giovanni in Laterano, the Colosseum, and the Spanish Steps.\n\nSince certain parts of the historic center are open to pedestrians only, some walking is involved in most escorted bus tours of the city. Don't forget to dress appropriately for visits to churches . Tour operators can also organize minibus tours for small parties.\n\nBus Line\n\nATAC. 06\/57003 | www.atac.roma.it.\n\nTour Operators\n\nAmerican Express. 06\/67642250 | www.americanexpress.com\/italy.\n\nAppian Line. 06\/48786601 | www.appianline.it.\n\nCarrani. Via Vittorio Emanuele Orlando 95, Repubblica | 00185 | 06\/4742501 | www.carrani.com.\n\nCiao Roma Trolley Tour. 06\/47824580 | ciaoromaopenbus.com.\n\nSegway Roma Tours. 380\/3012913 | www.segwayroma.net.\n\nStop-'n'-go City Tours. 06\/48905729.\n\nVastours. 06\/4814309 | www.vastours.it.\n\n### Special-Interest Tours\n\nYou can make your own arrangements (at no cost) to attend a public papal audience at the Vatican or at the pope's summer residence at Castel Gandolfo. The easiest way is to request them online through the Santa Susanna Church, the American Catholic Church of Rome (www.santasusanna.org\/popevatican\/tickets.html). You can also book through a travel agency for a package that includes coach transportation to the Vatican for the audience and some sightseeing along the way, returning you to your hotel, for about \u20ac35. The excursion outside Rome to Castel Gandolfo on summer Sundays for the pope's blessing costs about \u20ac45. Agencies that arrange these tours include Appian Line and Carrani.\n\nTourvisa Italia organizes lunch and dinner boat trips on the Tiber, departing and returning to Ponte Sant'Angelo. Boats leave four times daily for a cruise that covers all of the main historical bridges of Rome and other important sights. Tickets cost approximately \u20ac35 for lunch and \u20ac55 for dinner. The company also does combined bus and boat tours lasting 2\u00bd hours.\n\nA ride in a horse-drawn carriage is the Rome equivalent of a gondola ride in Venice. Coachmen can be contacted directly at popular sights like St. Peter's Square and the Colosseum. An hour's ride for four passengers to view the fountains of Rome will cost around \u20ac150, depending on your bargaining skills.\n\nCentro Studi Cassia organizes courses in Italian cooking, art, music, and current events in simple Italian. This is an enjoyable way to learn to speak some of the language and, at the same time, find out more about the culture and traditions of the country.\n\nTour Operators\n\nAppian Line. 06\/487861 | www.appianline.it.\n\nCarrani. Via Vittorio Emanuele Orlando 95, Repubblica | 00185 | 06\/4742501 | www.carrani.com.\n\nCentro Studi Cassia. 06\/33253852 | www.centrostudicassia.it.\n\nTourvisa Italia. 06\/448741 | www.tourvisa.it.\n\n### Walking Tours\n\nIn Rome, there are tours and there are tours. Why pay to be led around by someone who just memorizes some lines and gives you the run-of-the-mill tour, when you can learn firsthand from the experts? Context Rome is an organization formed by a group of architects, archaeologists, art historians, sommeliers, and professors that give specialized walking seminars to small intimate groups (no more than six people) in and around Rome. Every day of the week offers five or six theme walks, which might include Imperial Rome: Architecture and History of the Archaeological Center; Underground Rome: The Hidden City; Baroque Rome: The Age of Bernini; Vatican Collections, and even Rome Shopping. Prices range from \u20ac55\u2013\u20ac75 per person. If you want to graduate \"summa cum laude\" as a serious Rome tourist and aficionado, the walking tours of Context Rome\u2014with 26 PhDs and 25 Masters docents in its ranks\u2014can't be beat. Similar to Context, Walks of Italy focuses on sustainable travel and also gives specialized tours of Rome in small, intimate groups.\n\nAll About Rome, Enjoy Rome, Through Eternity, and Argiletum Tour also offer some fascinating walking tours of the city and its sights. Argiletum and the cultural association Genti e Paesi offer regular walking tours and museum visits in English, including private tours of the Sistine Chapel before all the hordes arrive. Book at least one day in advance. For a popular food tour that's off-the-beaten path, check out Eating Italy Food Tours, in Testaccio. Owner Kenny Dunn takes you behind the scenes at the Testaccio open-air food market, various mom-and-pop restaurants, and specialty food shops and explains the history of this working-class neighborhood and the \"slow food\" movement in Italy. If you have a reasonable knowledge of Italian, you can take advantage of the free guided visits and walking tours organized by Rome's cultural associations and the city council for museums and monuments. These usually take place on weekends. Programs are announced in the daily papers and in the weekly magazine roma c'\u00e8.\n\nThose who want to see everything during their trip to Rome without eliminating their daily run or workout might consider hiring a guide from Sight Jogging Tours. The company consists of highly experienced trainers that give tours of Rome based on the level of difficulty chosen by the client. Routes may take in Villa Borghese, Imperial Forum and Colloseum, St. Peter's Basilica, and many other sights. Trainers meet tourists at their hotel and take them back after the run is over. Most tours take 45\u201360 minutes and cost about \u20ac85 per person per hour.\n\nTour Operators\n\nArgiletum Tour. Via Madonna dei Monti 49, Monti | 00184 | 06\/45438906 | www.argiletumtour.com.\n\nContext Rome. Via Santa Maria Maggiore 145, Santa Maria Maggiore | 00184 | 06\/97625204 within Italy,  800\/691\u20136036 within the U.S. | www.contexttravel.com.\n\nEating Italy Food Tours. 800\/838\u20133006 from the U.S. or Canada,  800\/4118881 within Europe | www.eatingitalyfoodtours.com.\n\nEnjoy Rome. Via Marghera 8\/A, Termini | 00185 | 06\/4451843 | www.enjoyrome.com.\n\nGenti e Paesi. Via Adda 111, Parioli | 00198 | 06\/85301755 | www.gentiepaesi.it.\n\nSightjogging. 347\/3353185 | www.sightjogging.it.\n\nThrough Eternity. 06\/7009336 | www.througheternity.com.\n\nWalks of Italy. 334\/9744274 within Italy,  202\/684\u20136916 within the U.S. | www.walksofitaly.com.\n\n### Excursions\n\nMost operators offer half-day excursions to Tivoli to see the fountains and gardens of Villa D'Este. Appian Line's afternoon tour to Tivoli includes a visit to Hadrian's Villa, with its impressive ancient ruins, as well as the many-fountained Villa D'Este. Most operators also have full-day excursions to Assisi, to Pompeii and\/or Capri, and to Florence.\n\nTour Operator\n\nAppian Line. Piazza Esquilino 6\/7, Esquilino | 00185 | 06\/48786601 | www.appianline.it.\n\n### Personal Guides\n\nYou can arrange for a personal guide through the main APT (Azienda Per Turismo) Tourist Information Office.\n\nTour Operator\n\nAPT. Via Parigi 11, Repubblica | 00185 | 06\/51687240.\n\n## Trip Insurance\n\nComprehensive trip insurance is valuable if you're booking a very expensive or complicated trip (particularly to an isolated region) or if you're booking far in advance. Comprehensive policies typically cover trip cancellation and interruption, letting you cancel or cut your trip short because of illness, or, in some cases, acts of terrorism in your destination. Such policies might also cover evacuation and medical care. Some also cover you for trip delays because of bad weather or mechanical problems as well as for lost or delayed luggage.\n\nAnother type of coverage to consider is financial default\u2014that is, when your trip is disrupted because a tour operator, airline, or cruise line goes out of business. Generally you must buy this when you book your trip or shortly thereafter, and it's available to you only if your operator isn't on a list of excluded companies.\n\nAlways read the fine print of your policy to make sure that you're covered for the risks that most concern you. Compare several policies to be sure you're getting the best price and range of coverage available.\n\nInsurance Comparison Info\n\nInsure My Trip. 800\/487\u20134722 | www.insuremytrip.com.\n\nSquare Mouth. 800\/240\u20130369, 727\/564\u20139203 | www.squaremouth.com.\n\nComprehensive Insurers\n\nAllianz Global Assistance. 800\/284\u20138300 | www.allianztravelinsurance.com.\n\nTravel Guard Chartis. 800\/826\u20134919 | www.travelguard.com.\n\nCSA Travel Protection. 800\/348\u20139505 | www.csatravelprotection.com.\n\nTravelex Insurance. 888\/228\u20139792 | www.travelex-insurance.com.\n\nTravel Insured International. 800\/243\u20133174, 603\/328\u20131707 emergency travel assistance | www.travelinsured.com.\n\n## Visitor Information\n\nRome has an APT (Azienda Per Turismo) Tourist Information Office in the city center. Green APT information kiosks called Punti Informativi Turistici (P.I.T.), with multilingual personnel, are near the most important sights and squares, as well as at Termini station and Leonardo da Vinci and Ciampino airports. They're open 9\u20131 and 3\u20137:30 and provide information about cultural events, museums, opening hours, city transportation, and so on. You can also pick up free tourist maps and brochures.\n\nIn Rome\n\nAPT Tourist Information Office. Via Parigi 11, Termini | 00185 | 06\/51687240.\n\nCall Center\u2013Comune di Roma Ufficio Turismo. 06\/0608 | www.060608.it.\n\nENIT. (Italian Government Tourist Board). Via Marghera 2\u20136, Termini | 00185 | 06\/49711, 039\/039039 | www.italiantourism.com.\n\n### Online Resources\n\nThe Turismo Roma website is www.turismoroma.it and is packed with information about events and places to visit. For more information specifically on Italy, visit www.italiantourism.com, www.initaly.com, and www.wel.it. Other particularly useful sites are www.romeguide.it and www.unospitearoma.it, both of which have English versions. You may also want to consult www.ahotelinitaly.com. Particularly provocative, fascinating, and up-to-date are the monthly Web issues of The American, a popular English magazine based in Rome; their website is www.theamericanmag.com. Magnificent is the only word to describe this passionate writer's ode to the city's treasures of art and architecture, replete with hundreds of photos and little-known facts: www.romeartlover.it. An official website for many of Rome's most famous sights, and a place to make ticket reservations, is www.pierreci.it. If you're particularly curious about the history of food and where to get the best of it in Rome, check out this comprehensive blog www.parlafood.com. One example of a top website devoted to one sight in Rome is www.capitolium.org. A dynamic organization offering unusual tours and news about what's happening in Rome is www.nerone.cc, and www.museionline.it has invaluable links to almost all the city's many museums and galleries together with news of the latest exhibitions, opening hours, and prices. A handy guide to the bus lines threading Rome and its surrounding areas is www.cotralspa.it.\n\nPrevious Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Table of Contents\n\n# About our Writers\n\nPerpetual traveler, adventurer, and champion of worthy artistic causes, Lynda Albertson is a writer, editor, and founding member of the Caf\u00e9.Blue list-serve. Today, she lives in Rome where she serves as CEO for the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art (ARCA), an international nonprofit that examines contemporary issues in art crime and cultural heritage protection. In addition, she serves as copy editor and writer for the Journal of Art Crime and the Art Crime Blog (http:\/\/art-crime.blogspot.it). For this edition, she updated our Shopping chapter.\n\nAfter her first Italian coffee and her first Italian bacio in 1999, Nicole Arriaga just knew she'd have to find a way to make it back to Rome and moved to the Eternal City in 2003 to earn her Master's in political science. There Nicole freelances for several publications including Romeing, 10Best, and The American. When not writing, Nicole works as a programs coordinator for an American Study Abroad organization based in Rome. For this edition, she updated our Experience Rome chapter (which she wrote for our last edition), and also updated our Where to Stay chapter and Travel Smart section.\n\nHappy not to have a car, Rome resident (and teacher at the city's University of Tor Vergata) Martin Wilmot Bennett spends much of his time walking around, an ideal activity which has paid off royally in our \"Good Walks\" chapter. In addition, his vast background in Italian art led to his writing our special features on Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling and the Bernini\/Borromini rivalry.\n\nErica Firpo writes for an array of publications including New York Times, Huffington Post, Fathom, Oryx, and Insight Guides. In addition, she has penned a series of restaurant guide books starting with Rome Little Black Book, and is author of Rome Select. She also covers fashion, art and life-style issues in her blog (moscerina.com). For this edition, she updated our Nightlife\/Arts chapter and wrote our photo-feature on the Campo de' Fiori.\n\nDana Klitzberg is a chef and culinary expert from New York City. After studying in Florence and traveling to Italy for a decade, she moved to Rome in 2000, after completing culinary school in Manhattan (and cooking in top Italian eatery San Domenico NY). Once top toque in various Roman restaurants, she now works in several \"foodie\" areas through her company Blu Aubergine (www.bluaubergine.com): catering, private chef services, restaurant consultant, cooking class teacher, and a leader of culinary tours around Rome. A food and travel writer, this University of Virginia grad updated our Where to Eat chapter, which she originally penned years back.\n\nJournalist, traveler, and blogger, Amanda Ruggeri lives just down the street from the Colosseum. After graduating from Yale, getting a master's in international relations from Cambridge, and working as a reporter in Washington, D.C., she made her way to Rome\u2014and has never looked back. Today, she writes for the New York Times, Guardian, New York Magazine, National Geographic Traveller, and AFAR. She's also appeared on the History Channel as a documentary host, provided travel consulting sessions to Italy-bound travelers, and filmed a series of news clips for Vocativ. Her blog (www.revealedrome.com) features tips, tricks, and things not to miss in the Eternal City.\n\nAn award-winning travel writer, Margaret Stenhouse has written for The Herald and the International Herald Tribune's \"Italy Daily\" supplement, is author of The Goddess of the Lake: Legends and Mysteries of Nemi, and updated our Side Trips from Rome chapter.\n\n### Fodor's Rome, 9th Edition\n\nEditors: Robert I. C. Fisher, Denise Leto\n\nEditorial Contributors: Lynda Albertson, Nicole Arriaga, Erica Firpo, Dana Klitzberg, Amanda Ruggeri, Margaret Stenhouse\n\nEditorial Production: Linda Schmidt, Evangelos Vasilakis\n\nDesign: Jessica Ramirez, Jennifer Romains\n\nEbook Production: Lillian Sullam\n\nCOPYRIGHT\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2013 by Fodor's Travel, a division of Random House, Inc.\n\nFodor's is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.\n\nAll rights reserved. Published in the United States by Fodor's Travel, a division of Random House, Inc., and in Canada by Random House of Canada, Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.\n\nNo maps, illustrations, or other portions of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.\n\n9th Edition\n\nISBN 978-0-87637-179-4\n\nExcerpted from Fodor's Rome (978\u20130\u2013307\u201392935\u20138)\n\nAN IMPORTANT TIP & AN INVITATION\n\nAlthough all prices, opening times, and other details in this work are based on information supplied to us at publication, changes occur all the time in the travel world, and Fodor's cannot accept responsibility for facts that become outdated or for inadvertent errors or omissions. So always confirm information when it matters, especially if you're making a detour to visit a specific place. Your experiences\u2014positive and negative\u2014matter to us. If we have missed or misstated something, please write to us. We follow up on all suggestions. Contact us at fodors.com\/contact-us.\n\nENRICH YOUR EXPERIENCE WITH FODORS.COM\n\nResearch your destination. Talk to like-minded travelers. Get great deals. Sign up for Fodor's weekly newsletter.\n\nPHOTO CREDITS\n\nRome Cover, \u00a9 SIME \/ eStock Photo   \nAlbum 1, Angelo Campus   \nAlbum 2, M. Tumchewics, Fodors.com member   \nAlbum 3, Denyskuvaiev | Dreamstime.com   \nAlbum 4, Berhbs, Fodors.com member   \nAlbum 5, Amy Nichole Harris\/shutterstock   \nAlbum 6, Judith A. Reardigan, Fodors.com member   \nAlbum 7, Corbis   \nAlbum 8, Paul D'Innocenzo   \nRome Contents, Chris Marlow, Fodors.com member.   \nExperience Rome, Vicki Hatfield, Fodors.com member.   \nRome Today, Angelo Campus.   \nWhat's Where, eclypse78\/shutterstock.   \nRome Planner, Paul D'Innocenzo.   \nTop Rome Attractions, Angelo Campus.   \nTop Rome Museums, Angelo Campus.   \nTop Rome Churches, Angelo Campus.   \nRome Like a Local, Angelo Campus.   \nRome With Kids, Angelo Campus.   \nGreat Itineraries in Rome, behemuthm, Fodors.com member.   \nFree and Almost Free, Losevsky Pavel\/shutterstock.   \nBeating the Euro, Paul D'Innocenzo.   \nRomantic Rome, Day two (a Ponte Milvio nun ce sta pi\u00f9 spazio)   \nRoma, Piazza Trevi by Lidal-K http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/solidal\/3401443921 Attribution-NoDervis-License   \nGood Walks: Baroque Rome, Trastevere, The Forum, Angelo Campus.   \nWalking in Rome, 10459 Rome - Santa Maria in Cosmedin by xiquinhosilva http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/xiquinho\/3507030896\/ Attribution-License   \nA Stroll Through the Baroque Quarter, magestalk\/shutterstock.   \nTrastevere: The Village Within the City, Ackab Photography\/shutterstock.   \nRome of the Emperors: A Roman Forum Walk, Paul D'Innocenzo.   \nRome Neighborhoods, Paul D'Innocenzo.   \nAncient Rome, Corbis.   \nThe Vatican, Paul D'Innocenzo.   \nNavona and Campo, cathies, Fodors.com member.   \nCorso and Spagna, saluki00, Fodors.com member   \nRepubblica and Quirinale, Khirman Vladimir\/shuttestock.   \nVilla Borghese and Piazza Del Popolo, April Nelson, Fodors.com member.   \nTrastevere and the Ghetto, Paul D'Innocenzo.   \nAventino, Angelo Campus.   \nEsquilino and Celio bepsy\/shutterstock.   \nWhere to Eat in Rome, Angelo Campus.   \nThe Scene, Angelo Campus.   \nRestaurants By Neighborhood, Alexander Bark\/shutterstock.   \nWhere to Stay in Rome, Courtesy of Hotel Majestic.   \nThe Scene, Courtesy of Hotel Eden.   \nHotels by Neighborhood, Sputnikcccp\/wikipedia.org.   \nNightlife and the Arts, Asier Villafranca\/shutterstock.   \nThe Scene, Angelo Campus.   \nNightlife and the Arts By Neighborhood, Mark Burrows (Nottingham, UK)\/shutterstock.   \nShopping, Angelo Campus.   \nThe Scene, Erica Duecy.   \nShopping By Neighborhood, Erica Duecy.   \nSide Trips From Rome, Franco Volpato\/shutterstock.   \nWelcome to Lazio, Where the Organ in Villa d'Este is located by Avinash Kunnath http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/avinashkunnath\/3750715602\/ Attribution-License   \nOstia Antica, Ariy\/shutterstock.   \nTivoli, dave tonkin\/iStockPhoto.   \nThe Castelli Romani, Franco Volpato\/shutterstock.   \nTravel Smart Rome, Shirali Pandya, Fodors.com member.   \nGetting Here, Angelo Campus.   \nEssentials, Cyndy Doty, Fodors.com member. \n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\nSara Pascoe\n\n# _**Animal** _\n\nThe Autobiography of a Female Body\n\nFor Rosa, Hollie, Violet and all the other flowers.\n\n# Contents\n\n  1. Title Page\n  2. Dedication\n  3. Too Many Introductions __ \n  4. Meet the Book \n  5. Meet Me \n  6. Are You a Woman? \n  7. Love \n  8. Falling into Love \n  9. How We Fall \n  10. What's Mine Is You \n  11. Happily Ever After? \n  12. Body \n  13. Is There Any Body with You? \n  14. Bums, Boobs and Clever Old Fat \n  15. Blood and Babies \n  16. No Babies Just Blood \n  17. You Have Genitals! \n  18. Consent \n  19. Musings on Fear \n  20. Fantasy Versus Fiction \n  21. The Dangers of Assumption \n  22. How Old Is Old Enough? \n  23. Afterword & Charitable Organisations \n  24.   25. Selected Reading \n  26. Shouty Appendix \n  27. Acknowledgements \n  28. About the Author \n  29. Copyright\n\n#  _**Too Many Introductions** _ \n\n# Meet the Book\n\nWriting a book is an arrogant thing to do.\n\nI do stand-up for my main job, and that's pretty arrogant too. At work, I'm the only person in the room who is allowed to talk, I'm the only one who gets to have a microphone and essentially I make everyone sit there and listen to me going on about myself and my thoughts and ideas. A book is an even longer version of that, but I have so much to say that a gig wouldn't be long enough to fit it all in.\n\nFor a while I've been researching various theories of female sexuality. I thought that if I could learn to understand hormones and desire and brain functions then maybe I could make better life decisions, maybe I wouldn't be so confused by myself. I had this idea that just like dogs and pigs and dolphins, human beings are animals. And so, like other animals, we should have a programmed set of instinctual behaviours, but no one seems to agree what they are. I wondered if perhaps our cultures, religions and societal pressures had concealed our animal natures, even from ourselves. I kept visualising the modern human as a battleground with inherited instinct pulling us one way and learned propriety pulling us another and all of us struggling to understand or like ourselves.\n\nI wanted to unravel us.\n\nWhen I researched more around this topic, I realised there are two distinct investigations currently going on. There are the excellent scientists who are deciphering the codification of behaviour written in our genes, the physical shaping of our bodies by evolution and the emotional capacity of our brains. And separately, there are the cultural commentators; the sociologists, philosophers and feminists who write about society and media and modern reality, who discuss how women's bodies are treated, fetishised, worshipped, denigrated or controlled.\n\nI wanted to bring these two separate conversations together. To highlight some of the aspects of womanhood I am struggling with, to discuss what science can teach us and how culture can hurt us. I want to tell you fascinating things about our ancient ancestry and the terrors of recent civilisation, and to ponder the relevance for us alive guys, us now-timers. I want to show you that for every woman in the world, knowledge* and communication are the finest form of self-defence. That empowerment lies in comprehending ourselves as beasts and in accepting ourselves as we were built.\n\n* I'll be suggesting lots of further reading for you at the end.\n\n# Meet Me\n\nHello! My name is Sara* and I am thirty-four. I am English, Caucasian. I live in London in a flat that doesn't allow pets. I have no religion but a lot of faith. I have always wanted to write a book.\n\nWhen I was eighteen years old I decided to apply for Cambridge University. I'd read somewhere that being part of the Footlights drama society was a great way to become a famous actor, which had been my ambition since realising I did not want a proper job. I put Cambridge as the top choice on my UCAS form. My predicted grades weren't good enough, so I had a chat with my kindly teachers and begged them to predict me As rather than Cs. Geoffrey, my psychology tutor, said I wouldn't be properly prepared for the interview without coaching. I explained that my aunty Juliet had seen a news programme saying that there was pressure on Oxbridge to admit more students from working-class families and so I reckoned I'd be alright, then I worked my class right out of there.\n\nAND I GOT AN INTERVIEW! They have to interview everyone who applies, and I was thrilled to be one of those lucky 'everyone'. My mum decided to take the day off work and come with me. I borrowed some of her clothes to wear. My sisters had no one to drop them at school so they came too. The four of us went for breakfast in Cambridge city centre. My mum talked about how we'd all move there to live some day, while I ate egg muffins. We got lost on the way to the college. It was called Corpus Christi, which like all Latin means 'you don't belong here'. I was fifteen minutes late for a twenty-minute interview, but I didn't let that upset me. I was from a working-class family, raised in Dagenham then Romford. I had an Essex accent and my mum's suit on. I was exactly what they were looking for.\n\nI was interviewed by the Oldest Man in the World. His office was full of piled-up books. 'This is just like my bedroom,' I told him, 'except in my bedroom it's clothes.' He creaked a question: 'Why do you want to study philosophy at Cambridge?'\n\n**SARA**  \nI want to come to Cambridge so I can be in Footlights.\n\n**OMITW**  \nWhy philosophy?\n\n**SARA**  \nI think it's really really good.\n\n**OMITW**  \nWho have you read?\n\n**SARA**  \nJostein Gaarder. _Sophie's World_?\n\n_OLDEST MAN IN THE WORLD shakes head and speaks very slowly as if recalling an awful war._\n\n**OMITW**  \nI was concerned this would happen, but so far you are the first one.\n\nThen I pronounced Plato and Socrates exactly as you do if you've only ever seen them written down: 'Plateau is mega good. As was So-crates.' Then I left.\n\nIt took me a decade to realise what the old man's comment about _Sophie's World_ had meant. I'd loved that book because it introduced me to some really complicated concepts, because it summarised philosophers and their ideas so simply. And of course that was the Cambridge don's problem: it gave Essex girls in their mum's clothes the audacity to think they might understand anything.\n\nBut I didn't know that yet. I was so exhilarated being in that ancient churchy building, and I had another interview that I wasn't late for. I told this much more Normally Aged Man that I wanted to be in Footlights and then famous and, hopefully, friends with Stephen Fry.\n\n**NAM**  \nAnything else? Apart from acting?\n\n**SARA**  \nI'm going to write a book about sex and my generation.\n\n**NAM**  \nWhy?\n\n**SARA**  \nI just think it's really interesting.\n\n**NAM**  \nWhy?\n\n**SARA**  \nIt's _really_ interesting.\n\nIn the back of the car on the way home I tried to read a book about Wittgenstein, but I kept getting distracted by my own excitement at how well I'd nailed the interviews and how much fun I was going to have being in Footlights. And it would be scary to move away from home, but I would expand my mind and learn to ride a bike and have a little bed in a little room and fall in love with an intellectual boy who was homosexual and I was VERY surprised to receive a rejection letter two weeks later. Clearly they weren't as hungry for commoners as Aunty Juliet had led me to believe.\n\n'At least you got an interview,' my mum kept telling me.\n\nThat was half my lifetime ago and look at me now, curled up with you and Stephen Fry, reading a book I wrote about sex and my generation. I think it's really interesting and I hope you find lots to think about too.\n\nDream big, kids. May all your rejections quickly become laughable, because anyone who says no to you is an idiot. Xxxxx\n\nImportant question before we start...\n\n* My name doesn't have an 'h' on it, but it's pronounced Sarah not Sah-rah. Make sure you are pronouncing it correctly in your head.\n\n# Are You a Woman?\n\nWhen I do my job, I'm referred to as a 'female comedian'. With most occupations, being a doctor or teacher or chef or whatever, you are defined by the type of work you do. But my job title also includes my gender. I don't do it any differently to the non-females, I stand there speaking words, sometimes walking from side to side or throwing a hand in the air. My boobs don't get in the way or make me fall off the stage or anything, yet 'female' pre-empts my 'comedian'. Like a disclaimer. I don't hate this and I'm not angry, but it's made me notice gender more than I would have otherwise.\n\nLots of jobs have feminised titles: wait _ress_ or mer _maid_. There are women who work under a male title, firemen or postmen, a lazy catch-all that maybe they get annoyed about? Sometimes I am called a comedienne, which I like, because it makes me sound French and cooked. The thing that's odd about people noticing or commenting or presuming as to my gender is that they do; notice and comment and presume. I never told anyone. I didn't ring up for my first gig and announce, 'Hello there, I'm a _woman_ , could I possibly have five minutes of your stand-up comedy next Tuesday?'\n\nI was twenty-six when I started doing gigs and I'd been female all of my life. I'd been dimly aware of that from pregnancy scares and the difficulty of urinating standing up but it'd never been commented upon when I entered a room. I'd always identified as a person. Human being. Ordinary. But when I began to perform at stand-up nights, bookers would say, 'It's always nice to have a woman on.' They might warn the audience, 'The next act is a woman,' so they wouldn't be shocked and topple their chairs. People might wait afterwards to tell me that I was 'good for a girl' or that they 'usually hated female comedians'. Or they would give me helpful advice like 'You shouldn't talk so much about lady stuff.' No one was cruel or nasty. No one explicitly told me, 'This is a man's job, you are not welcome.' But I was baffled. Why did my being a woman seem so noticeable to everyone else? Why was it the first thing that they saw?\n\nWhen I became more successful, after a few years on the circuit, I would do interviews for radio stations or local papers. They would ask me, 'What's it like being a female comedian?' and I never knew how to answer. Did they want logistics? I travel to shows on a train, I write words down in a pad. 'It's such a male industry,' they might helpfully clarify. 'What's it like to be a woman?' When I really think about it, I have no idea what it is like to be a woman. I've no experience of gender or species apart from my own. I've nothing to compare it to. I cannot fathom anything other than being inside _my_ mind and body. That question is asking me to extend my subjective experience to all women, to speak universally and comparatively of a gendered condition, and that's an existential ask for someone promoting a Wednesday night 'Chucklefest' above a pub in Norwich.\n\nWhenever someone wants a gender comparison, I remember the Greek myth about Tiresias. He was a man, but then he got turned female for seven years after hitting some snakes. And because he had experienced shagging as both sexes, Zeus asked him whether men got more pleasure from sex, or did women enjoy it more? Tiresias said women got ten times as much pleasure as men. But of course this is MYTH not science. You cannot compare the genders in any quantifiable way. You just can't. We can't understand the world from anyone's perspective but our own.\n\nSo I've become hyper-aware of my womanhood and that's made me think a lot about what gender even _is_. I have daydreams where I wonder: what if I woke up with a penis? Would I still be a woman? Imagine someone as a horrible prank has sewn a penis on me, and I have to walk about with it in my trousers, but \u2013 I'd still feel like a woman, I'd just be a woman with a penis. So it's not my genitals that define me... so what then? Ovaries, womb. If they were removed, I'd still be a woman. I'd be a wombless woman. With a penis. If I took lots of testosterone, had my breasts removed, had a deep voice and a beard and short hair... at what point would I drop the 'female' and become a comedian? I have decided it's my mind that's woman. It's my narrator. It's my relationship to myself, and oddly, nothing at all to do with my body.\n\nTo return to my question 'Are you a woman?', the only person who can answer that is you. You define for yourself what gender means and how you fit within it, if at all. For a long, boring time, gender has been a binary with sweeping fictional stereotypes. 'Men are physically stronger than women,' an idiot shouts. No they're not. If you took all the strongest women and pitted them against the weakest men, the women would thrash them. _All_ men are not stronger than _all_ women, there's about a hundred million exceptions, and if there are that many exceptions then it's not a rule. Ditto boys don't cry, girls are nurturing, women aren't hairy, blah blah blah, it's a prison. An invisible trap we've unknowingly lived in while wondering why the boys are so frustrated and aggressive and the women spend so much of their energy hating themselves and we're all so needlessly unhappy. Every time you hear someone say 'men are like this' \u2013 or 'women are like that' \u2013 they're wrong and you should stop listening. There is no statement that is irrevocably and absolutely true across an entire gender through culture and time and geography. Except male toilets always smell worse, but apart from that\u2014\n\nA lot of negative things have been allowed to happen because we believe our gender defines us, or that there is a correct way of being male or female. If you are reading this book it means you are one of the luckiest people in the world \u2013 I can presume that you live in the first world. You are educated to a high reading standard; you have leisure time and a little money and live under a government that allows you to think your own thoughts.\n\nWe can free ourselves from invisible prisons. We escape from old ideas by replacing them with new ones.\n\nThe book I have written is about the experience of growing up in a female body and with the physiology of a female body, and this excludes the experiences of many women. But gender is a mere idea. It's a spectrum, you can slide up and down on it or stay solidly placed \u2013 what I'm trying to say is that it's likely your way of being a woman is completely different from mine. I identify as female and I'm heterosexual. And I'll always be white. My subjective world-view cannot speak for all women's experience or reality. I forgive myself for this, and hope that you will too. I'm not attempting to be the last word in a conversation, I just want to be part of it, and then I'll sit back and listen some more.\n\n# Love\n\n# Falling into Love\n\nI often think about how effortless my life would be if I was a mouse; running between cupboards, shagging all the time and doing tiny poos. I would respond instinctively to my environment and never question or analyse. I wouldn't need horoscopes or psychology. If something is scary, run away; if something smells nice, have a bite. Unfortunately, tens of thousands of years ago, my ancestors developed a complex awareness and intelligence that made responsive simplicity impossible for me. And for you.*\n\nHere is a _rough_ timeline of where we come from:\n\n2.5 billion years ago: The first organisms utilise oxygen.\n\n1.5\u20132 billion years ago: The first cell with a nucleus.\n\n510 million years ago: Fish invented.\n\n300 million years ago: First mammally things.\n\n245 million years ago: Dinosaurs all over the place.\n\n220 million years ago: First proper mammals.\n\n65 million years ago: No more dinosaurs (phew).\n\n20 million years ago: Our great ape ancestors diverge from old-world monkeys.\n\n5 million years ago: First humanoid ancestors, the _Australopithecus_ guys.\n\n2.8 million years ago: _Homo habilis_ start getting more people-y, using stone tools etc.\n\n1.8 million years ago: _Homo erectus_ , based in Africa. Brain size 74 per cent of ours.\n\n200,000 years ago: Anatomically modern _Homo sapiens_ arrive \u2013 let's party!\n\n60,000 years ago: Human migration from Africa.\n\n40,000 years ago: Our cousins the Neanderthals die out.\n\n35,000 years ago: Evidence of cave art: we're getting creative.\n\n10,000 years ago: Agriculture begins: we're getting organised.\n\n5,000 years ago: Written language: using symbols to communicate\/do tax returns.\n\n4,500 years ago: Pyramids built. Humans will continue to cover the earth with architecture as well as creating computers, aeroplanes, acid rain and the Vajazzle.\n\n400-odd years ago: Shakespeare writes plays so good they have to be explained to you.\n\n22 May 1981: Sara Patricia Pascoe is born. Evolution is complete, humanity is perfected.\n\nI've taken the approximate dates above from people who seem to know what they're talking about\/have written books with good Amazon reviews. But there are elements about which experts disagree, not to mention people who have a fundamental religious belief.\u2020 My ex-boyfriend's mum used to say that evolution was 'all a bit far-fetched' and I used to laugh and laugh, which is more enjoyable than arguing with someone. I haven't spent my life studying fossils, all my knowledge is secondary. If you prefer a different explanation for how human beings came into existence then you're welcome to read the following as a fable and we can still be friends.\n\nEvidence for the gradual shaping and sudden mutations of human evolution comes from our own DNA structure and skeletons\u00b6 found underground. Scientists use recovered bones to find out about our ape and _Homo_ relatives that are no longer around, and to trace our species's physiological development from tree-dwelling, plant-eating idiocy up to our bipedal, less hairy, super-brainy current state.\n\nI'd like to give you a compliment now: YOU ARE SO CLEVER. So clever. No matter how you did in your GCSEs, no matter how often you've forgotten where you put your tea and knocked it over, you are exceptional. You have a HUGE brain. It's too big. It's embarrassingly large. It's proportionally massive, roughly three times bigger than an orang-utan's or chimpanzee's, twice as big as a gorilla's. And it's not just insanely huge, it is brilliant at communicating with itself. It's adaptive. If you became blind as a child, your brain can map the world using non-visual spatial awareness. If you're deaf, your brain reorganises to comprehend language via visual stimuli. If you're a black-cab driver you'll have a phenomenal, muscular memory while if you're an alcoholic you'll suffer protective blackouts. Our brains change how they function in order to be as efficient as possible according to how we use them. This process is called neuroplasticity and it takes place continually throughout our lives.\n\nYour large and elastic brain allows you to interpret the world in a way that your ancient ancestors couldn't. It was developed over thousands of generations as a survival tool, for mapping landscapes and predicting behaviours. For hunting and pretending and cooking and protecting. It makes empathy possible as well as the ability to manipulate empathy in others. From the second you were born, your brain has been collecting information in order to make you stronger and more prepared for whatever you might find in the world. Your brain interprets and encodes everything that happens outside and inside of you into what we call 'meaning'. It translates vibrations into music, reflected light into scenery, the movements and vocalisations of other _Homo sapiens_ into friends and enemies; it literally creates your world, and you alone live there.\n\nAs strange as it sounds, some of our brain's 'thoughts' are unconscious. We all have instinctual impulses and these are inherited because they enabled our survival. A good example is hunger. No one needed to teach you to want feeding; your body responds that way because for millions of years the mammals who were impelled to eat periodically were far more likely to successfully breed than those malnourished losers who felt no impetus. You have the genes of the hungry. It's inbuilt inside you, you're pre-programmed. The conscious part of the brain is the bit that gets you fed. That's how your ancestors knew where to forage, or how to track an animal. It's how you manage to ask directions to the nearest supermarket and select a baguette filling you think you'll enjoy.\n\nPerhaps your conscious mind is working away right now, thinking, 'UM, excuse me lady but I _don't_ actually _feel_ hunger. I never know when to eat, I'd starve to death if someone didn't tell me to have a banana occasionally\u2014'\n\nWell okay then you: throughout this book I will be making sweeping, generalised statements that are true for the majority of the human race. Not for everyone. There will always be exceptions and abnormalities. We are a very varied species; every generation displays a wide range of possibility. If we were all exactly the same, certain environments or circumstances would've wiped us out in our uniform unsuitability. The outliers and the unusual are our species insurance: curiosities and anomalies have enabled us to survive. So you're unique and unusual, well done, now pop off and eat your banana.\n\nThe desire for sex could be called instinctual, it's a\u2014\n\n**YOU AGAIN**  \nNot for _me_ , I'm asexual.\n\nPlease don't speak with your mouth full. For the _vast majority_ of adult people, the desire to have sex appears as an instinct. No one has to sit you down and encourage you: 'Look at that guy over there, doesn't he have lovely arms?' But with sexual instinct, the interplay of desire and its satisfaction is more complicated than having a sandwich or reheating lasagne. It involves other people, both as objects of desire and as possible sex partners. I cannot have sex with everyone I want to. I cannot have sex every time I feel the urge. I have to hide the majority of my sexual feelings due to social expectation, cultural education and politeness. We all laugh when a dog humps someone's leg; his life is free of rules and shame. He does not ask himself, 'Does this leg fancy me back? Will it be insulted or offended? Is it a married leg? Or underage?' No, he jumps on and grinds away as his body instructs him. The dog can't get the leg pregnant, so we can just laugh \u2013 what an idiot \u2013 but the instinct he's obeying will mean sometimes that leg _is_ another dog and puppies will be made. So it works, it's a great system. The dog's urges result in more dogs for the world, HOORAY!\n\nUnlike a dog, you'll have been taught about sex, whether in detail or implicitly. From your parents, school videos, watching _Dirty Dancing_ when you were eleven and not quite understanding it, you'll have absorbed a trillion messages about what sex is and how you are meant to feel about it. And now, my friend, you're a tug-of-war. Pulled one way by your unconscious desires, pulled back and restrained by the rules of behaviour that your society and upbringing have foisted on you. Instinct on one shoulder, expectation on the other. Add this to the false construction of female sexuality that's flung at you from porn, TV and women's magazines and you're all set for difficulty orgasming confusion.\n\nYou'll have heard phrases about humans being a 'higher' species, but interestingly only from other humans. COINCIDENCE? We arrogantly believe we're the best animal on the block. We even categorise ourselves separately. People assume they're superior to chimps and zebras because those guys don't keep diaries or go on yoga retreats. Humans can wear clothes and learn the saxophone and of course this differentiates us, but we're also warm, furry and don't know when to stop eating; we're conscious animals, but beasts none the less. While we might feel in control of the decisions we make, while we might be able to justify every single thing we do, underneath our behaviour, simmering away, are our evolved predispositions. We are overly proud of our consciousness and it causes us to ignore our nature, or to misunderstand it.\n\nLove exists in many species but is classified as 'pair bonding' or 'mating behaviour'. In non-human animals we view it very simply as a 'reproductive trait', an inherited behaviour that aids breeding. Yet when it happens to US, when we feel it for ourselves, jeepers creepers, we don't shut up about it \u2013 I've got an exercise book filled with quotes I copied out during my teens. Pages of them; Germaine Greer, Oscar Wilde, Dolly Parton, Glenn Hoddle, my sister Kristyna and my friend Siobhan scribbled alongside Chinese curses, sections of the musical _Rent_ , Paul McCartney, Kriss Akabusi and William Wallace via Mel Gibson. As you'd expect, most of the quotes are about love. About how it's worth dying for or fighting for and life is not worth living without it. That it is immortal, priceless, liberating, courageous, comforting and\u2014\n\nLove is described like GOD.\n\nThinkers, novelists, poets and musicians use religious language about a basic and fundamental emotion. The effect is to mystify rather than decipher. Sure, romantic love can be an overwhelming and powerful experience but, you know, so can desperately needing the toilet, and we comprehend that in a totally unsophisticated way. No poems or songs about the anguish of looking for a bathroom; the torture of a locked door, the urinal that got away. Love has a PR team, and we've been left with two choices, worship or doubt. Either we subscribe to the scriptures and believe love is metaphysical quasi-wizardry or we atheistically spurn it and screw like earthworms in the mud.\n\nOR we could investigate why it feels so huge. We could learn about hormones and neurotransmitters, evolved behaviours, cultural norms and the effects of environment. We could, as objectively as possible, consider ourselves animals for a little while and see if our emotions begin to make more sense.\n\n* I'll be presuming you're a human for the entirety of this book.\n\n\u2020 If, in the future, the theory of evolution is proved to be a massive prank by the Christian God to test our faith I'll be the first to apologise and beg to get into heaven. I want to live forever\u2021\n\n\u2021 I want to learn how to fly \u00a7\n\n\u00a7 high.\n\n\u00b6 Spooky.\n\n# How We Fall\n\nIf you were an alien visiting Earth from outer space and you had to fill in a quick form about how different species procreate and rear their young, most animals would be easy. You'd whizz through them.\n\nSalmon: Female lays eggs in riverbed and male sprays them with sperm. Female protects nest until she dies about a week later.\n\nGiraffe: Males compete to court a female in oestrus. She raises calf with little involvement from father.\n\nCat: Female mates with local male, gestates for sixty-three days, has kittens. Feeds them for five or six months until they head out on their own. No male involvement in rearing.\n\nUntil you got to us.\n\nHuman: Female has a bath, puts on a nice dress and goes to All Bar One...\n\nHmmm, you'd think, chewing a pencil with one of your mouths, these human beings don't seem to have predictable behaviours. They _say_ they mate for life, except very few of them do. Most claim to be sexually faithful, yet many aren't and all find it extremely difficult. They _say_ that children are brought up by their two parents, except loads are adopted or brought up by one parent or a step-parent or a grandparent or, very occasionally, wolves... and then you think, 'Sod it, it's too complicated, I'll leave that one blank,' and so you get a C on your Visiting Planet Earth assignment and now you'll never make the electronic egg that birthed you proud.\n\nIf all animals have a natural mating and bonding pattern, what is ours? I'm not even an alien and I'm confused. Are we supposed to be monogamous, but culture and modernity have made it very difficult? Or was monogamy foisted upon us by religions in the olden times, and that's why we struggle with it now? What I've been TOLD by, you know, soap operas, cartoons, rom-coms, women's magazines, novels, pop music, dating websites, sex education and every single episode of _Friends_ is that the _ideal_ relationship occurs between two people, is emotionally and sexually committed and should last for life. Anything shorter than 'for life' is a false start, any infidelity means things are 'not right'.\n\nLooking at species more closely related to us for answers, we find a wide range of sexual and social behaviours:\n\nGorilla: Several females live together accompanied by one male that they mate with. He gets overthrown when a younger fitter male comes along.\n\nChimpanzee: A group of males and females live together and practise lots of social mating. Females are most attracted to dominant males, and males are most attracted to older females who have already successfully reared offspring.\n\nOrang-utan: Female lives alone on her territory and is visited periodically by a male. He may visit several females.\n\nGibbon: Both genders are social but exhibit very strong pair bonds and are often described as monogamous.\n\nSo here's a question. WHY such a range? They're all apes, shouldn't they be more similar?\n\nAll animals procreate and cohabit in the way that's most suitable for their environment, or rather, environment dictates the most profitable breeding patterns for all animals. Factors like food scarcity or predators will determine whether working as an extended family group is the best reproductive strategy, or whether daddy needs to stick around and help out. And remember this is not conscious. Gorillas don't have AGMs where they sip tea and discuss the benefits of a maleled harem. They have evolved this behaviour over hundreds of thousands of years, because the genes of those who preferred such an arrangement were more likely to survive and be carried through subsequent generations. The best mating strategies proved themselves in numerous offspring and over generations this creates predictable behaviour.\n\nModern humans were shaped by exactly the same process, and so you, alive right now and riding a motorcycle, are physically equipped for life in the African savannah around forty thousand years ago. Your psychology, hobbies and dress sense will have changed in the meantime, but your instincts haven't. Your culture has transformed but not your nature; you're the same animal in different trousers. So in order to find out whether we should be staking out a territory or getting a gang together for a sex party, we need to investigate what our ancestors did relationship-wise.\n\nCANCEL THE ORGY! The science books say we lived in social groups but with strongly bonded pairs raising their own children.\n\nIt is obviously very difficult to be absolutely sure about the behaviours of our long-dead ancestors. Until someone invents a time machine, working out what the _sapiens_ of a hundred thousand years ago were up to is supposition. Some behaviours leave physical traces \u2013 we know when humans were using tools and cooking food because evidence has been found and dated \u2013 but we know little about the sex lives of those primitive people. There are no fossilised love letters demanding fidelity or cave paintings depicting nuclear families, so how have the scientists reached their conclusion?\n\nThe strongest evidence is 'body dimorphism'. This is what they call the size difference between genders and it is indicative of alternative mating strategies. Throughout nature polygynous mating results in males that are bigger than females. (Polygynous = males having multiple female partners, but I am sure you knew that already.) When there is competition amongst males, being larger makes it much easier to dominate your opposition and anyone you're trying to get off with. And if larger males are more successful at mating, more of their genes will be replicated in offspring. Here's a human analogy: imagine that massive male wrestlers were each impregnating hundreds of women while preventing any weedy non-wrestlers from getting their leg over \u2013 what a sexy story! After several hundred generations the genes for smallness would be much rarer. So when mating is competitive, all males become larger. The females do not increase in size, as this does not have an impact on their ability to reproduce. In human terms, a lady wrestler does not insist that all males only have sex with her and prevent weedy non-wrestler ladies from ever getting any, although I have to say I would have to respect her position if she did.\n\nSO, gorillas have a large body dimorphism, with males being 1.5 times bigger than the females, and orang-utans even more, with males being twice as big. Both these species are polygynous \u2013 it's all adding up so far, well done science. With chimps, who are also polygynous, there is less dimorphism, with males being only 1.3 times larger than females. This is because chimpanzee females mate with a lot of males, so while being big is still an advantage for the males, it's not _as_ important. Basically, the females put out more so there's a wider gene spread; keep it up, ladies. And then you have gibbons, who are monogamous and have genders almost exactly the same size, with a dimorphism of only 1.02. Which is what we were expecting from this theory, excellent.\n\nWe're all excited to find out: what about humans? What is our dimorphism? My current boyfriend is much taller than me, but my ex-boyfriend was almost the same height. Should I take my shoes off before you measure me? Oh, they've already worked it out \u2013 PREPARE THE ANNOUNCEMENT TRUMPET:\n\nHuman males are ON AVERAGE 1.1 times larger than human females.\n\nSo that's more dimorphism than gibbons, less than chimps. If we extrapolated purely from the evidence of gendered body size we'd believe that it's in our nature to practise monogamy rather than polygyny. Our ancestors utilised a mating system where everyone gets paired up, even the skinny and tiny. We use this measurement to indicate that our male ancestors were not competing for females in a way that would make size an advantage. Perhaps a very slight advantage, or maybe females preferred _slightly_ bigger men, hence this small disproportion.\n\nThere is another possibility to consider when it comes to explaining our dimorphism, but we need to understand something else first, something scientists can be sure about.\n\nWe bond. You'd agree with that? In whatever form it finally takes, however long it lasts, we have evolved to love the socks off each other. Hopefully you'll have case studies in your own life to verify this. I certainly have; I loved my first person at sixteen and have been crazy for loving people off and on ever since. But let us stroke our beard thoughtfully and ask _why_? Why do some species of animal pair-bond and others don't? Cats and giraffes and salmon aren't bothering, so why are we?\n\nIs the answer:\n\na) Boredom.\n\nb) Guilt.\n\nc) Fear of being alone.\n\nd) Parental investment.\n\nThat's correct! The amount of parental investment required in raising a baby human is the reason we love so deeply.\n\nA salmon hatches and can swim and feed and go about her business without any need for her parents. A baby giraffe is born able to run around and fight and play, and can reach up and suckle from her mother without assistance. Kittens are physically restricted for the first few weeks of their lives. They are suckled by their mother, and when she goes out to hunt she leaves them well hidden. She is able to protect and feed them by herself until they are strong enough to do it for themselves.\n\nNow let's imagine a human baby, a few minutes old. She cannot swim off and live her life like a salmon; she needs looking after. She can't nurse without assistance like a giraffe, so she needs an exceptionally nurturing and caring parent who does everything for her. Let us imagine her mother, a human woman: she can lactate to feed her baby but she has to hold the baby while she suckles. She can't put her child down as it is exceptionally vulnerable. Babies know this. It's why they cry so much, it's like an alarm going off: 'NO ONE'S HOLDING ME I'M ABOUT TO BE EATEN BY SNAKES AND FOXES.' It is tricky for a mother to forage or hunt while carrying her baby and for a few days after birth she may find any movement difficult. How is she going to create a warm place to sleep? Or protect herself and her baby from wildebeests? Imagine you, an hour after childbirth in the African savannah... could you put up a tent? Could you run from a scary zombie vampire predator?\n\nA cat is equipped to successfully raise her kittens alone, but a human woman isn't. She needs help. And this brings us back to that big brain of ours.\n\nRemember when I was complimenting that immense organ you keep under your hat? Well, its development radically adapted our bodies. As the human brain increased in size, the female frame had to accommodate producing it. Millions of years ago we evolved a much wider, flexible pelvis in order to birth the huge skulls of our babies, skulls that have to remain soft and flexible themselves in order not to kill mummy on the way out. At some point in the last million generations, the human brain became so big that it couldn't complete its growth _in utero_. Human women give birth to part-baked, premature babies. It's an evolutionary compromise. If human babies developed to the same point as newborn chimps, they'd need to gestate for two and a half years and all women would die giving birth. That means no children would have mothers, and they would be much less likely to survive into adulthood. Women who gave birth earlier, to smaller, less developed babies, were more likely to survive, and although their newborns needed more attention and nurturing, their children had better odds of becoming adults. Thus it was those 'premature birth' genes that were carried into future generations. As you'll be aware, even with a gestation of only nine months, giving birth is still a precarious, critical undertaking. Over three hundred thousand women die in labour every year, even in countries with advanced maternity practices and western medicine. Making a baby is the most dangerous thing a woman can do, and that is the cost of our minds.\n\nHuman babies need more parental investment than any other animal on the planet; we require feeding, protecting and educating much, much longer than any other ape. We are born completely incapable and take years and years of growth before we can keep ourselves alive without assistance. A woman cannot raise a child all by herself. I'd be annoyed at that statement if I was reading this \u2013 I come from a single-parent family where my mum did everything. Perhaps you did too? My mum probably _could_ put up a tent in the African savannah with a baby on her tit and placenta dangling between her legs, she's that kind of lady. When I say that one parent isn't enough, I'm talking about pre-civilised times in a hunter-gatherer society. We have stocked fridges now, and pizza delivery and hardly any wolves, so it's easier \u2013 although, if my mum's temper was anything to go by, still really really hard.\n\nBeing born so (comparatively) early means human babies spend all their early life lying about growing their brains. They make a MILLION new brain cells every twenty seconds and this can use up to four fifths of their body's energy. If I was going to design baby clothes I'd put the slogan 'Mind-growing is mind-blowing!' on the front in neon, and then on the back a flashing LED screen showing the brain's gradual expansion with a trail running underneath saying 'Five times larger than expected for an animal our size!!!!!!' People would say those clothes were unsafe for young children and prohibitively expensive, and they would be right. So I'd go out of business, having lost all the savings I'd invested. I'd have to go back to temp work, where I'd cry at my desk and eat yogurts. This sad story is just one example of the great things brains can come up with!\n\nSo human babies are rubbish at taking care of themselves. They can't hold their own head up for about six months and they have a hole in their skull where the bones are growing together called the fontanelle. They require CONSTANT and INTENSE attention which is super-demanding. When a chimp gives birth, her baby can grip immediately, so she can chuck it on her back and swing away through the trees straight to the cocktail bar some other trees. Human mothers are encumbered by the care their offspring need, and in pre-civilised times would require the assistance of a family group. The families who helped each other and worked together in childrearing would have been much more likely to have their kids reach adulthood. Hence we've evolved to have strong, loyal feelings towards family members. The genes of the isolated were lost.\n\nThe greatest factor affecting whether a child survived her infancy was mothering, and so much mothering was needed \u2013 more than one mother could give. Human babies needed at least two mums, and thus our species evolved a new, second kind of mum, a boy one, sometimes referred to as a 'dad'.\n\nIt works like this: a baby with two caregivers has a much higher chance of surviving. Just like a male's large size being a strength in polygynous species, the ability to bond with sexual partners and their offspring is a strength in ours. And the more our ancestors bonded, the better they did. The more they loved each other, the harder they worked to provide and keep everyone alive and stop baby falling in the river and things like that. The genes for pair bonding have strengthened generation upon generation for millennia. The parents who wanted to be together with their partners were the evolutionary victors. And it's a huge set of emotions and compulsions. It's not a muted 'Oh, I should probably help out, that's the right thing to do' but a bellowed 'I WILL DIE WITHOUT THIS PERSON THEY ARE BETTER THAN ANYTHING ELSE THAT HAS EVER EXISTED I CAN WATCH THEM GOING TO THE TOILET AND STILL WANT TO KISS THEM OH GOD OH GOD MY BODY IS NOT BIG ENOUGH TO WITHSTAND THE FORCE OF MY FEELINGS.'\n\nLove.\n\nThe difficulty of keeping human infants alive has necessitated the deep, terrible way we fall in love with each other; you have to _really_ like someone not to run away into the forest when they're holding a crying shitty baby. None of us would be here without love, our species would have diminished and disappeared. There is no fate, there are no souls or stars crossing or 'The Ones'. Our powerful emotion is an inbuilt survival tactic. It's a primordial glue, sticking us together to continue the species. You're correct, I _should_ design Valentine's Day cards.\n\nI know it's more magical and less sciencey when you _feel_ love, but that's why it works. Reduce the power, turn the volume down and humanity would have died out. Imagine a world with no human beings: the planet would be unpolluted, there'd be no SeaWorld, no factory farming, no animal testing, thousands fewer extinctions and many more rainforests \u2013 who'd want that?\n\nSo we bond, we love each other, and now we know _why_ , it is time to ask _how_.\n\nLet's talk about magnetic resonance imaging, often referred to as an MRI or sometimes as an _f_ MRI (the _f_ stands for 'functional', I know that because I asked someone). If you've never had an MRI, you just get in a big tube and lie down at the hospital. They tell you they can see your brain and which parts of it you are using at certain times and the machine makes a lot of cranking noises and you feel claustrophobic and you want to move but you're not allowed or your brain pictures will be blurry and you get quite frightened and think, 'I wonder if this was a clever trick to kill me? Pretend to be an experiment on comedians' brains and then zap me while I'm in here?' Then you think, 'OH SHIT, could they see me having that thought?' and then 'Could they see me having that one?' and then you think, 'I'd better not picture anything rude,' and so you think about bottoms non-stop for twenty minutes until they let you out again and you're not dead which is a relief and they show you pictures of your brain and it's all there, which is another one.\n\nHere is a picture of my brain thinking about bottoms. It is my favourite photo that has ever been taken of me:\n\nScientists have conducted experiments in MRIs to find out what parts of the brain are activated when we feel love. They showed participants pictures of their lovers and WHOA their brains lit up like a brain in an MRI. The two most active areas were found to be the caudate, which is involved with cravings, and the ventral tegmental, which produces dopamine.\n\nDopamine is a neurotransmitter you should know about. It affects pleasure and motivation. Technically it is a chemical reward from your brain, but it just feels like happiness. Imagine natural highs: helping a frail old man across the road, finding \u00a35 on the floor, flying a kite while a cute puppy kisses you \u2013 these things cause dopamine to be released and then you feel chilled and amazing. Drugs like cocaine also release dopamine, which is why some people like putting it up their nose so much and don't realise how boring it makes them at parties.\n\nThe MRI experiments revealed that when people are in love, the interaction of dopamine becomes heightened; it gets _greedy_. The ventral tegmental floods the caudate with dopamine and the caudate signals the ventral tegmental to send it more dopamine please in a delightful cycle and the result is intense elation.\n\n_Roses are red,_\n\n_Violets are blue_\n\n_I get a big hit of dopamine_\n\n_When I see you!_\n\nThis all-encompassing, delicious, dopamine-fuelled romantic love is experienced as something you crave and can't get enough of; you'll never be full, you'll never be sated and you'll never feel more alive. It's a cascade of chemicals that makes you _need_ to be near your chosen person. It is the exact same brain process as addiction, and that's how it's experienced; consuming your attention, taking over your dreams and all your waking thoughts in between. Behaviour may verge on the obsessive and it can be physically painful to be separated from your love \u2013 bodily reactions don't get stronger or more compelling than this. Such feelings may arise during a sexual relationship or inspire you to start one, and TA-DA, you've been paired up all nice and ready for childrearing.\n\n'Er, Miss Pascoe,' says Laura with her hand in the air, 'but I'm on the pill actually so my body doesn't need to bond me to sex partners.'\n\nThis is the interesting thing: we have sex all the time that we know won't result in children \u2013 because we're using contraception, or we're post-menopausal, or our boyfriend is a woman \u2013 but our body doesn't recognise that. Our brain will produce neurotransmitters and hormones and all of the accompanying physiological cacophony because this is what evolution has programmed it to do. We have not evolved a 'non-reproductive sex' switch, because there would have been no genetic advantage in doing so.\n\n'What about unrequited love?' asks Stephanie sadly, drawing a picture of Ronan Keating.\n\nIf you love someone who doesn't love you back or maybe someone you haven't even met, the brain reacts in the same way. Think of it as motivational. You've picked someone to pair-bond with and you're getting dopamine hits as an incentive to solidify the relationship. Although this brain function evolved to influence and strengthen pair bonding, it is often hijacked by non-reproductive loves. The caudate and ventral tegmental areas have been shown all lit up in the MRIs of very religious people talking about their god, and it facilitates the 'relationships' people have with animals or inanimate objects as well as adulation of celebrities. In such instances, the intense emotion and euphoria surrounding the object of love will be as real as for those in consensual relationships with actual humans who exist. Perhaps knowing this should make us more sympathetic to each other and our crazy non-rational love lives. For instance there is a Swedish woman who 'married' the Berlin Wall in 1979. Her name is Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauer \u2013 that's right, she took his name. She's been interviewed talking about her 'husband', and it is easy to laugh at the things she says, like how sexy he was and how much fun they had together. But then I remember that her feelings are as real as anyone else's and how strange it must have been on the day the Berlin Wall was torn down; everyone in the world celebrating her husband's murder and the desecration of his corpse while she alone was\u2014\n\n'Okay then,' asks Poppy, pointedly getting us back on topic, 'if this bonding thing is true, why didn't I fall in love with all the guys I've had sex with?'\n\nEveryone in the class laughs because it sounds like Poppy has done it with loads of people. 'SHUT UP EVERYONE,' I say strictly, 'Poppy has asked a really, really important question.'\n\nIf our body thinks all sex could make us pregnant, shouldn't _all_ sex make us start pair-bonding? I've had it both ways \u2013 not an innuendo \u2013 I've had sexual experiences with boys I wasn't really into, but afterwards I got a post-coital crush on them. A bit obsessed. And even years later, if I bump into them I'm very aware of needing their attention and wanting them to like me and I HATE it. It makes me feel vulnerable and rejected and see-through. I might not have wanted them to be my boyfriend, but I needed _them_ to want to be my boyfriend, or at least to see me again, and I was a bit hurt when they didn't. I would ideally list the full names of the boys who rejected me here and I'll be honest, I thought the whole point of getting to write a book was REVENGE ON THOSE WHO HAVE WRONGED ME but apparently this has LEGAL RAMIFICATIONS and I'm not allowed. I'll save it for my Oscars acceptance speech. If I happen to die before I win my award for Best Actor in a YouTube Video, there is a list of men hidden inside a spotted teapot in my kitchen. Find it, read it out at my funeral and ensure the whole event is televised. Please. Or I'll haunt you.\n\nI'll tell you about one guy from ages ago. I worked with him at the Millennium Dome, which gives you a clue of exactly how ages ago it was. I hadn't really noticed him but he asked me out on a date and I had never been on a proper date before so I said yes to be grown-up. We went to a bar and then for a long walk and I enjoyed myself fine and we went back to his flat because it was nearest. I was on my period but didn't find a good time to mention it, one never wants to seem presumptuous \u2013\n\n**ROB** ( _casual_ )  \nWould you like to have another drink at my place?\n\n**SARA** ( _smiling_ )  \nYes please, and also, in unrelated information, my womb is currently shedding its lining.\n\nLater in his bed, once it was clear that we were going to have sex, I was too embarrassed to say anything, because we were already having sex and he didn't seem to notice, then we fell asleep. In the morning bright sun shot between the blinds and onto the murder scene. A bloody hand print on the wall. Streaks on his white covers and sheets. 'Ha ha ha,' I laughed encouragingly and alone. He asked me to leave so I asked if I could stay and he said no. And all of a sudden I really liked him, and I checked my phone constantly that day, and that night I sent him psychic messages to text me. But he didn't and when I saw him at work he ignored me and a week later he started going out with someone else in our department. She once told me her boobs were getting bigger from all the sex she was having and I had jealousy about her breasts and her boyfriend. A few years ago I would _still_ think about him occasionally so I friend-requested him on Facebook and he must still have been thinking about me too because he replied, 'Where do I know you from?' So I'm glad I ruined his bedsheets, good old bloody womb. And now I don't care about him at all and can't even remember him and what was I even talking about?\n\nOh yes, the point I am making is that I liked him so much more _after_ sex than before. He felt really important and relevant and I suffered seeing him and being blanked by him and watching him kiss someone else. But I've had the same experience reversed as well. Make yourself comfortable as Old Sara P. reads you another tale from her _Sexual Anecdotes_ (Volume One, 1998\u20132002).\n\nI lived in a big shared house with nine other people, one of whom was Italian and couldn't speak English. His name was Tomaso, and whenever I passed him in the corridor he would giggle because he was stoned and say ' _Ciao bambina_ ,' which was super-hot. We started holding hands when we watched television, and we wrote each other letters that we translated sat side by side with an Italian\u2013English dictionary. One evening Tomaso sat on my bed and drew pictures of Sideshow Bob from _The Simpsons_ and they were so good that I kissed him. He then mounted me straight away and started pulling my trousers down. I wanted him to use a condom but was struggling to find the word in Italian, and he laughed and kept repeating ' _protezione_ ', which, if there had been a mood, would have killed it. And then we had sex while my inner monologue congratulated me: 'Isn't it amazing that he seems so into this while you feel absolutely nothing?' He came and went. And the next morning he was back and I was saying ' _non_ ' and he was miming and trying to tell me something. I can't be sure what it was, my best guesses are that he used to be a food reviewer for a magazine _or_ he'd given fellatio for money. I avoided him for days as he put letters and Sideshow Bob pictures under my door and when he knocked I pretended to be asleep. Then I arranged to move out, and did; bin bags of belongings in a taxi cab while Tomaso was at work one day.\n\nWith Tomaso I liked him a lot _less_ after sex than before \u2013 I more than disliked him: he repelled me, I wished he didn't exist. And it wasn't just because the sex was of poor quality, I've had rubbish lays that I still fancied madly afterwards. I've had _loads_ of those. #bragging\n\nWhy do we get attached to some sex partners and not others? Is it:\n\na) Astrology.\n\nb) God decides.\n\nc) Parental investment.\n\nd) For compatibility take letters of both surnames, give numerical worth from alphabet position then add, divide and show as a %.\n\nYep, the answer is still parental investment. Having a child with someone is such a monumental drain of time and energy, such a precious and precarious expenditure, that we are very fussy about who we undertake it with, which translates into 'who we are willing to bond with'. Remember you have evolved to have these feelings because sex _can_ make babies, not because you _are_ literally having them or planning to.\n\nTo simplify this using my examples, with Rob my body decided 'Game on, baby daddy, he be a keeper,' and with Tomaso my body yelled, 'Close it down, nothing doing, beep beep beep, this vehicle is reversing.'\n\nThere are trillions of factors that influence these unspoken, unconscious decisions and they occur every time we sleep with a new person. We evaluate what our sex partner is worth in a measured equation of resources, traits and genetics \u2013 in your face, romance! There are some obvious things that might put you off somebody \u2013 ill health, bad hygiene, terrible temper. And there are some very shallow things that you can't help finding attractive \u2013 money, the nice things bought with money, and expensive trousers that he got with some of his loads of money. You're not a bitch, this is evolution's fault, it is babies having massive brains' fault. If, after the internal sums of your mate's possible contributions to childcare, your body decides you can do better... off you run. Not literally, unless this is a Julia Roberts movie,* but you will be uninterested in bonding with them any further or having sex with them again.\n\nThere are tons of qualities (aside from money) that make people attractive for dating past mating\u2020 \u2013 kindness, generosity, strong arms, wittiness, being great at crosswords; your body will respond positively to many traits. Apparently you'll also be judging your partner\/lover\/guy asleep on you on the night bus via his pheromones \u2013 I say 'apparently' because while some books talk very confidently about pheromones and how they influence our behaviours, other people are equally confident that they are unproven. Not their existence \u2013 pheromones are airborne hormones so we'll definitely have them \u2013 the doubt is over whether we are able to smell them... I know, I'm not a science guy so I can't tell you the truth. And the science guys all disagree, so they can't help us either. Let us be interested but reserved in our enthusiasm while we consider what evidence there seems to be.\n\nIn pheromone studies they get people to sniff sweaty T-shirts and then rate the accompanying photographs for attractiveness and they've found that participants are often most attracted to people whose immune system is different from their own. It's not conscious, but the smell of certain people makes your loins go schwing\u2021 and it's claimed that this allure is caused by your body knowing that sex with that partner would produce healthier children with a more varied and effective auto-immune system. It's real-life sci-fi: we might be able to _smell_ whether we'd have strong, fit children with someone. Personally, I love the idea of pheromones because it makes sense of the non-rational lust that some people provoke in me. Also I really enjoy the smell of my boyfriend's armpits and I'd rather be a great pheromone reader than super-gross. Dear Scientists, more experiments and human\u00a7 study in this area please, Love Sara.\n\nSo after sex with someone you might be infatuated with them or you might never want to see them again, yes Laura, your hand's up again\u2014\n\n**LAURA**  \nIf, in pre-civilised, pre-contraceptive times\u2014\n\n**SARA**  \nYes dear, get to the point.\n\n**LAURA**  \n\u2013 if all sex could result in pregnancy, wouldn't women have evolved to try and hold on to _any_ man they'd had sex with, even if he was rubbish, just in case?\n\n**SARA**  \nNot necessarily, not if there were _other_ men around to have sex with.\n\n_LAURA looks disapproving._\n\n**SARA**  \nYou can tell your facial expression to shut up, mate. Human beings are mammals, yes? And we gestate our young internally, which means sperm swim in, and nine months later, baby comes out.\n\nNobody SEES the egg becoming fertilised, which means that if the mother has mated with a few men in a short time-frame, even she won't know who the biological father is. Nowadays you could get a DNA test and go on _Jeremy Kyle_ for a good shout, but we're still thinking African savannah 40,000 years BC, and exploitative television hasn't been invented yet.\n\nIt's called 'paternity certainty', it's a wonderful phrase to sing or rap and it's vitally important to the evolution of our species. Or rather, paternity _uncertainty_ is. It means that a woman might have sex with one man, reject him due to low mate potential, then later (could be minutes, could be weeks) have sex with some other dude. And she likes the second guy cos he has a cool nest and is good at peeling mangoes and they become involved and bonded and then bring up a baby together, which, genetically, could belong to the first man. But mum has made an excellent evolutionary choice, as no matter who it is related to, this baby will have a greater chance of survival with the father who has higher mate potential. Paternity uncertainty means that, evolutionarily, a woman might do well to have a few fellows around her wondering 'Is it mine?' She ensures more resources for herself that way and is better protected, she\u2014\n\n**YOU AGAIN**  \nExcuse me, Mrs Contradictions, but earlier you were going on about how body dimorphism proves we're a monogamous species and now you're saying women do it all over the place and then attempt to sucker some guy with a better flat into bringing up baby\u2014\n\nWell I don't think that's _exactly_ what I said, but to go back to dimorphism: the 1.1 difference between human genders suggests that male size wasn't very important for mate selection, BUT there is a complication to this evidence and it involves our colossal brain. Some scientists argue that any body dimorphism that might have existed in humans would have been balanced out when the brain began its exponential growth. Huge male babies would have been impossible to birth, mother and baby would have died, those genes were lost and the sizes of the two genders became more similar as a result. It's very interesting to consider, and either way, it's important to remember that this 1.1 does not guarantee fidelity. It places us somewhere between the complete polyamory of chimpanzees and the definite monogamy of gibbons; human pair bonds are not the end of our mating life, nor are they as sexually exclusive as we might like \u2013 which the next chapter will explore.\n\n'But please,' you beg me, with a thirst for summary and conclusion, 'tell us, Sara, what is LOVE?'\n\nIt's _so_ complicated and obviously we all experience it differently, but here you are \u2013 for your quote book:\n\n'Love is a compulsive motivation towards a certain person ruled by evolutionary selection bias and a neurochemical reward system' (Pascoe 2016).\n\nLet me know if you want that printed up on a baseball cap.\n\n* I'm worried this reference is too old. You see, Julia Roberts once made a movie called _The Runaway Bride_. It reunited her with Richard Gere after that successful film they made about how fun and sexy it is to be a prostitute. It was different in the olden days, you wouldn't remember, anyway, just insert a film reference from your generation in here \u2013 perhaps 'Miley Cyrus' has been in a film?\n\n\u2020 I will of course be trademarking that. For my baby clothing line.\n\n\u2021 Or appropriate word for arousal from your generation. Do One Direction have patter? I don't know why I'm so sure you're younger than me. Do young people even read books now? Aren't they all Wii-ing on their Segways and taking Meow Meow?\n\n\u00a7 I say human because quite often scientists do animal studies which are 1) cruel and 2) non-transferable. If we want to find out about humans, knowing about rabbits, cats and mice is virtually irrelevant. 'Oh I wonder what effect caffeine has on the human brain?' 'Well, we just gave one hundred cups of coffee to this beagle and now it's dead.' 'GREAT, will you write this up for the _New Scientist_ or shall I?' That was a short excerpt from my new theatre piece _Stop the Inanity_ _(and the Torture)_. It stars me and Brian May.\n\n# What's Mine Is You\n\nFor me, understanding love scientifically helps. It makes sense of something that is otherwise illogical. It doesn't answer all my questions, but I find its objectivity soothing. For a long time, I kind of defined myself through my first relationship. I obsessed about it for years, running over memories for posthumous clues \u2013 what had gone wrong? What had I done? If you and I were drunk in a Wetherspoon's I'd tell you the long version, but we're sober in a book, so here's a short account without me crying:\n\nI was sixteen when I first loved someone. We met in a college production of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_. He played a small servant part and always made everyone laugh with his deep bow and flouncy exit. I played Puck, on a skateboard, which was incredibly ground-breaking. At the after-show party we kissed and then he told me he'd once seen a man shoot himself, so we went to talk all night in my mum's garden. I lost my virginity a week later (same dude) and stopped going home unless he was with me. I only slept where he slept, I only went to class if he insisted on going to his. I'd get euphoric sitting in the passenger seat of his car or turning round to look at him after I'd switched the kettle on. I missed him when he insisted on going to the toilet alone. He was my Ted Hughes! My Sartre! My Prince Albert!* We were together for ten months and seven days. We only spent one night apart. Then at a karaoke night, while I was on stage singing 'Never Ever' by All Saints, I saw him kissing someone else. I ran out, he didn't follow. He was already going out with the other girl. He quit college to avoid me. I slept in my mum's bed for six months.\n\nI'm too old to keep going on and on about it, it's over half my lifetime ago, it should be hazy and irrelevant. It's a year of memories I wish would fade but they became core bricks in the building of my being. Anyway, I have a preoccupation with cheating, fidelity, faithfulness. I don't trust, and I am ruined. NO, not _ruined_ , that's too dramatic. I guess I blame all the failed relationships that followed on that first one. And I shouldn't call them failures, but that's how it feels.\n\nDuring my grieving process I liked my mum. She never told me to be strong or stop crying and she occasionally offered to give me things, which is how we express love in my family. 'Oh that is _awful_ , bloody hell, do you want this dress?' My mum was still angry with my dad and now I appreciated why; the betrayal, the broken promises, the breakdown of certainty. Mum had confronted Dad before the divorce, asked him, 'Are you having an affair?' and he had met her gaze and replied, 'No. No I am _not_.' And then later she found out that he _had_ been with another woman and she was so upset:\n\n**GAIL**  \nWHY DID YOU LIE TO ME?\n\n**DEREK**  \nI didn't lie, I wasn't having _an_ affair...\n\nThis story is recounted as a family joke, a witticism, a funny thing my dad once said rather than the remarkable behaviour of a sociopath:\n\n**DEREK**  \n... I was having seven.\n\nNow you know my parents' silly names, leaving us to wonder how on earth a man called Derek persuaded so many women to have an affair with him.\n\nI was a child and when all this was happening I hadn't understood the emotions. There's a photograph taken when I was six: I'm in a pink leotard and my sister Cheryl's dressed as a cat and Mum is wearing a silver dress, pregnant with Kristyna. I have my arms up, posing for the camera, but Mum is looking at the floor. She has Princess Diana face, pained but keeping it together. We were having a Christmas party at Aunty Sandra's and my dad arrived with a lady called Janice and I told my mum I thought Janice was _beautiful_ , then the photo was taken. I feel very guilty now. I wish I'd realised how sad she was \u2013 I'd have tried to give her something.\n\nA decade later and my very first boyfriend, let's call him Colin because that's his name,\u2021 Colin had betrayed me. I wasn't a child any more and I got it; Dad was a _bastard_ , Colin was a _bastard_. They were selfish, they were liars, they were manipulative and \u2013 'Oh _no_ ,' said my mother. She stopped me and corrected me. 'It wasn't their fault, they're not _bad_ people, they were simply being _all men_.'\n\nIn a series of informal lectures that I like to call 'The End of Hope' Mum told me how men\u00a7 couldn't help being attracted to lots of women, that they were built this way, it was biological destiny.\n\nMy mum is really clever, she studied for a PhD about eight years ago and insists on being called 'Dr Newmarch' even in restaurants and at bus stops. She has always been interested in how the body works, genetics, nature versus nurture and all that. She is all at once the stupidest, most intelligent person I know. She'll take a break from studying Chinese economics or the structure of the genome to ponder why it's only European countries taking part in Eurovision, where the stars go in winter and how a _character_ in _Coronation Street_ is going to cope with an _actor_ from _Coronation Street_ 's sex scandal.\n\n**SARA**  \nI think 'Sally' will be alright, Mum\u2014\n\n**GAIL** ( _worried_ )  \nShe's already been through so much.\n\nDuring 'The End of Hope' my mum excused Colin's behaviour in evolutionary terms. While my ideal parent would have been round his house threatening him with a hockey stick until he agreed to go back out with me, my mum was elaborating about sexuality; how it was the most powerful instinct that humans had, it ensured the replication of genes, the survival of the species, it was responsible for the majority of human social behaviour. Sex was at the heart of everything.\n\nObviously no one wants to hear this kind of stuff from their mother, _so_ gross, but this was not new information. I was halfway through Psychology A-level, I'd spent a year with Sigmund Freud lecturing me about sex.\u00b6 The only preparation for your mother shouting 'BECAUSE WE ALL WANT SEX' is to hear it first from a long-dead Viennese man. I'd spent a lot of mental energy trying to disprove Freud. I was desperate to discover human behaviours that were _not_ sexually related so that in class I'd be able to go, 'What about ice skating?' and everyone would applaud and Geoffrey, my teacher, would say, 'Oh yes ice skating has nothing to do with sex, Sara is right \u2013 let's give her ten certificates!' Except that ice skating is a demonstration of talent and skill and body strength, all attractive qualities, and Freud believed that all artists were consciously or subconsciously trying to get people to fancy them \u2013 so that is not a good example.\n\nTry it, see if you can find something in your life that cannot possibly be connected to sex. You think of huge things like death, and you go, 'Yeah actually, death has _nothing_ to do with sex... except, oh, I guess sex is how your genes escape death and continue after you have gone. It is our mortality that propels us to procreate and sex is a death antidote and \u2013 okay.' So you try little things instead: 'brushing my teeth', 'going to the cinema', 'celebrating Halloween'. None of those things has _anything_ to do with reproduction... except that personal hygiene is important in attracting a mate and people go to the cinema on dates and films depict all kinds of amorousness and arousal, but Halloween, there you go, that's a fiesta of fear and nothing more and OH GOD LOOK AT THE OUTFITS I've never seen anything sexier. You've lost another round in 'Find a Thing That Has No Sex in It'TM.\n\nSo while I wasn't surprised at Mum's 'sex is everything' rationale, her new information, her revelation, was that men and women had separate and distinct sexual programming. Mum explained that the strategies that enabled our ancestors to successfully procreate were gender-specific; what we wanted from each other was different, more than different \u2013 contradictory.\n\nWe've considered parental investment already while we acknowledged the effort required to successfully raise a human child. What we have to recognise now is that _becoming_ a parent is different for each of the sexes. Our physiology has given us very unbalanced roles and this is thought to influence our sexual behaviour. Mum put it in rather brutal terms: 'Men shag around, women try and stop them,' she told me, nostrils flaring, like an angry pony. And this wasn't just a jaded divorcee's personal opinion, this was a crude summary of the anthropological explanations she'd been reading. Let me try and explain it in a politer form, while attempting to control my inherited nostrils.\n\nTo be a father, a man needs to deliver some semen inside a woman. This can take less than a minute \u2013 we've all been there, am I right, ladies? But to be a mother, a woman must gestate a foetus inside her body for nine months; she will experience sickness, vulnerability and pain before the mortal danger of childbirth. She will require a high-protein, calorific diet despite being physically restricted from obtaining one. In a hunter-gatherer society she will need to breastfeed her child for three to four years.\n\nLet's have a quick look at the maths there: one minute versus nine months plus four years = a huge injustice of input and effort.\n\nThe human form of reproduction makes it possible for a man to get lots and lots of women pregnant. Men make trillions of sperm, it's a constantly replenishing|| resource, and they can (technically) have lots of sex with different people throughout the day and night. In evolutionary terms, the human males who had the most sex with the most partners would leave the most descendants. It's a probability game and an evolutionary advantage. The male offspring of these philanderers would inherit genes that made them fancy a huge variety of sex partners and the cycle would continue. Generation upon generation, the sexiest men would be rewarded with more offspring, who would in turn produce more offspring, _hakuna matata_. If we put our modern morality on the windowsill for a moment we could applaud these virile men and their wonderful species-continuing abilities. WELL DONE, LADS, YOU ARE VERITABLE SPERM FOUNTAINS!\n\nWhat of our female ancestors?\n\nWell, a woman who mates with several men cannot produce more children than a woman who has only mated with one \u2013 they both gestate and raise offspring equally slowly. No amount of sex partners can significantly change the number of descendants a woman would leave, so desiring a variety of lovers is not an evolutionary advantage for her. Genes for female promiscuity are _not_ passed to female offspring at a higher incidence. Further to this, anthropologists tell us that because pregnancy and childrearing are so expensive in terms of resources, the woman who is not pair-bonded may be less successful at childrearing. The primitive female who didn't bond with those she slept with, who high-fived and yelled 'Thanks for that' before climbing back into her own tree, her children would have had lower parental investment and thus a decreased survival rate. She was a sex loser, so fewer of her genes were passed on to future generations. Instead the genes for deep attachment were inherited by the female children of women who knew how to successfully hang on to a man \u2013 their children's survival rate increasing with parental investment.\n\nPut your hands down, we're not clapping this \u2013 it's too depressing.\n\nTo reiterate: the ideal mating strategy for men is constant seduction, multiple partners and all round sexy sexing times and the ideal mating strategy for women is 'For god's sake don't let that man go.' I wanted to _protest_ this, I wanted to march up and down with a sign covered in expletives and shout at \u2013 who? Whose fault is it? Oestrogen? Darwin? Evolution, I would like to speak with your manager. How will any heterosexual people ever be happy? Men have this vibrant, exciting sexuality and woman apparently have nothing but a desperation to curb it.\n\nRemember, my mum was telling me this, I was seventeen \u2013 AND I HATED IT yet I couldn't prove it wrong. It _seemed_ to make perfect sense. If I scanned my surroundings, Essex _circa_ 1998, it was a panorama of girls trying to get boys to like them; we bleached and browned and starved ourselves while the boys clustered outside Threshers or near funfairs waiting to accept or reject us. I was aware of male sexuality being, like, a proper _necessity_. They were open about their libidos, they'd exclaim the need for a wank or shag in the casual way I might express a yearning for an appetite-suppressing cigarette.\n\nSo, though distressed, I believed it. This was truth, men and women were doomed to disappoint each other. There were gender agendas, fidelity versus freedom. I'd been naive with Colin, but heartbreak was my education and I would not be fooled again. I began subsequent relationships with cynicism and Armageddon mutterings, slamming down cocktails and exclaiming, ' _Well_ , it's not going to go anywhere so let's just have fun,' with the un-fun eyes of someone who died inside when the person opposite didn't contradict my 'not going anywhere' statement. I had a few small boyfriends and then a bigger boyfriend but there was no excitement; as soon as a guy liked me back, I prepared myself for the ending. I thought I was being very clever and protecting myself, I thought I was a realist and could now have a great old time without getting hurt.\n\nIf this was a film there'd be a montage here: bright lights, loud music, me buying drinks for a succession of fresh-faced men. And then it would cut to me in my thirties, living alone in a flat that doesn't have wi-fi, decoupaging a chest of drawers with the words 'I'm so lonely'. Then a dinosaur would run in and eat me, because this is a really great film. From the dinosaur's belly you'd hear a grumbling sound and then me:\n\n**SARA** ( _O\/S in belly_ )  \nMY CYNICISM DIDN'T SAVE ME!\n\nWithout hope and expectation things were _not_ fun. My flings weren't flippant and pleasure-fuelled, they were pessimistic and miserable, like spending your day at Alton Towers waiting by the exit because you know it's gonna close eventually. There you stand, lying to yourself that you're exactly where you want to be, packed and ready to get out before anyone's asked you to leave.\n\nALL MEN CHEAT was my mantra; I lectured in it, I warned my friends, I was not invited to _any_ weddings. 'It's not failed morality but a reproductive necessity,' I would explain to my boyfriends while they protested their innocence. 'You can't help yourself,' I'd patronise, 'but you must stop lying about it.' You can imagine how great I was to go out with \u2013 punishing my partners with mistrust and shouting and no evidence of unfaithfulness bar their Y chromosome. I shook my head when friends insisted their lovers 'weren't like other men'. 'Assume he's cheating and see if you still want to be with him' was my relationship advice. I felt very sorry for my dad's new wife \u2013 and for Hillary Clinton. 1998 was a bad year for her too, probably worse because she had the press to contend with. There's such personal shame in being cheated on, like you failed by not being enough for someone. I didn't like the disrespectful way newspapers wrote about Hillary, or how they wrote about Monica Lewinsky like this was her fault. And people seemed so shocked that a PRESIDENT would do it: how could he risk the most powerful job in the world for some heavy petting? But I understood it. 'Monkeys, mate, we're all monkeys,' I said it then, I say it now. How can the president of the United States be immune to his genetic programming when nobody else is?\n\nIf we fast-forward ten years of my life we'll see a long on\u2013off relationship interspersed with lots of short relationships speeding past blurrily. We stop briefly: it's late 2007 and I start stand-up after a particularly hurtful break-up. We watch a bit of the gig and it's terrible, I'm bitter and too drunk to be on stage. Fast-forward another five years, we see my work improve but not my romantic life, blur blur blur, now stop \u2013 it's 2013 and I'm having a conversation with comedian John Gordillo outside a club in Hampstead. He's smoking a roll-up and I'm watching jealously, trying not to ask for a puff on it. I'm telling him all about how I don't believe in monogamy. He doesn't believe in it either. He recommends a book called _Sex at Dawn_ , says it will blow my mind, or something equally emphatic. Skip through a couple of weeks now as I order the book from an ethical tax-paying online bookshop and read it. Play in real time as CGI effects show my skull bursting open and brains and blood spurting all over the room while my eyes roll around on the carpet. Then a dinosaur runs in and from my mouth, which is hanging off, I say, 'Please don't eat me, I have so much to live for... I just found out that _women have a sexuality.'_ Then my headless body and the velociraptor do it.\n\nIt was a totally new idea to me. Despite all my talking and thinking about sex, I'd never considered that women had their own sexuality. I'd assumed it was an accompaniment to male sexuality, a tangent, an offshoot, or worse, something we _pretended_ to have in order to turn men on. To begin understanding that women had our own desires that existed only for our own pleasure was \u2013 well you saw, my eyes fell out of my face and my mind was sprayed everywhere.\n\nI've no idea how you'll be responding to this information. Perhaps you've fallen off your bus seat being all like 'WHAT? We have a \u2013 excuse me? I can't see a _sexuality_ anywhere upon my person, there's certainly no room in my trousers. Where would this sexuality be? Surely this is all a silly rumour put about by _More_ magazine?' Or perhaps you're the opposite, a sexually realised and satisfied woman, extinguishing your cigarillo in the man you're straddling's pi\u00f1a colada and exclaiming, 'How can this idiot have taken thirty-two years to realise she was sexual?' But in French.\n\nI regret that I spent so many years fascinated and terrified by male sexuality while uncovering absolutely nothing about my own. For a decade and a half I believed that men wanted sex, and the most that women could want was to let them have it. Men had horny sex drives and women were the boring gatekeepers, deciding who we let in. I knew that being sexy was important for women, oh yes, it was completely paramount. You needed men to fancy you \u2013 that was your currency. I spent my twenties spouting all kinds of shit about a woman's sexuality being powerful 'because she can, like, use it to manipulate men'. I want to puke in old me's face, I want to fight her and her docility in a car park. If men have stuff we need or want, we don't pole-dance around them hoping they'll start whacking off and drop it \u2013 we restructure society so that women are able to achieve everything they want and need for themselves. But you know that, sorry for shouting. What I'm trying to say is, for me 'sexiness' was a pretend thing that I did to make boys like me. I had no grasp of sexual desire, I'd never noticed its absence in my decisions, I never thought about it because I'd only ever wanted to be wanted. I was thirty-two and I had never successfully masturbated. I had no sexual fantasies. I enjoyed sex in a detached and reassuring way; 'he still likes me', 'he's into this', 'this means he won't leave me' and 'this is what I should be doing', like all the magazines had told me. Sex often felt like acting \u2013 always being super-aware of whether _he_ was enjoying himself and never realising that I was supposed to.\n\nBut now I knew better. Thanks to _Sex at Dawn_ I found a teacher, an educator, a substance to lead me through an exploration of the feminine side of the evolution story. My guru, my mentor, my informant, was sperm. YES, it turned out I'd been wasting it previously, mopping it up with my pyjamas or washing it straight out of my hair, when I should have been scooping the jellied off-whiteness up to my face and whispering, 'What is it you have to tell me? What it is that you know?'\n\nIt starts with a man, I KNOW ALL SPERM STARTS WITH A MAN, but this man worked at Liverpool University, his name is Geoff Parker and Wikipedia says his birthday is 24 May so we know he's a Gemini. Dr Parker made all kinds of discoveries about how sperm behave when you watch them under a microscope and those findings were developed by science writer Robin Baker into a theory called 'sperm competition'. No it's not Channel 5's new gameshow but a claim that when the semen of different men are mixed together the sperm _fight_. They battle, they go to war and attempt to destroy each other.\n\nASTONISHED TRUMPET\n\nAccording to Baker, men have two kinds of sperm: 'egg-getters' and 'kamikaze'. The egg-getters try to get to an ovum and fertilise it, as the name would suggest. The second type, kamikaze, are slightly smaller, their heads are elongated, they cannot fertilise an egg. Instead their job is to stop any rival egg-getters, those that originated inside another man. Some kamikaze sperm work by blocking, curling up in mucus to stop enemy sperm travelling through, and others are fighters, recognising competitor egg-getters thanks to telepathy coloured shirts hormonal signals, headbutting them and emitting poisons.\n\nIt is baffling to think about and so I can't stop thinking about it. Sperm can live for up to five days inside a woman's reproductive system, so if I had four male partners ejaculate inside me over the weekend a full-scale battle would be raging in my womb and tubes when I caught the train on Monday morning. And I wouldn't be able to _feel_ it and nobody could tell by looking at me unless I was wearing my 'Banged Four & Feeling like Agincourt' sweater. Yes of course I will make you one.\n\nThere is much debate on the subject of sperm competition and a huge amount of research still to be done on exactly how it works, if indeed it does occur in humans. Some very reputable scientists have argued against it, and it's currently rather an unfashionable subject. Is that because of how it reflects on our species or because the original theorists were not very well respected? I don't know. This is the difficulty with being an interested person with only secondary sources to rely upon; you can read one book and believe one thing and then read another that entirely contradicts the first. I need my own lab, a pipette and a gallon of fresh semen in order to find the truth \u2013 I'll set up a Kickstarter page.\n\nLots of animals do demonstrate versions of sperm competition. Sometimes this involves speedy sperm or congealing fluid or even the volume of sperm produced. It does seem that human males ejaculate more sperm into partners they really like. (Sara fans her face and acts coy: 'Oh my, with that extra 0.2 of a millilitre you're _spoiling_ me.') Apparently men's bodies do a subconscious calculation of how many sperm to ejaculate into their partner based on the likelihood of needing to compete with other sperm. Studies have found that men ejaculate more when their partner has been away, when they are with a new (non-virgin) partner, and when they're having an affair and know their lover is sleeping with someone else. So if you've been with your boyfriend\u2020\u2020 all weekend gardening and watching movies and haven't so much as popped to the shops, when\u2021\u2021 you have sex he will ejaculate less than if you've just arrived back from three days at a conference called 'How to Admire Male Models'.\n\nIt's worth reminding ourselves that such physiological responses are subconscious and uncontrollable. Strategic ejaculation is not affected by wearing a condom and it is not a reflection of conscious mistrust or suspicions about a partner's infidelity. It's clever old nature seizing control and taking precautions.\n\nBut why does it need to?\n\nIf we understand that some sort of sperm competition exists, we have to accept the ramifications. Evolution is a responsive process rather than an inventive one. Strategic ejaculations and kamikaze sperm do not exist as a back-up, a 'just in case' or designed idea, but because for thousands of generations sperm that could fight and block may have been a reproductive advantage. If Gerald and Bernie both had sex with Doreen,\u00a7\u00a7 Gerald would have a better chance of inseminating her if he had extra sperm. Bernie would have a decreased chance of insemination if he ejaculated less. This means our ancient female forebears may often have practised multi-partnering. If sperm evolved to fight it was because there were rival sperm to contend with.\n\nSo we need to re-evaluate what we've been told about female sexuality. Specifically, we need to forget what my mum told me, because _she was wrong_. And it's not the first time \u2013 Mum's been wrong several times before, like when she claimed the live _EastEnders_ episode would be the best thing that ever happened to television or when she went out with that guy Paul\u00b6\u00b6 who stole our car, but at least in this instance it wasn't her fault.\n\nThe scientists who discovered evolution were Victorian men. They wore monocles and top hats. Their opinions and ideas were shaped by their society, as is true for all of us. The platform for communicating natural selection was built by men such as Charles Darwin and it was lopsided with male bias. Women in the nineteenth century were restricted and oppressed, generally dismissed as coy, chattering nurturers. Victorian culture was dominated by ideas of 'propriety', repression and public prudery. The combination of these factors resulted in observations about animals, apes and humans being made solely from a masculine perspective. Males were understood as active, while females were seen to be passive and non-instrumental. Even with examples such as peacocks where female choice in sexual selection had clearly and visibly affected evolution (males have big beautiful tails because peahens fancy the guys with the prettiest feathers) the possibility of female desire as a species-shaping factor was denied and ignored.\n\nThe public construction of sex in Victorian times was that men enjoyed it while women derived their pleasure from conception and pregnancy (lucky us). With this weighted presumption, the results from animal studies met the new theory of evolution and created a model of human sexual behaviour that completely ignored female lust, desire and pleasure as forces that moulded our species. There was no ugly villain masterminding this, no dastardly plot to supress female sexuality, just some fallible and subjective scientists. If you believe without question that female animals derive no pleasure from mating, that intercourse is something they simply endure to beget children, then you'll ignore a jungle full of female animals displaying desire and initiating sex. They'll be invisible, obscured by foliage and preconception. And poor old western civilisation will spend decades entrenched in misunderstanding. We'll accept that sex is something that happens to women, something which is performed upon us rather than by us. Despite being fifty per cent of the cast we'll be props rather than actors. And we have been.\n\nI try not to shout, as I don't think it's useful. People stop listening, they feel lectured. But this is the first point in the book where I have really wanted to open the window and BELLOW. I found the previous paragraph very difficult to write as I kept welling with fury. I wanted to underline things thirty times in red pen, I wanted to hammer it all out in capitals and misspelled swear words. I don't want to be reasonable, I want to insult those Victorian imbeciles and smack them on the bottom with what they've cost us. Modern women have been betrayed by science. We have been lied to and about; they stole our autonomy, they vanished our pleasure and the effects are so embedded, the words of experts so respected that the revolution of reclamation will be slow and difficult. But hey, at least it's started, and you're part of it, so pack some sandwiches and try to think positively.\n\nI am sure Charles Darwin was a nice man. I'm sure if I'd bumped into him on the Galapagos Islands I'd have thought, 'What a decent fellow \u2013 and he sure did know a lot about worms!' At university we were always asked if artists could be considered separately from the age they lived in \u2013 should a two-hundred-year-old novel with racist language be removed from the canon, or could the author be forgiven as she didn't know any better? There's no answer to this question, by the way, just opinions. Some people say it's detrimental to keep racist ideas floating about by respecting their vessels; others say historical racism mustn't be buried and hidden, we modern guys must recognise and learn from it. Usually an assessment is made of a work's worth and intention and the same has to be true of Darwin and sexism. It's not his fault he was a Victorian, I'm not suggesting we throw his incredible and enlightening life's work in the bin and start again. But I think he and his contemporaries' prejudice has to be flagged because an entire area of science has been built upon it. If we were _literally_ going to make a flag I would embroider it with Darwin's list of pros and cons for getting married. It's fun source material for finding out about Victorian sensibilities. You can find the whole text online but highlights include describing a 'nice, soft' future wife as an 'object to be beloved & played with, better than a dog anyhow' and looking forward to the charms of 'female chit-chat'. I doubt those words come from a man who considered women his equal, but \u2013 well, he's dead now and we're not, so we win. See below for more female chit-chat!\n\nSince the discovery of sperm competition, scientists, anthropologists and evolutionary psychologists have been building a more balanced model of human sexual behaviour. They don't all agree and there's loads of conflicting evidence and opinion to be found out there, but it can safely be acknowledged that women have a basic biological drive to have genetically strong children. Our sexual attractions are our body's attempts to make clever, tactical decisions in regards to future offspring and those attractions do not always lead us towards one man and fancying him and only him forever and ever.\n\nHETEROCENTRIC BIAS KLAXON: of course many women reading this will not fancy men at all. Every living person evolved from heterosexuals or at least from people who had _some_ heterosexual intercourse and this means while discussing evolution, homosexuality can often be ignored or considered unworthy of comment. While I'm using these broad strokes of opposite-sex attraction I should make it clear that exactly the same process and instincts are at work in homosexual loves and lusts. The mechanics are identical, you're still choosing possible parents to future offspring in every sexual encounter; the incentives or deal-breakers of certain partners are still assessed via a genetic agenda. Our bodies don't understand that not all sex makes babies \u2013 like how using contraception or being infertile or post-menopausal does not affect heterosexual sex instincts; it's always potential mummies and daddies we're looking for. I _know_ , it does sound gross when put like that, sorry.\n\nWe already know that the number of sex partners a woman enjoys won't alter the number of children she could have. But if genetic strength of progeny is considered, we find that while the quantity of offspring may not be increased, the quality could be. Consider this for instance: for a woman in the pre-civilised, harsh environs of ancient Africa, having all her kids with the same father could be risky. With a single gene pool her children will have similar strengths and weaknesses; a disease or environmental factor that killed one might well kill all. Instead, breeding with several different men could work as a form of spread betting \u2013 her children would inherit a larger range of genetic traits and dispositions; Jeremy's got darker skin and won't get sunburn, Claire's got longer arms which help with fishing. There would be a higher likelihood that some of her children would survive into adulthood and BANG, sister gone evolved herself a roving eye. Hallelujah and Merry Christmas, suddenly being a woman doesn't look so committed and passive after all. I'm going to put on my sexiest beret to celebrate.\n\nHave a go on my trumpet while I tell you a bit more:\n\nApparently multi-partnering could have been instrumental in our becoming the empathetic, social creatures we are now. Picture this: a tribe of nine or ten family groups, numbering around a hundred people in total. If all the families are headed by pair-bonded adults who are completely sexually exclusive then there's little incentive for sharing and inter-familial support. Each may well look after her own. BUT if each adult woman is sleeping with a couple of her male neighbours, and each of those males are sleeping with a couple of other local women, then none of those men can be sure if any of those women's children are his. With no paternity certainty there would be a greater incentive for families to work together, to pool resources and to be emotionally invested in each other's success. The children of the tribe would be better protected and more valued, thus increasing their survival rates. The more adult caregivers each child has, the better their chances. Paternity uncertainty and multi-partnering connects people together. Our social groups, our fondness for our friend's offspring and group childrearing can be linked to this system of mating. Cohesive social harmony induced by our horny female ancestors? It is time to don a second beret.\n\nContrary to what we've been told or what we might expect, women are not programmed to be purely monogamous. But we _do_ form strong, chemically enhanced pair bonds, so we're not completely wild and uncommitted either. We exist somewhere between the two extremes and it seems the flexibility of our desires is an ingenious survival tactic. We're able to react to environment and circumstances when seeking a mate or a partner and to ascertain what we most need from him or his genes. But life has thrown us a paradox; raising children requires committed parenting and powerful bonding, while having the healthiest, most likely-to-survive children could require mating outside of that relationship. It would appear that for both genders, an ideal mating state could be a bonded family unit, with some extra sex with external partners.\n\nHow do you feel about that?\n\nAll morality and personal feelings aside, _your_ ideal mating state could be to bag yourself a skilful person who is useful and great at providing, while having the occasional affair in order to deepen your children's gene pool and encourage support from other adults. If you're in a long-term relationship, you might find yourself attracted to people very physically different from your partner for this reason. You might get crushes on people who are more successful than them, a reliable signal of smart genes and access to resources. You might have a crush on their best friend or brother or someone else socially close... the guys and girls you fancy outside of your pair bond are determined by your subconscious desire to cuckold.\n\nMorality and personal feelings back safely on the table, I find these theories and explanations of human bonding and attraction interesting and terribly troubling. It's a relief to read about non-monogamous evolutionary programming as I always feel very guilty for fancying people outside of my relationship. I took it as a sign that my relationship wasn't working or that I was a bad person. Now I understand that being in love doesn't stop my body noticing handsome young men in the vicinity and I can forgive myself. My body is a baby-making machine honed by millennia and I've commandeered it for bike riding and buying stationery; of course I'll wobble when I encounter a flat-bellied twenty-four-year-old who smells of the seaside. But I don't want to provide excuses for cheating. While we can't control who turns our head in the street or makes us flush by the photocopier, we _are_ in charge of our hugging arms and kissing lips. I don't think biology is an excuse to cheat \u2013 but it could provide an explanation for wanting to, or for trying open relationships or practising polyamory or any other non-monogamous state that is built on honesty and makes you happy. Our evolution has shaped us to have wide-ranging urges and lusts but topped our brain with a pre-frontal cortex to control ourselves. If you've promised a lover you'll be faithful, don't you be quoting my book and blaming me while he cries in the bath. You be kind to that boy. 'We're all monkeys, mate,' is not a good enough excuse for hurting people.\n\nHang on, why _does_ it hurt so much to be cheated on? If multi-partnering and philandering is in our genes, why do I get so jealous? The thought of my boyfriend kissing someone else ignites a volcano of pointless nauseous anger. I cry myself to sleep when he's away, suffering the varied sexual jaunts I send him on in my mind. If we listened to my emotions they would dictate that monogamy is the _only_ way, thank you, and couples should all be faithful to each other forever and ever until they die, the end. Even when you've broken up with someone they shouldn't be allowed to go out with anyone else, you should be able to put all your exes in a freezer until some future date when it won't wreck your weekend to find out they've got married from an uploaded photo on Facebook. Congratulations, Christopher, if you're reading this.\n\nI am trying to educate my emotions.\n\nI watched a documentary about polyamory. These were not couples with open relationships, as I had been expecting from the title, but trios who were all in love with each other in committed love triangles. They lived in houses as threesomes. Took care of children together, shared chores and swapped beds. I was very sceptical, keeping alert for a strain of voice or sadness behind eyes that would signal 'they're just pretending to be happy'. One of the groups was made up of two women and a man. He'd had an affair at work and fallen in love. His wife had gone out on a date with his mistress, thought she was great and invited her to move in with them. 'She didn't wanna lose her bloke,' I heckled the programme from my head, 'she'd rather share him than be alone.' I watched as she made dinner for their children while her husband had a night out at the cinema with his girlfriend. 'What a mug,' I judged and presumed, while she explained how well the situation suited her, how she had more time for herself and more love for her husband.\n\nI have to remember that all of my discriminations are hardwired. I was tutored by my culture to view only two-person relationships as 'normal' and any other formation as an aberration, an emotional freak show. If I'd grown up in a polygamous society, I might consider Aunty Sandra and Uncle Trevor the weird ones. It'd be their love life I'd want to gossip about; why doesn't Uncle get a younger wife to help with children? Why does Aunty not bring a nice local girl in to be her new sister and do the chores? How can they be satisfied only having each other?\n\nIn Britain, it's not just rare or unusual, it is _illegal_ to marry more than one person and punishable with up to seven years in prison. A couple of years ago I took part in a TV politics show with university students. The discussion was about the affordability of living in London but a question popped up from someone who said he represented the Polyamory Society. He asked the MP I was sitting next to: 'Now gay marriage has been recognised, isn't it time people who want to marry more than one person be given legal rights?' The MP was flustered and I really felt for him. As he stuttered and corrected himself, you could tell how worried he was about replying stupidly to a question he was unprepared for. He was preoccupied with showing his respect and support for the gay movement and he finally announced, 'These kinds of questions make me angry.' People who were against gay marriage had criticised the government, saying their decisions were undermining the sanctity of the wedding ceremony, predicting that people would soon be able to marry animals \u2013 or cars and fences. The MP said, 'Bigamy has nothing to do with gay people having equal rights,' and then he stopped talking. The atmosphere in the room was tense and confused and the polyamory man who'd asked the question wanted to speak again. The presenter avoided him and moved the discussion on while the student waved his arm in the air, red-faced and misunderstood.\n\nI thought about it afterwards. Of course a marriage of three or more people is not like marrying a pet or inanimate object, because it still involves consent and love and intentions and promises from all parties. And while most of us in that room considered polyamory a strange and perhaps scary thing, isn't that how homosexuality used to be regarded a few decades ago? 'Normal' is a concept formed by averages but it changes with education and tolerance. I wish we'd been brave enough to investigate what the student was asking us, but we were too scared of offending people. Trying so hard to be tolerant that we were the opposite. I also realised the question wasn't as off-topic as I'd first thought. Perhaps the only way any of us could afford London house prices would be to marry a few dudes and combine overdrafts until we got a deposit?\n\nHuman polyamory can be inextricably connected to economics and circumstances. Most countries where polygamy is legal seem to be very poor, like Bangladesh, Sudan and Ethiopia. For women living in countries where their gender prohibits them from a career outside of the home, they are better off as one of a rich man's many wives than as the sole wife of a poor man. It's almost always this way round because, globally, it's men who control access to resources. The Polygyny Threshold Hypothesis posits that a male animal is more likely to have multiple partners when there is an uneven distribution of resources, when one male occupies a safer\/more plentiful territory and can protect and provide for more than one female. This hypothesis was based on the behaviour of birds, where (because of the way they breed) females are reliant on males. It is interesting that the countries which allow men to marry more than one woman also seem to restrict the lives of women, for religious or cultural reasons. Female humans in such countries are similarly dependent.\n\nAs we've already discovered, a man with many female partners can potentially have more children \u2013 so polygamy makes sense as a mating strategy for a wealthy, powerful man. But because no amount of men can significantly increase a woman's brood, cultures where women have more than one husband are very rare. There is a well-documented polyandrous society in rural Tibet. The exhausting methods of farming they undertake and the shared family ownership of land mean that if a woman wants to marry a man, she often has to marry all his brothers as well. In severe conditions with hard work and food shortages, polygamy is a survival tactic; with more bodies to toil and care for children, the extended family is far stronger and more likely to succeed than a lone man and woman would be under such circumstances. In cases like this, multi-person marriages are a response to the environment.\n\nBut I'm still biased by my background, my subjectivity is emotively playing the trumpet and I'm imagining this poor Tibetan woman \u2013 what if she fancies only one of the brothers but has to do it with all of them? What if they gang up against her and she is bullied and mistreated in her own home? Same with the Pakistani or Saudi Arabian women who share their husbands with younger wives; do they feel rejected and jealous? Do they wish they lived in a country where they could have a husband all of their own? The problem with a completely prejudiced world-view is separating the benefits of someone else's marital arrangement from how I would feel if it were imposed upon me. _I_ wouldn't want to be married to five brothers in Tibet, or be part of a harem. But that doesn't mean there's not lots of happiness, satisfaction, love and joy available to the people who choose that set-up. Marrying three brothers, if that's completely normal to you, might be super-hot. I'm trying not to project, and I am failing. I remind myself that a two-parent family is not 'normal', it could be interpreted as a sign of environmental luxury, access to food and no fear of predators. It's just one of the ways that humans can choose to live.\n\nI have tried to imagine situations where I would share my boyfriend, or take another lover into our house... they all involve an apocalypse and I'm not happy even thinking about it. Two boyfriends... yes, I could probably manage that, but I don't find the idea sexy because I know I'd simply be watching _two_ grown men playing iPhone games for seven hours a day. Unless the electricity has run out because of the apocalypse and then the iPhones won't have battery and if I know my boyfriend, which I do, he will kill himself. So, forty-five minutes into the apocalypse and we're back to monogamy. The opposite way, being _one_ of his girlfriends? I know he'd love it and it upsets me so much I'm crying as I type this.\n\nSexual jealousy is an ugly trait and I'm ashamed of it. I know it stems from insecurity, I know that mostly it's irrational and I wish I didn't care. I wish I could have open relationships and not be raw at the thought. I can repeat to myself calmly, 'It's just sex, just genitals, it's just flesh and skin and \u2013' AARGH no can't do it, my body isn't big enough for these feelings. I hate my boyfriend's past and I am terrified of his sexual future and if all the women in the world could just sign here to promise they'll never kiss him then I could relax a little bit:\n\nI ______________ do solemnly swear never to kiss or do anything else sexual with Sara's boyfriend no matter how much he begs or how good he is at iPhone games.\n\nThanks guys.\n\nJealousy evolved alongside pair bonding. They are intertwined and inseparable, ancient and animal. There's a lot to lose when you are investing time and resources into bringing up children \u2013 a man who is cuckolded will spend his life ensuring the success of another man's genes. A woman who shares her partner with other women will lose some of his potential resources. If the man with a pie has two wives, they each get half a pie. If the man with a pie has fourteen children with six different women then everyone gets a tiny bite of pie and those children now have a lower survival expectation. If your dad is a jazz musician like mine then he can't afford any pie and your mum will have to work very hard to support you on her own. In terms of genetic inheritance, the suspicious, jealous, possessive types may have ensured their own genes were carried into future generations, and into us. This ugly trait is a mating technique too and another aspect of ourselves to struggle with and hope to forgive.\n\nOur next battle is forever. Eternity. The idea that the only successful relationship is one that never ends. If you've accepted that human beings have an inherited predisposition towards something slightly more flexible than monogamy, let's move on. Even if you haven't accepted it, come anyway, the bottom of a page is no place to be sitting on your own.\n\n* The man, not the genital jewellery.\u2020\n\n\u2020 Unless penis piercing works as a metaphor here? 'My love was like a small hole in my\u2014' No, it doesn't work.\n\n\u2021 He lives in Japan now and hopefully won't find out about this book, but if you do happen to be reading this in Tokyo please tippex out each 'Colin' and write 'Julius' or something. There is also a little piece of legislation called privacy law that means I have to disguise anyone I'm talking about so please can you imagine Colin with a moustache and a beret.\n\n\u00a7 Sorry my mum was being so heterocentric here. Obviously loads of men don't fancy women at all.\n\n\u00b6 I mean I was _reading_ Freud, not that he was my actual lecturer, I'm not that old and if I were, I don't think the father of psychoanalysis would've been slumming it at Havering Sixth Form College.\n\n|| And delicious.**\n\n** I'm joking.\n\n\u2020\u2020 If your boyfriend is a woman, studies have found that she will never ejaculate more than zero sperm.\n\n\u2021\u2021 If.\n\n\u00a7\u00a7 These names have been changed to protect their prehistoric privacy.\n\n\u00b6\u00b6 Real name, long hair, lived near a dry ski slope. If you know him, tell him to pay my mum back.\n\n# Happily Ever After?\n\nI was never interested in Disney princesses as a child. My dolls didn't get married, they got haircuts and amputations. When I was twelve, I was into marbles, gymnastics and the curse of Tutankhamun's tomb. I was unaware of romance, I was too busy running around. Then an injury forced me to sit down \u2013 I'd choreographed a cardigan-swinging dance that knocked all the ornaments off my babysitter's mantelpiece. 'The show must go on,' I thought and continued my routine barefoot atop the debris. I couldn't walk for a week after the operation to remove glass from my feet, and my career as a cardigan dancer was sadly over.\n\nWhile I was recovering, my babysitter and I would watch TV together to distract ourselves from the newly empty mantelpiece. And it was on that sofa that I learned about love, from a daytime movie on Sky. It was about a young, beautiful woman who was seduced by this guy. She shouldn't have had sex with him but he was too sexy and so she had to. And then she found out she was pregnant and he said he would marry her but he had to get some diamonds from the diamond mine first. And she said, 'No it's too dangerous,' and he was like, 'I have to, for you and the baby.' So he went, and he never came back. And so the girl was looking for him all the time, and trusting that he would return. And everyone was like, 'He abandoned you,' and 'He's a loser,' but she kept looking out and waiting by the road to the diamond mine for him. And she had her baby and it was a girl who grew up thinking her father didn't want to see her, but her mum kept telling her he would come back if he could. But everyone else, like her nan, was saying, 'Your dad was a naughty sex man and a user.' And then time passed as it does, and the mum was an old lady and she died. She had never got married because she was waiting for her love. And after her funeral, a man came running down the road from the diamond mine. They had found a SKELETON down there, it was the father of the girl and it was holding a MASSIVE WHITE DIAMOND and they brought it to her, and her dad hadn't run off or found a new woman, he had died when all the rocks fell on him. And now the mum would never know that she was right because she was completely dead.\n\nIt was very upsetting, it was so _unfair_. I cried and cried until my mum picked me up and then I continued to cry as I told her about the poor woman and the poor man and then she cried too because she is a very empathetic and passionate woman. And I never forgot the film. I have regularly thought about the story and what I had learned about love. That if love is _true_ , if love is _real_ , then you will get a diamond eventually so just believe in it, until you die.\n\nI am in love at the moment. His name is John and the first thing I said to him when I met him was 'You need to know I've seen your penis.' It's not a famous penis or anything; he is not a condom model. I was texted a naked photo of him as a joke. He was drunk in a flat at the Edinburgh Festival and had put Tom Craine's new coat on to rub his bum on it or something, and Tom had taken a photo and sent it to Josh Widdicombe, who forwarded it to everyone else, including me. I looked at it and thought, 'That guy is having a great old time laughing in that coat.' And then a few days later I met John at a gig and I was very embarrassed. Eighteen months later we were in a relationship. We had fallen for each other while drinking heavily, just like in the movies.\n\nJohn has an English degree from Oxford, which I am jealous of. He can quote Philip Larkin and T. S. Eliot and before sleep he relaxes by pretending he is Sherlock Holmes. When he is _really_ drunk, he cries about Freddie Mercury while singing along to Queen on YouTube. He is pretty great AND YOU HAVE SIGNED A CONTRACT PROMISING NEVER TO KISS HIM so don't get any ideas. I loved him quickly. It was sudden and thunderous like a waterslide. I walked to the station after my first night at his flat and searched myself for the negativity and loneliness that live in my crease and spider about when I'm sober. Gone. None left, blown away. I bought a packet of bagels and ate them on the Central line, stroking the world and its inhabitants with my eyes. I was calm and I existed and if I was a film I would've ended. John was the resolution, thank you, roll credits. I was happy for fifty-five minutes and it was really enjoyable and I will never forget it. And then the spiders scuttled back.\n\nA couple of months into our relationship, I was falling asleep in John's bed and I whispered, 'Promise you'll never leave me.' He stayed silent, I lay there waiting. I asked, 'Are you asleep?' He said 'No' in a tight voice and I knew I was being creepy and needy. He told me, 'People can't promise each other things like that,' and I knew he was right and I was ashamed. It was a weak moment, but sometimes, in all the rawness of loving, it would be nice to go to sleep wrapped safely in a comforting thought, even if it is a lie or the kind of thing you can't really promise. Another time I asked him if he would consider being frozen if we broke up and unfortunately he thought I was joking. We went on dates where I'd slam down cocktails and say, 'I don't believe in marriage, let's just have fun!' and then I would weep because I didn't believe in marriage and I didn't believe in anything and I was asking him for reassurance that I couldn't define. He finds me very confusing.\n\nI was so grateful I had met John. I was thirty-two, it was sixteen years since I had loved Colin when I was sixteen. I tried to read something meaningful into the numbers. I felt very excited and joyous but the positivity of those emotions was cancelled out by my fear that this happiness would disappear. My elation sat hand in hand with doom. Every wonderful moment reminded me of love's finiteness \u2013 this too will pass. All of my previous relationships had finished, so why not this one? That's what relationships do, they end. And you shouldn't worry about the ending at the beginning, it's illogical and it ruins everything, it's like giving birth to a baby dressed as the Grim Reaper. It's like turning up at a job interview and saying, 'Oh what's the point? If you don't sack me, I'll quit.' It's like going to your job interview and just before the boss falls asleep, begging him to promise he'll employ you forever.\n\nI don't even believe in forever but I don't feel safe without forever and this is problematic.\n\nI ruined the beginning. We moved in together and I cried all day. I got hysterical in Ikea imagining all that assembling in reverse when we broke up. Everything we created together, every contentment I autopsied immediately, predicting how I would feel when it was over and all these happy moments were added to my collection of regretted memories.\n\nI blame my parents, which is unfair but quicker than self-examination. It's their fault I don't have an example of a healthy, committed relationship to emulate. My parents met when they were teenagers. My dad was in a pop band and my mum had seen him on TV when she was thirteen. We were told the story a lot when we were young. We had scrapbooks of my dad's pictures in magazines. When my mum saw him on TV she had an _epiphany_ , a physiological reaction: she was flooded with certainty that this was the man she was going to marry. She just knew it, she knew it! And then to ensure that happened she stalked him for four years, attending concerts and recordings and sitting out on his lawn with other teenage girls. She insisted. She threatened suicide and attempted suicide and she mugged him with her love and eventually she wore him down. They got pregnant with me, something I will always feel guilty about, then Cheryl. Then they got married, then Mum got pregnant with Kristyna, then Dad left for jazz and other ladies.\n\nI should be grateful to my mum for her persistence. I wouldn't exist if she hadn't succeeded in seducing my father and learning nothing about contraception. She told me that when she saw my dad that first time, the epiphany she felt was me wanting to be born, insisting on it. And that is _exactly_ the kind of thing I'd do; vibrate through a teenager telling her to make me.\n\nSo John and I are living together and I'm attempting to control my angst. I become obsessed with historical couples; I have this idea that if I can find a great example of a pair who got it 'right' then I can copy them and learn from them and everything will be fine. I started with Adam and Eve, the original pairing. And they're very typical, sure, at the beginning it's all magical and staying up late counting each other's ribs and laughing. But you can't sustain that. The magic fades, he's boring, she's off talking to wildlife and comfort eating \u2013 then their landlord kicks them out and one of their kids kills the other one. If they can't make it work in Paradise, what chance have I got in Lewisham?\n\nI researched all the great love stories: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, Victoria and Albert, and what I found was: suicide, infidelity, cousins. They were all _entirely_ tragic. My friend Vanessa recommended I read Napoleon's love letters to Josephine, said they were the most romantic things ever written, and so I did. And they are beautiful, I admit it. He is this powerful man, in charge of most of Europe, and he just misses his wife madly and wants to kiss her on the heart and 'much lower'. Historical swoon. Then I found out he later divorced her because she couldn't have children and married somebody else, the little French bastard.\n\nEvery love story I found wasn't. They were all tragic and imperfect. Everyone got hurt, everyone died. This wasn't helping.\n\nThen John and I set off on a walking tour in Bloomsbury and we stand outside the house where Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes spent their wedding night. I want to press my hands all over the bricks and rub myself on this magical place but decorum and John's arm prevent me.\n\n'Sylvia Plath didn't mean to commit suicide,' the tour guide says. 'She put her head in the oven, yes, and she turned the gas on, yes\u2014'\n\n'She also put milk and biscuits in the kids' room,' I whisper helpfully into John's ear. He looks at me and mouths, 'Shut up please.' The guide is telling us that Plath's downstairs neighbour was due to come up to clean and do chores. Had she arrived on time, she could have saved Sylvia, but she didn't, because the oven gas had seeped through the floorboards and she'd passed out too.* The tour guide pauses and shrugs.\n\nI think he's trying to persuade us that Sylvia Plath's death is even sadder than we'd realised, because maybe she didn't mean to die. I'm trying to absorb this when the idiot moves on to the next building and a funny story about advertising slogans. 'Ha ha ha,' laughs everyone as tension is dispelled. And this is _my_ epiphany. I grab John's hand and in a loud voice explain, 'I've just worked out that Plath and Hughes is NOT a love story at all. I'd always thought that they were the most _romantic_ framework: meet tall intelligent guy; bite his cheek at a party; poems, passion and Ouija boards ensue; he deserts you so you kill yourself \u2013 I thought that's what love was, that pain is how you prove your devotion and if it's not so extreme that you would die for it then it's not worth living for and\u2014' John's eyes beg me to stop talking, so I do. He continues to listen to the stupid old tour guide but my mind is too noisy now. Maybe it's the _story_ that's the problem. The way our minds collect information into a narrative.\n\nStories are how humans comprehend things they don't understand, like all the ancient creation myths trying to explain away what's scary: 'Oh, that river is there because some god ejaculated,' and 'Oh, the sun just hides at night because the moon is her ex and she doesn't want to bump into him.' And even with all our modern knowledge, the feeling of love, the too-big HUGENESS of how it _feels_ , reduces us all to mystics. We idealise the relationships of celebrities, we fetishise the lovers in films and novels and we rationalise the chaotic explosions of feeling that happen to us.\n\nThe human mind does not allow events that affect us to remain mysterious; our consciousness requires the firmest relationship between cause and effect in order to function. When our conscious mind does not 'know' why or how something has happened, it guesses. It predicts or assumes based on previous learning and WE DO NOT EVEN KNOW THAT THIS IS TAKING PLACE. The process is called 'confabulation', it's when your mind takes over, provides an answer, and you, the person thinking, feel it like truth. There is a wonderful example that illustrates how this works: in the nineteenth century the German psychiatrist Albert Moll instructed a hypnotised patient to put a book back on the shelf when she awoke. The lady woke up, took a book from the table by her side and placed it on the shelf. Moll asked her why she'd done that and she replied, 'I do not like to see things untidy. The shelf is the correct place for a book and that is why I put it there.' Her conscious mind was unaware of the instruction she had received and confabulated an explanation that made sense to her; she was a tidy woman, this was the kind of thing she would do.\n\nMore recent experiments have involved injecting participants with adrenaline. This naturally occurring hormone stimulates the sympathetic nervous system. You'll have experienced its effects yourself when you've been nervous or very excited \u2013 it can be unnerving. It makes your heart beat faster and causes skin to flush and heat. It's a strong physiological reaction that we interpret as emotional. In tests, when people don't know they're being injected with the drug, they attribute the physiological symptoms to something that has happened, some stimulus. 'That man made me angry', 'That film was really funny', 'Certain situations stress me out.' When participants know what they're being injected with and its effects, they tend to understand: 'My body was reacting to adrenaline.' This is huge, isn't it? When people didn't realise they'd been reacting to a chemical, they accepted the effects without question. They owned them, 'Yep that's me, that's how I feel because I'm feeling it.' They even reasoned with events and their environment to work out what they were reacting to. They confabulated and it seemed so logical that none of them knew it. This highlights the greatest weakness in our personal psychology: when our body causes us to feel a certain way we rationalise why we have those feelings, we attribute causes to the effects. We can never separate ourselves \u2013 'Oh, I feel this way because a gland inside me is releasing molecules into my bloodstream.'\n\nThis is relevant to our topic because what we call 'love' is really a variety of hormones and neurotransmitters swishing around our body. These chemicals induce behaviours and stimulate strong emotional reactions. But when we experience it we aren't in a lab, there isn't a scientist waving a syringe and getting us to fill out response forms, so we're unaware of the chemicals, they're invisible. It's left to our conscious mind to justify how and why we feel the way we do. We confabulate, we justify; star signs and toned arms and 'I've always liked a bad boy' \u2013 but, you know, we're subconsciously making it up. We create a story.\n\nThinking about my own body as a responsive meat machine reacting to chemical stimuli makes me feel disassociated and mad, but I'm not going to stop. We've already spent some time with dopamine; now I'd like to introduce you to my favourite hormone, come here \u2013\n\nOxytocin, this is reader; reader, this is oxytocin. Every book I've read about hormones, and you should be aware that is over _two_ books, refers to oxytocin as 'the cuddle hormone', which makes me think about blankets and middle age and a huge cushion with a face. Oxytocin deserves a sharper name to reflect its function: 'the satisfaction after orgasm hormone' or 'the not abandoning your kids hormone'. I don't want oxytocin sounding tame when its effects are so gargantuan.\u2020 Oxytocin is released by affectionate touching, stroking and massaging, holding hands, nipple stimulation and coming. It is what bonds mothers to their babies after birth and via lactation and it is a vital part of romantic attachment. It creates blissful, contented feelings towards the object of your affection, it works to decrease stress and, _I_ think, it's addictive. Being completely subjective now, I've always felt like a cat who wants to be petted all day, circling legs, begging for more attention. I get irritated with my boyfriend because he needs space away from me and refuses to play when I want to sit on him or squash him or wrestle. Yes, I'm very annoying. Apparently a person's relationship with oxytocin is set in childhood. People with very physically affectionate parents and carers can become adults with a 'skin hunger' who need to be touched a lot, while children who were held less can feel uncomfortable with touching. But I also know people who are the opposite, they come from physically reserved families and are desperate for contact as adults, or my friend who has a really really affectionate mum and any kind of hugging makes her feel smothered and suffocated, so... I dunno. We don't have definitive answers.\n\nThey sell oxytocin sprays on the internet, they're expensive. I have no idea if they work. I'd thought they were for people like me who feel affection-starved and don't get enough sex but in fact they are for people like me who worry about their partners cheating. There was a study on infidelity where men had a spray of oxytocin up their nose before being let loose in a room full of women. They scientists studied where the men looked, who they spoke to and for how long (welcome to my life) and asked them questions afterwards, and found that those men who'd had the spray flirted, looked and leered a lot less than those who'd had a placebo spray. The oxytocin-sprayed men seemed to notice attractive women a lot less, although I STILL wouldn't recommend you buy one. I think they're taking advantage of paranoid partners and the product feedback on Amazon is a list of one-star 'the bastard still didn't come home for two days' customer reviews.\n\nAlso, guess what? Oxytocin makes you forgetful. It's instrumental in blotting out the pain of childbirth, so women don't remember how awful it was and are willing to go through it all again, and it's why we behave foolishly when we are falling in love. If you're going crazy on each other, hands everywhere, PDAs, tons of sex and massive orgasms, your body will be flooded with oxytocin. You'll be drunk on it, making you less sharp. You might ignore the odd warning sign of bad behaviour; it won't seem so important that he stole from your purse or made a pass at your sister. But as the relationship goes on, those early hormones recede and it can feel like waking up to reality. Understanding the science of this should stop us disparaging ourselves for our loved-up decisions. Your body was behaving very cleverly by making you a bit stupid. Falling in love _is_ irrational and we have to forgive ourselves for it \u2013 but if you're gonna keep seeing him, maybe invest in a safe and don't take him to family gatherings?\n\nOxytocin plays a massive role in falling in love, as sex and touching promote bonding, but it is also relevant to falling out of love. When you've been with someone for a long time, there is less incentive to connect physically; you may take each other's body for granted. But the less you touch, the less bonded you feel, and the less bonded you feel the less you want to touch, and it's an unfortunate cycle. But knowing about it can help. If you're having a row with your bae, ask if you can hold hands while you shout, and you'll find oxytocin makes you conciliatory and less angry. Vice versa, if you're trying to break up with someone STOP SLEEPING WITH THEM as you're making it more difficult for yourself to leave. Some very mumsy advice there, you're welcome.\n\nSo far we've tasted a mere spoonful of the hormones that affect us. But as they fluctuate, rise and plummet, our emotions are powered and shifted and, like the people in adrenaline experiments, we attach reasons to our altered states. When I skateboarded around as Puck in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ , I placed a 'love potion' on the eyelids of sleepers, who woke up and loved the first person they saw. In real life it is dopamine, oxytocin and other chemicals that drug us and we are equally unaware that they've taken over. We feel crazy with emotions and intentions and we can only make sense of all that with story.\n\nHere is a story: Once upon a time in 2001 I worked in a hotel in Nottingham and I had no money, I got paid \u00a3100 a week into a bank account where I was so far _over_ my overdraft that I couldn't take any out. It all went on fees and fines and I was stuck. I wanted to go home but didn't have the train fare. I'd usually have borrowed it from my mum, but she'd lent me money to get up there and I still hadn't paid her back so we weren't talking. I got free food and a room at the hotel, which was good, and I used Rizla papers to make cigarettes from the fag ends left in ashtrays in the bar. For entertainment I had books that guests left when they'd finished with them. It was a generous system, but the fruits were a poor quality. The hotel was aimed at the over-fifties, it was supposed to be 'cruise-style' holidaying for people who hated boats, and I don't know if it was that demographic or maybe something that happens to the brain after menopause, but Jesus, those women read shit books. The men read hardback sports biographies but never relinquished them, so the Book Swap Box was refilled weekly with the same story, in varying lengths, countries and costume. It could be ballerinas in Russia or camel farmers in Egypt, it might be set in the ancient past or in deepest space, but the plot was always:\n\n_Woman very poor and has very thin waist and wrists and long silky hair, she has some talent but who cares? She so poor. Bad rich man notice her and then good man rescue her. Good man marry her, he turn out to be even richer than bad man, ending._\n\nI was as poor as the peasants and slave girls the stories described but with added stinky ashtray hands. Every day my books told me that as long as you are very very beautiful a man will save you eventually. Beauty is your only escape plan. The ideal beauty is a contradictory sensual\/virginal look and you can literally exchange that shit for a rich man's money. I didn't believe that I was beautiful, or that I'd ever meet a man at the over-fifties Warner Holidays hotel, but I brushed my teeth and plucked my chin just in case... and then one day, just when I had given up hope, I _did_ meet a man, Terence Peterson. We would walk together in the grounds, pushing his ageing mother in her wheelchair. He would describe the scenery for her decrepit eyes, adding in kingfishers and raccoons that weren't really there as his mother laughed and I hoped she'd never die. But she did, on a Tuesday, and Terence had to leave. 'Come with me,' he said. It should have been a question, but he was insistent and used to getting what he wanted. 'I'll never touch you,' he added, although my thin wrists were desperate for him to grab them and wave them around. 'We'll just be best friends,' Terence explained to me, 'unless... but no, but maybe? My mother has left me two million pounds in her will on one condition \u2013 that I MARRY YOU.' I was shocked and surprised and virginal and sensual and I turned to him and swooned while I replied, 'No thank you, I will not marry you, because I'm suspicious about this new will and the circumstances of your mother's death and also, more importantly, because you don't exist.'\n\nIf this was a musical I would sing a solo called 'The White Diamond Was Inside Myself' now and you would clap and clap and think, 'That is so meaningful,' and, 'She's a better singer than I was expecting.'\n\nWe're not stupid, are we? We're astute and self-aware, we know that the men depicted by rom-coms and chick-lit are invented for amusement and dreaminess. But I worry that being bombarded with these fictional men all the time has caused my disappointment with real ones. It's emotional porn. Even taking good looks and money out of the equation, the men in films and books and television are BRAVE. Even in comedies or when romance is a B-plot, the central male characters are _emotionally_ heroic: they pick one woman who they really like or love and then they risk rejection and humiliation and they don't give up and they fight for her and become better men for her and \u2013 it's literary Photoshop. No matter what our ideal, fiction feeds it to us and tells us to wait for it. With actual sex pornography, the flip is created. The majority of porn depicts a reality where women are always horny and willing for sex, easily aroused and loud to orgasm from penetration. We should all be fretting about how the repeated consumption of those lies is affecting people, but there is also this other, more common lie being shouted about what we should expect from love. This is the modern world; women lied about by pornography and men lied about everywhere else.\n\nSo many romance stories involve a saving, a redemption, a woman floundering until a man steps in and takes control. But dependency on a man is not freedom, it's a rubber ring that could deflate. There are evolutionary reasons why resources are attractive in a mate, so it's appealing to celebrate wealthy men in our fantasies, but I would like to put a warning sticker on every Mills and Boon or _Bridget Jones's Diary_ : 'SEEKING FINANCIAL SECURITY IN A PARTNERSHIP IS DANGEROUS!' Yes, dangerous I say; when someone leaves you, they should only be able to take their love with them, not your house or your stuff. Vice versa, you should never be imprisoned in an unhappy relationship because you can't afford to leave. Economics underwrite love \u2013 any human who cannot support herself is vulnerable to others, and if we romanticise that vulnerability, if we continue to idealise it, we're permitting the infantilisation of women and maybe even creating victims. Now I would love to brag about how I saved myself from the self-dug debt pit of 2001 but I was actually rescued by Mr Student Loans Company and his non-credit-checked lending policy. And then at university I got into more debt and eventually had to do Mr Voluntary Bankruptcy in 2005, so I am definitely the sort of wise and clever person you should absolutely be listening to.\n\nThe idea of 'The One', this belief I've absorbed that there is ONE person who will make me happier than any other, is itself a fairy tale. It is a story format. It has a beginning: the search for The One; a middle: some investigations of authenticity to check if he's The One; and an end: ta-da, a crowning ceremony and a booming voice, 'He hath passed the test and is indeed THE ONE.' It's how we communicate our romances to each other and ourselves and it's an antiquated ideal. In Plato's _Symposium_ , Aristophanes explains that in the olden times humans were round like balls and had two faces, four arms and four legs each. And they had double genitals: some had two willies and others had two vulvas, and some had one of each. And they floated and bounced around happily, feeling very content but also super-powerful and making attempts to take over heaven. And the gods were really threatened and decided to split all humans in two, dividing and diminishing their strength.\n\nAnd now human beings only had one face and a mere two arms and two legs each and one willy or vulva. And Zeus said, 'You guys better behave now or we will split you again and you will only have half a face and you'll be hopping around on one leg,' and the new bipedal humans promised to do their best. But now they missed their other halves and could not feel whole without them. They had lost their soulmates, and would spend their lives looking for them. For some women their soulmate was another woman and for some it was a man, but either way they would only feel happy when they found them again and pushed their genitals together and were complete. THE END.\n\nI don't know if the ancient Greeks took Aristophanes' story literally or if they just enjoyed the poetry of the metaphor. It's a wonderful explanation for how it _feels_ to fall in love \u2013 an attachment so powerful that it _seems_ like destiny. The olden Greeks didn't know that hormones and neurotransmitters are the real gods that rule us. They needed myths for explanation; this was how they confabulated. But for modern me, being told that I'm not whole on my own, that I need another very specific person to _complete_ me, is unhelpful. The idea that there's only one correct answer among the millions of wrong ones \u2013 doesn't this make us fussy and overly critical? It's the relationship equivalent of spending New Year's Eve travelling between addresses, miserable and imagining everyone else is at some amazing party you can't locate, when in reality they too are in taxis and on night buses wondering where they will ever find happiness.\n\nI've spent my adult life believing that some partner, some relationship, some sort of sex would make everything better. My sadness would leave me, and that's how I'd _know_ I was with the 'right' person. I recognise the dissatisfied, incomplete, half-souled being Aristophanes describes and when I've met a guy and those feelings haven't gone away\u2014\n\n**SARA**  \nIt's the wrong set of limbs. He was NOT the answer!\n\nOh, I don't know what the answer is, by the way, or even why we have such troublesome questions. This is not a self-help book and I worry I've given too many of my own opinions already. Like that stuff about not relying on men for money \u2013 do what you like, of course, it's your life. And maybe you have brilliant New Year's Eves and the observation was not universal, perhaps you're grounded and content and all these words seem like the overthinking of a woman with too much time and not enough hard labour on her hands? If that's true, why don't _you_ write a self-help book and I'll read it during breaks at the gravel pit\/heavy-lifting factory.\n\nIn my wonderings and efforts to be open-minded I remind myself that western world assumptions could be wrong. Maybe Aristophanes was on the right track but human beings actually used to be in big conjoined blobs of four and you have to find _three_ other people to be happy. Or six? What if the happiest and most fulfilling relationships available to our species contain the same number of participants as a basketball team? Our closed minds restrict our decisions \u2013 are they cheating us of contentment? Why is it _one_ person we're supposed to be seeking? Oh no, here comes a strict old scientist, all white hair and stern face:\n\n**SCIENTIST**  \nYou're being very silly.\n\n**SARA**  \nI'm not! I'm trying to shake off cultural conditioning\u2014\n\n**SCIENTIST**  \nWe bond in twos because that's how many people it takes to make a child.\n\n**SARA**  \nNot if you don't know that\u2014\n\n**SCIENTIST**  \nBut we _do_ know that\u2014\n\n**SARA**  \nThere is this tribe of Native Americans, the Bari, and they believe that every man a woman has sex with adds to the child she makes, that all the sperm works together to build the baby and they all have joint paternity.\n\n**SCIENTIST**  \nAnd you brought me in just to tell me that?\n\n**SARA** ( _stroppy_ )  \nI AM _TRYING_ TO UNDERMINE THE CONCEPT OF COUPLES\u2014\n\n**SCIENTIST**  \nWhy?\n\n**SARA**  \nI'm scared.\n\n**SCIENTIST**  \nOf what?\n\n**SARA**  \nThat I will never have a relationship that lasts forever, I'll never find the stupid 'One' and I'll always feel like a failure.\n\n_Pause. SCIENTIST looks smug._\n\n**SARA**  \nOkay, I heard myself, I get it, you can go now.\n\n_SCIENTIST does thumbs up like she's the Fonz and exits. Yeah, the SCIENTIST was a woman all along and if you pictured a man you're a sexist conditioned to expect males in positions of authority (as are we all)._\n\nWhy should I feel this pressure for a love that's endless when virtually no one achieves it? When I researched historical lovers the only technically successful relationship was Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. They got married and stayed together for the rest of their lives \u2013 about thirty-six hours, until they took cyanide in a bunker ( _drops mic and leaves stage_ ).\n\nI used to be really judgemental of my mum. After my dad left, she would drink wine, listen to terrible music and wail, 'No one wants a woman with three kids, I'll never meet anyone.' But she did meet men, and I hated them. A new one would be introduced and she'd joke that I was 'the protective one' while I tried to set him on fire with my eyes. And then eventually the man would stop coming round, and I knew that it was our fault, because they didn't want to be part of our awful family. Because me and my sisters were too much to take on. Because we were naughty and never went to bed, because we spilled things and didn't clean them up, because we existed. I hated the boyfriends because they stole, they sucked up any happiness my mum was capable of, and when it was all gone they left and abandoned us to clean up the emotional oil spill.\n\nI wished my mum would stop looking and that we would be enough for her. She would cry and say she had no one to talk to and I didn't understand because she was talking to me _right_ _now_. The music would go on and the wine would be opened and we would hug her and try to make it better or dance and try to make her laugh. But the crying only ended when she met someone new, and she'd ask me to be nice to this one please and Cheryl would sit on his lap and cuddle him and I would stare from across the room and refuse to go to bed so I could keep an eye on things.\u2021 When I was little I blamed the bad men for coming into our lives and hurting us, but when I reached twelve or thirteen I started to blame my mum for inflicting them upon me.\n\nThe punishment for my adolescent scorn has been to repeat what I'd seen Mum do from the inside. Like _Freaky Friday,_ I became her. All the phrases I loathed \u2013 'this time it's different', 'he's the one I've been waiting for', 'I really think this is _it_ ' \u2013 now fly from my mouth. And my poor friend Katie, she has to listen to me and she will kindly and occasionally say, 'Do you remember you said this about Mark\/Tom\/Steve?' and I say, 'NO I HAVE NEVER FELT LIKE THIS, IT IS A NEW FEELING ALL THOSE OTHER FEELINGS WERE INCONSEQUENTIAL.' As a teenager I despised my mum for needing a man to feel complete, for seeking a happy ending that made sense of all that had been before. Now I'm that way myself and it's me I can't bear. 'Oh this one is The One,' I say, and then it doesn't work out so I go, 'Oh no, he wasn't,' or sometimes 'He _was_ and I ruined it,' and then I meet someone else and say, 'Hooray, this is it, The One,' and then it doesn't work out and I think, 'Oh I was wrong again,' and then I meet a new One and I am an idiot. Or I'm an animal. I'm an animal desperate as I begin the end of my fertility and my body is crazy for making babies while my mind is full of romance stories and hope. If there was a switch I could press and not fancy boys any more I would. I wonder what I could have achieved in my life if my thoughts weren't consumed with longing and insecurity. Should I get spayed like a cat, to stop my yowling and nighttime wanderings? I'd be a bit shy after the operation, but I'd soon heal and then I would curl up on a soft chair and whatever was near would be enough. I'm completely projecting onto cats now \u2013 maybe being spayed is really depressing? People don't tend to be thrilled about their hysterectomies. Oh cats, tell us your secrets.\n\nIf you read articles about divorce rates \u2013 always described as 'shockingly high' or 'on the rise' \u2013 blame is laid at choice's door. 'Not enough commitment nowadays,' says an old lady on a porch. 'These young people quit too easily,' says an old man in B & Q. Are we romanticising this 'staying and working at it' mentality? The divorce rates are never celebrated. This would be my article about it if I had a newspaper column:\n\nNew statistics from the Department of Knowing Things show that nearly fifty per cent of marriages are ending in divorce rather than the cold, honest death promised in front of God\/loved ones\/a registrar. These figures indicate that many human beings are free and self-loving enough to alter situations in which they have become unhappy. An increasing number of the world's women are no longer trapped by economic dependency on husbands whom they do not love. Historically women could not own property, lease in their own name, borrow money from banks or retain ownership of wealth or assets they inherited. It is only within the last century that British women have gained rights to vote, to work in all professions, control their own finances and be considered 'persons' in their own right. As recently as the 1970s women in the UK could not get a mortgage without a male counter-signature and could be sacked if they got pregnant. Perhaps a proportion of these modern divorces are instigated by women whose great-grandmothers would have been trapped with fewer options? Just saying. Now over to outside with the weather.\n\nThanks for reading my column. If there was an accompanying picture it would be me and a Labrador, I'm shrugging and he's raising an eyebrow, so the tone would be like 'What a world' but also 'Let's try and stay cheerful'.\n\nI've never been married. No one has ever asked me except the fictional Terence Peterson in a story I wrote sarcastically. I have bountiful respect for those who wed. My past incarnations, old Saras of different ages, feel like different people to me; Sara who got herself into debt or Sara who loved Colin. I wouldn't want to spend the present stuck in irreversible situations I created in the past. Although actually I can't get a mortgage or an overdraft or one of those bank cards that you press on the thing and it zaps money \u2013 a contactless card \u2013 and that's past me's fault. Imagine if she'd also chosen me a life partner? If I'd married my year 2001 love, I'd be Mrs Amateur DJ with a Substance Abuse Problem.\n\nAgreeing to marry is an overcoming of logic, a pledge: 'I don't care if I change, I'm prepared to stand by the decisions I make today.' Or, or it's more that when you're really deeply in love you can't imagine it will ever recede. Love wouldn't be doing its job properly if it was sane, if you could see through it and make rational assessments. But the loving feelings _do_diminish. The evidence is all around you and in the list of previous sex partners you keep hidden in an unused teapot. I thought I would love my first boyfriend, Colin, forever. I checked myself periodically, through university and jobs and living abroad, and, yep, I still loved him. And then I saw him, we met up, six or seven years later. We went to Brighton for a drink and I felt nothing. It was so odd. He talked and I stared at his face thinking, 'How did I ever kiss you?' I was a sane woman reflecting on insanity. He'd changed his surname and found God and got married and had children. And I politely chatted, wondering if I'd got much more intelligent or just been blind to his clich\u00e9d talk. And then we left and he sent me a text about wanting to fuck me and I stared at it wishing it felt like a victory. All the chemicals that go crazy gluing us to someone by loving them, when they're reabsorbed or redistributed or go wherever they go it's like being left beached by the sea. The previous state makes no sense.\n\nThere is a brilliant woman called Helen Fisher and I'd really recommend watching her TED talk about love if you haven't already. She's also written about theories of serial pair bonding; she studied divorce rates from countries across the world and found that the median duration for marriage was seven years. 'Seven-year itch is proved real by science,' cried crappy newspaper journalists who are never pictured with wry Labradors. The median time for divorce has to fall somewhere, as is the nature of averages, so the seven-year timespan may not be significant of anything. Also 'seven-year itch' sounds like an old-person clich\u00e9, from back in the olden days when they were happy to do things for seven years. If 'itch' refers to a discontentment that makes you reassess your life and want to make changes I have one every thirty-five seconds. I blame mobile phones that can go on the internet #attentionspa\u2014\n\nFisher's studies found that while the median was seven years, the mode \u2013 most common \u2013 length of time to stay married was four years. This is more illuminating, considering what we have discovered about parental investment and bonding. A four-year-old child is mobile, communicative and, in our culture, ready to go to school. In hunter-gatherer societies four is the age when children tend to start being cared for by older siblings or outside the immediate family, and on average women give birth about once every four years. The conclusion drawn by Fisher and others is that we've evolved to closely bond with a mate for the period of time that ensures the greatest survival odds for any offspring. After this mating cycle it is natural to detach and move on to a new partner, so that women can have genetically varied children. Fisher's stats also showed that there were higher divorce rates among younger people, which she argued had little to do with modern dissatisfaction and everything to do with their peak of fertility and ability to have a second or third cycle of childrearing with a new partner.\n\nThat is the kind of thing I read and go THERE IT IS, THAT'S THE ANSWER: humans have a cyclical bonding tendency of around four years, we intermingle deeply and massively and _painfully_ , and then we recover and start fancying other people again. It explains me and my relationships, how difficult the end is, how my feelings change. How hurtful it is to snap away from someone in the early stages, before the cycle is complete. How impossible I find it to like someone I have spent a few years with. But this might not resonate with your experience. I am so keen to find an answer that explains me that I will grasp at anything \u2013 not a euphemism.\n\nI think it's worth contemplating the serial bonding theory seriously. I'm not saying that the numbers are exactly right or that the explanation doesn't have flaws and contradictions BUT imagine if, culturally, we expected relationships to finish. If rather than this venerated concept of eternity overshadowing our pairings, we all loved and loved and then moved on when necessary or timely. In that society, anyone who stayed with the same person for too long would be mocked and ridiculed \u2013 if you knew an old couple down the road who'd been high-school sweethearts, you'd tell me and we'd go egg their house and shout up at their windows: 'Get dressed! We're taking you speed dating!' We'd march them there ourselves. Maybe you'd get off with the old man to prove a point? I wish you hadn't, that's a bit out of order actually. But imagine if the people who ended up being together for fifty years were like, 'How weird, it was just a fling that went wrong!' If we admired the people who created and kept lifelong partnerships, but considered them a wonderful anomaly, while the lists in our teapots got longer and longer and we judged our loves on our hearts rather than the calendar. Hmm?\n\nI'm imagining myself giving this speech to Sylvia Plath and she is smiling through her tears and getting back into bed. Simone de Beauvoir is texting Sartre that it's over. Queen Victoria is removing her widow's weeds and now she's nude and making a pass at Simone. Eve walks in with a bowl of fruit and we all laugh. Ha ha ha ha ha. The musical finishes with a brilliant finale, I'm singing 'Endings Aren't Failures' and when I get to the rap bit, all the women in the world do the robot dance and we all feel okay about everything. We all agree that pair bonding is the most powerful influence that affects our bodies. Doing it multiple times is an evolutionary strength, we're the winners! We throw our diamonds into the air because we don't need them any more! Terence Peterson tries to propose to all of us and we beat him to death with hardback copies of _A Room of One's Own_!\n\nAnd then we go home.\n\nWe have learnt a little bit so far, I understand some things slightly better \u2013 or I have more ideas to ponder. But there is so much about my body and its behaviours that I still want to comprehend. The female preoccupation with looks and youth and body weight; women assessing other women's attractiveness; a beauty industry that grows rich on female insecurity and a society that celebrates a woman's sexiness as her most valuable achievement. I'd always believed these were contemporary challenges caused by commercialism and women's magazines, but it's truer to say they are the residual concerns of ancient mating tactics sent haywire by modern living.\n\nIf this were a film there'd now be a close-up on a mouse in a cage. She is grooming her whiskers over and over again. She is agitated and gnawing at her own fur and she doesn't know how to stop. And you'd tut and understand that the director was, quite heavy-handedly, telling you she is you.\n\n* I have looked this up \u2013 it's not _quite_ true. Sylvia had left a note asking a (male) neighbour to call a doctor, but he didn't see it on his way to work as planned, because the gas had knocked him out.\n\n\u2020 I utilised the thesaurus function of my computer here because I worry I've used the word 'huge' too much.\n\n\u2021 An eye I was training to START FIRES.\n\n# Body\n\n# Is There Any Body with You?\n\nSo, you know glow worms?\n\nIf 'no' throw the dice, if 'yes' go forward five pages. COME BACK, I totally pranked you. It feels wrong to suddenly start talking about glow worms out of nowhere but I think about them all the time, I believe we can learn something from them, so let me tell you about it \u2013 STOP LOOKING FOR DICE.\n\nI read that glow worms are dying out and that it was because of electricity. Then I looked it up on the internet and found out some people had been claiming for ages that there were fewer glow worms, but there was no definite proof because it's really hard to count them and then, even once you _have_ counted all the glow worms, if they've never been counted _before_ , you have nothing to compare that number to. So they had to wait and count again, but now it seems certain that glow worm populations are diminishing. Oh dear.\n\nGlow worms are not actually worms, they are little flying beetles and it is only the female glow worm who glows, which is sad for the male glow worm as both of his names are a lie. So the female glow worm lights up, and the male glow worm finds her fuzzy fluorescence very attractive. I'm anthropomorphising, let me be more clinical \u2013 the light emitted by female glow worms enables male glow worms to locate them and inspires mating. Male glow worms have been shaped by their evolution and the sexual selection of their species to be 'turned on' by the glow that emanates from the female. And then bastard humans put their clothes on and invented conductive wires and lightbulbs and now male glow worms spend a lot of their time mating with street lights, which they think are massive, super-sexy lady glow worms. Idiots.\n\nLots of animals have evolved sexual ornamentation to attract mates: bright red bottoms, colourful plumage, handsome antlers \u2013 all kinds of visual stimuli that advertise health, great genes, lack of parasites and what have you. In nature ornamentation has been a failsafe and trustworthy way of ascertaining mate potential for millions of years, right up until humans evolved to the point of screwing with everything. There are some interesting experiments that scientists have done, and when I say interesting I mean cruel, but also, yes, interesting. They have artificially heightened the ornaments of certain species, attaching dyed feathers, painting bottoms, sticking on super-massive antlers to see what happens. And what does happen? All the lads or ladies go crazy for the super-sexy sex signals and no creature has a built-in bullshit detector. They don't have a cut-off where they go, 'Surely, Stephen, those antlers are too big, you can barely lift your head and you won't be able to fit through the door of the house I've got even though I'm a deer.' Instead they are like, 'Come over here and rut with me, Stephen, your headgear is flipping amazing.'\n\nAs you know, human beings also evolved via sexual selection. Let's just clarify what this is. _Natural_ selection is the wellknown shaping force that has created our bodies and minds. We adapt to what our environment requires \u2013 or rather, those who don't adapt perish. The genes of the ill-suited are lost as their offspring flounder and fail to produce healthy children. To give a rough, crude and made-up example: imagine some _sapiens_ living in a forest a hundred thousand years ago, and imagine one family had a genetic mutation that made one arm bigger than the other \u2013 the left arm, it's massive. If that bigger arm made them better climbers (to avoid predators), better foragers (they can reach for more fruits and things) and better hunters (they can use their big arm to club things to death) then they will be better fed and safer than other families. Their children have a lower mortality rate, so they go on to have more children with the genes for bigger left arms who also flourish and have more children who survive more successfully than their smaller-armed cousins and, generation upon generation, there are slightly more genes for big arms than small arms. Let's say one per cent more each breeding cycle. Speed this up: over a hundred generations, over a thousand \u2013 if the bigger left arm is still an advantage then many more _sapiens_ now have the genes for it. There are more big left arms in any community, and now it becomes competitive, perhaps about twenty per cent of all the _sapiens_ have this big left arm, but now they are foraging and hunting so well that there is less food for the small-armers, whose children now have an even higher mortality rate, blah blah blah, you can see where this is going, eventually all _sapiens_ end up with a big left arm. It takes millennia but it happens.\n\nSexual selection is just as gradual a process, but rather than improving the spread of certain genes through an animal's fitness, it happens via mating opportunity. Imagine there was the same mutation, a hundred thousand years ago, but that hefty left arm does _not_ help with climbing or foraging or hunting. Instead it is super sexy, just plain gorgeous to have a big left arm, and the males from the big-left-arm family have sex with about twenty per cent more females than small-armed fellows, while females from the big-left-arm family have more choice of breeding partners and can select much stronger and healthier males than the average female. Over thousands of generations the genes for this purely aesthetic advantage would have a wider and wider spread. This too could result in all _sapiens_ developing big left arms over tens of thousands of years.\n\nAnd often there's an overlap. Imagine if that big left arm was found sexually attractive _because_ it enabled those who possessed it to be better food providers and thus exciting potential mates. With both forces working upon mate selection as well upon any offspring's survival rates and their mating opportunities, genes would be spread even faster. I'm so convinced by my own argument I'm wondering why people don't have a big left arm when they are clearly so great \u2013 then I remember that symmetry is an important visual signal of health in humans. It proves \u2013 or suggests \u2013 that there was no illness, parasites or malnourishment in childhood and adolescence apparently. Maybe that's why the fictional big left arms never stood a chance?\n\nAs odd as it is to think about, you are made like any other animal, with ornamentations and attributes that advertise your worth. Your physical composition speaks as to your mate potential. This is an inescapable truth. No matter how civilised we are, typing away in our offices, we are programmed to assess each other, everyone we meet, for indications of health and fertility. This is why beautiful people are more likely to get away with crimes than ugly people, it's why older women find themselves unrepresented on television, it's why disabled or physically unusual people have to fight so much social stigma to gain respect and equal rights. As unfair as this seems, as unfair as this _is_ , if we become more aware of our inbuilt animal bias we can improve. We can make better conscious decisions, question our reactions and send good-looking people to prison improve our human interactions.\n\nJust as our judgement of others is based on subconscious evolutionary programming, so is our low-level awareness of being assessed back. It's why feeling attractive is so closely linked to confidence. It's behind our urge to manipulate what others see of us through shaping clothing, padded bras, make-up, Instagram filters and, in extreme cases, cosmetic surgery. It's why being a woman can sometimes feel like being an unwilling shop window \u2013 constantly visible and considered an advertisement. Our selfhood is obscured by superficial valuation. Whether we like it or not, women's bodies evolved physical ornaments that signal our ability to conceive children. It is creepy and unfortunate but instinctual. Men look at women and women look at each other; we assess height and hair shininess and face shape \u2013 but the most fundamental adornment, our trustworthiest signal of vitality and potential, the hot brightness of our glow, is fat. Fatty fatty fat fat. Body fat enabled our species to survive; it created the energy store to grow our brains. Like the big left arms of my imagination, a high body fat percentage was both naturally and sexually selected in our evolution. If you have ever felt negatively about any fat on your body, I am about to attempt to change your mind. And mine.\n\n# Bums, Boobs and Clever Old Fat\n\n_Once upon a time a woman was reading a magazine that was aimed at making women feel bad about themselves so that they would buy stuff. It was called_ You're Fat! _magazine. The woman enjoyed the bright coloured pictures of the publication and the familiar sting of hating herself. And then, across the page, there was a QUIZ! 'What body shape are you?' The woman answered the questions in her fine, calorie-counting mind and the answers revealed that she was apple-shaped. Shaped like an APPLE. Suddenly everything made sense: the fact she always rolled off bus seats and couldn't hold pens. No wonder she couldn't get a husband. Sure, some guys liked her stem and leaf, but all of her boyfriends had found that ash-like grassy patch on her bottom gross. And all women have been shaped like fruit ever since, except hourglass women, they are the happiest women of all as they are filled entirely with sand._\n\nWhen I started writing this book I enrolled on a course for Body Confidence. A burlesque performer with a degree in psychology would teach a small group of us to love our bodies. 'This will be great for research,' I told myself, which was a lie. I want to stop hating my body because it is so time-consuming and because it makes me so sad sometimes. I get angry at myself about how lucky I am to be healthy and alive and how stupid it is to cry about how you look in a bikini. I also find the idea of any kind of journey towards self-acceptance utterly repulsive. '#firstworldproblems,' I would say sarcastically if I was planning to go on a course like this for myself, 'maybe you can take a class in vapid self-obsession afterwards.' So here I'd cleverly solved the conundrum, pretending my incentive wasn't my _own_ body confidence but the other women on the course \u2013 I could write about them and learn things. When you are a great liar like me, deceiving yourself is easy.\n\nTo make sense of the statement 'Hating my body is time-consuming' I could describe a simple process like 'getting dressed' or 'preparing to leave the house' and demonstrate how much of my daily thought is squandered on hiding my stomach \u2013 but I don't want you to know. I am very embarrassed about how I feel. I'm ashamed that I care about what I look like and I've been aiming since childhood for invisibility. I could never be small enough; my ideal body shape is disembodied voice, radio. And it's a secret. I haven't talked to friends about my body since I was a teenager and I don't confide in my family. My insecurity is more than weakness \u2013 I consider it a personality defect. I have always believed it makes me a bad person, a vain, shallow waste of humanity. With all of the awful, terrible things that happen in the world, how dare I spend all my time thinking about my bottom? I have the luxury of being one of the few fortunate women on the planet who are safe and sheltered and fed and watered, and I have the audacity to be unhappy. The only thing I hate more than my bum is my preoccupation with it. A cycle of self-hate: I hate my body and I hate _me_ because I hate my body. And seeing all this written down, it is CRAZY that I don't think of my body as 'me' but as something that my 'self' is trapped inside.\n\nAny concern with appearance is a time tax. Conditioning, colouring, scrubbing, plucking and shopping. Apparently Albert Einstein had loads of suits but they were all exactly the same so he never had to think about what to wear.* He went on to use that saved brainpower to do something very brilliant like invent the car.\n\nIt's scary how much of my inner monologue is consumed by debating food choices, berating myself for what I've recently eaten and promising I'll do better. Plus the hours in front of the mirror, prodding, sobbing, trying everything on and deciding not to leave the house. My weight has stopped me doing things, has kept me from parties and dinners and award ceremonies because the stress of attempting to look 'nice' has beaten me.\n\nI don't know if the fact that my job involves people looking at me makes it worse. Comedians put themselves down a lot; it's an easy source of comedy. At my early gigs I had material about how physically disgusting I was and how I couldn't get a boyfriend or whatever. And then I saw another woman do the same kind of thing \u2013 a brilliant and beautiful comedian who I really respect \u2013 and seeing it from the outside, I realised the effects; we were apologising for ourselves while reinforcing to all of the women in the audience that we _were_ fat and it _did_ matter. And I decided never to do it again. I would never again write a joke about not being good enough because of my appearance. Now I imitate arrogance instead, but in the nervy few moments before every show I wish I had worn something more flattering and fret that someone will heckle me about my weight. No one ever has. My enemy is internal.\n\nWhen I was fourteen, my best friend Hayley and I would get dressed together at her house before going out. We often planned what we would change as soon as we could afford plastic surgery. I'd get big boobs and a small nose, she would get liposuction and a six-pack like Peter Andre's. Hayley always told me to do make-up first, get dressed second, because hiding how ugly your face was would make you feel better about your body. I have to get dressed on my own now, but I live with my boyfriend so sometimes he comes in and his face, his facial expression, when I am freaking out and throwing things and being hysterical \u2013 he stands there pale and big-eyed and baffled about how this can happen to a grown-up, intelligent woman who just popped into the bedroom to put some trousers on to go to Sainsbury's. 'I'M SORRY,' I yell at him, like yelling ever improved a situation, like an apology ever meant more by being louder and aggressively intoned. He looks scared and I get angrier. A logical me observes from a distance, knowing I'm being completely mad, but can't do anything about it. I'm on irrational and unpleasant autopilot. I don't look in mirrors when I am out of the house because it is too dangerous. My reflection in a shop window can cause me to go home. The memory of a great gig is ruined if I am emailed photographs that were taken.\n\nSince early adolescence I've been ridiculous, but now I had this course. I didn't hope to be fixed, but the act of booking it, paying for it, turning up there, would be the _beginning_. The undoing of nearly thirty years of constant inner negativity. I was going to listen to the other women's feelings about themselves, their journey, and I was going to tell them they were beautiful and mean it and see them start to _feel_ it. And I, I would start to feel it too. I could never love myself, no way, but if I could get to a neutral position of not caring, _well_ , imagine what I could do with all the time and thoughts I'd reclaim; I would do more charity work, breastfeed the poor, reinvent the car \u2013 a better car, one that's made of balloons and pops if you hit any animals or people \u2013 I couldn't wait to be more productive!\n\n'Thank you for enrolling in your chosen class: Self Esteem and Body Confidence,' said the confirmation email. 'For the first session, please bring an outfit that makes you feel really sexy.' There was then a list of suggestions; hot pants, mini-skirt, high heels, suspenders, catsuit etc. I cried for a while imagining how great it must be if you have an outfit that makes you feel sexy.\n\nI hope you understand why I didn't go.\n\nBroadly speaking, there are many differences between men and women. These differences will never be universal, never true for every single person, and there will always be a larger variance _within_ a gender than _between_ the genders. That is a confusing sentence so I'll reword it more simply. Take height. Here is the broad stroke: men are taller than women. But this is not universal, because loads and loads of women are taller than loads and loads of men. Also the height difference between the world's tallest man and the world's shortest man is much more than the difference between the average height of men and women \u2013 _comprendos_? On average, as well as being shorter, women are fatter than men. Woohoo for us, the rolypoly tiny guys. On average we're composed of twenty-seven per cent fat while the typical stringy manthing is only fourteen per cent. As I'm sure you're aware by now, nothing about the body's composition is an accident. We are perfectly built; any flaws about our ancestors' persons were thrown into the bin of natural selection. Our doubled body fat means something. Either fat was imperative to our individual survival OR it was sexually selected OR, da da da da da DA, both.\n\nIf we were to slip down the hill of time and hang out with the humans of forty thousand years ago we'd find they were physiologically the same as us. If you'd been born then, you would be you \u2013 there would be differences in socialisation, you wouldn't have as many shoes, but your brain and body would be identical. Pre-farming, with no domesticated animals or reliable crops, you and your family would have foraged and hunted about for the things you liked to eat\/anything edible you could find. The calories contained in the food you ate would likely be burned off during your endeavours to find more food. Rooting, scouting and scavenging would have been your main exercise and the majority of your waking hours would be spent locating the sustenance needed to keep you alive. In any country of the world, in any era of human existence up until the last hundred years, a slow metabolism was beneficial. Storing energy as fat is an insurance policy for the lean times \u2013 a long winter, a drought, any time when food is scarce. The skinny, too-fast-metabolismed women of prehistory perished. We can cry for them later.\n\nFor post-adolescent women, fat on the body is an announcement. It proves that they are great at finding food and, even better, that they have plenty of energy saved up ready to feed their children. Males who preferred fatter females were rewarded throughout our evolution with a higher survival rate for their offspring. A woman with a surplus of stored fat can utilise that energy even at times of starvation. It is broken down when she needs to breastfeed her babies, so the enriched milk nourishes her children through their most vulnerable years. This incredibly sensitive and reactive storage system saved and enabled our lives. Men have evolved to store only enough fat for themselves \u2013 you're wriggling round with a family's worth. And I've been idiotic in despising something I should've been worshipping.\n\nWe have to learn more about fat. The word is poisoned by negative connotations: greed, bad health and abnormality. I've considered my fat as a visual punishment, a toxin. And it's not, it's a magnificent organ with the worst PR team in history. Fat is our energy source, our batteries \u2013 fatteries? Hmm, yes, fatteries. It's our fillable hamster cheeks. Our fattery cells are storing processed calories, condensed into lipids and waiting there until we need them. If you are an average woman (I certainly don't think of you that way) and I kidnapped and starved you for an experiment (I'm a terrible friend), you could survive for around two months. THANKS, FAT, FOR SAVING YOUR LIFE.\n\nEvery single cell of your fat is _amazing_. It's not some numb luggage, it's alive and a vital part of your endocrine system. Adipose tissue (or fat) releases a hormone called leptin which travels via your blood to your hypothalamus and lets your brain know how much you're carrying. If you've got enough your brain will inhibit appetite; if you need more the hormone ghrelin will be produced, which encourages hunger. That conversation is going on constantly as your body regulates itself to maintain a perfect balance, a shape and size that will keep you at your strongest and healthiest, ready for the longest trek or the harshest winter.\n\nFat also produces oestrogen. Your lovely lady sex hormone is largely provided by ovaries, but supplemented by kindly fat cells. Being super-skinny means a bit less oestrogen, which might result in irregular periods in younger women and a more difficult menopause for older ones. The residual oestrogen from fat is why plump ladies age a bit better and their skin seems a little smoother. And not all fat is the same. During adolescence girls can gain between ten and twenty kilos of adipose tissue. It is mainly located on the bum and upper thighs and is composed of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. This is the exact same stuff that adverts for butter substitutes are always telling us is 'good fat'. Well, good is an understatement, mate. Omega-3 polyunsaturated fat is a large component of the human brain. The adolescent female body is storing it up ready for any children that will come later. When she breastfeeds, the omega-3 polyunsaturated fat around her hips will be used to fortify her milk and build her baby's most important organ. How can I have been allowed to hate my wobbly thighs when there were brains in there all along? BRAINS! Minds. The things that compose sonnets and invent balloon cars. Our massive brains are about sixty per cent fat, by far the fattiest organ in our body \u2013 without fat there would be no thought.\n\nYou are correct, that does deserve a 'Congratulations, fat' trumpet:\n\nHere's another thing to consider. If you _were_ living forty thousand years ago your only impression of what you looked like would have been from looking down. You could see your hands and wiggling fingers; your arms up to the shoulder if you turned your head; your belly, hairy pudenda, your legs heading off towards the floor with little feet down there in the distance. But no matter how much you craned your head round you could not find your bottom. You could feel it with your hands, squeeze it, you'd know it was comfy for sitting on. You could look at other people's bottoms but you couldn't accurately compare your own to theirs. I assume back then I'd have been bowling about assuming my derri\u00e8re was as delicious as the nicest ones I saw, and with no mirror to prove otherwise, how happy I'd have been. I'd have patted my own cheeks and thought, 'Yes, that's about right,' and continued feeling fabulous. During our species's entire evolution we would never have seen ourselves reflected clearly. Our assessment of self-worth and status would have been drawn from the behaviours of others around us. We were completely unable to scrutinise certain aspects of our physicality until some bastard invented metal-backed glass two thousand years ago. Our modern silver-backed mirrors have only existed for two hundred years, and this is relevant because they affect our self-confidence. Psychological studies consistently demonstrate that looking in the mirror makes us feel worse about ourselves. For people with body dysmorphic disorder just twenty-five seconds of mirror-gazing can produce anxiety and stress, and for healthy confident people ten minutes can lead to distress and becoming more self-critical. The less we look in the mirror, the happier we could be with our appearance. In fact one study found that women who were blind and couldn't look at themselves were more satisfied with their appearance and dieted less than sighted women. Any mirrorstaring sessions are doing us harm.\n\nUntil I started researching for this book I'd always assumed that concern about the aesthetics of our bodies was a modern insanity \u2013 but it's actually an evolved behaviour that recent inventions are sending into overdrive. We are predisposed; the reason I care about the shape of my hips and the pertness of my buttocks is that they tell tales about my worth as a breeding partner. The safety and security of my female ancestors would have been partly determined by their shape. Their value and status within their tribe was connected to their health, youth and fertility. The same is true for all mammals on this planet, yet none of them evolved consciousness of it. None of them invented the mirror and developed enough awareness of self to stand in front of it fretting.\n\nOur male ancestors made conscious and subconscious choices about who to mate with and some of those selections were more successful (in reproductive terms) than others. A penchant for women too weak to bear children, too old, too narrow-hipped, led to a dead end for those genes. What remains worked. There have been tons of studies on what makes women attractive; you'll be aware of oft-quoted 'ideal' female body measurements. Out-in-out, boobs-waist-hips. It seems not to be a woman's size that matters so much as her proportions. When they've tested male and female preferences for women's bodies they reliably define 'perfection' as a ratio of around 0.7 between breasts and waist and again between waist and hips; the classic 'hourglass' shape lauded by magazines. Whether six foot or four and a half, whether eight stone or fifteen, it is these proportions that mark a woman as a wonderful beauty. Interestingly (well I thought so anyway), when men and women are asked to draw the ideal female body the ratio stays much the same but men generally draw a fleshier, wider woman. Heterosexual men have an inbuilt appreciation for female body fat that is not reflected by the tastes of modern women \u2013 what does this mean? Is it because our female ancestors bred with men whose body fat percentage was half of ours, so they assume the same is ideal for us? Are heterosexual women seeking to be like the men they want to attract? Or is our obsession with youth idealising tiny female frames?\n\nThe small waist, flat stomach thing _is_ related to youth. Remember that until recently, almost any sexually active woman would be pregnant every few years so her stomach would show the effects of childbearing and her waist would widen gradually throughout her life. A 0.7 ratio is nature's way of indicating fertility; the widened hips and breast fat acquired in adolescence alongside the flat, smooth belly of the un-impregnated. It's a body that says 'I'm ready and able'. Even more incredibly, this indication of fertility is not a deception. It appears that women with a desirable waist\u2013hip ratio do conceive more easily than those with thicker waists or slimmer hips. The hormones that have sculpted their physique are the exact same ones necessary for baby-making, lucky bitches. And so male humans are driven to seek curves exactly as their glow worm equivalents are drawn to light.\n\nAnd this is how women lose twice. Once in being looked at and once in the looking. Women's bodies are compartmentalised. Those feelings you've had since childhood, of being sized up like a prize marrow, being assessed and weighed and eaten up by eyes, are real. The psychologist Sarah Gervais conducted studies in which people looked at photographs of men and women, some of which were digitally enhanced. She found that when there was a woman in the picture the eyes of both genders focused on breasts, waist and genitals. Gervais also tested participants' memories and found both men and women were more likely to recall a woman's breasts than her face. Participants of both genders appeared to view men as whole and women in pieces. It's awful, but it makes sense. In a way it's reassuring \u2013 you're not mad or imagining things, everyone is looking at you all of the time (especially if you're young). And you're looking at women too. Why? Don't shout all at once; yes please, Clara, you've got your hand up nicely:\n\n**CLARA**  \nIs it because we all secretly fancy each other?\n\nClara, that's a good theory, and of course _some_ of this eyeballing is sexual in nature \u2013 women are attracted to each other occasionally or exclusively \u2013 but that doesn't explain all of it. Shelley?\n\n**SHELLEY**  \nIs it because we hate each other and view each other as competition?\n\nErm, that's nearly right. We don't hate each other, but we are aware of each other. Sometimes unknowingly aware, if that makes sense \u2013 for hundreds of thousands of years before clothing and farming and capitalism, our bodies were almost all we had. We might have had a few tools or that day's food, but no other external signals of status. And status is extremely important to all animals, it relates directly to your power and safety, your resources and comfort. Human beings have evolved to be hyper-aware of their personal position in any group, and to find our place we assess each other. That's why women look at each other's skin, hair and body shape. And that's why our self-esteem is connected to our body image, because instinctually we connect being attractive with high status, protection, usefulness and power. When we feel physically inferior to the women around us it can be very difficult to feel happy and sane. Our big fat brains cannot help compartmentalising other women and visually dissecting ourselves because we assess our bodies like a product we're selling and it's been that way for millennia.\n\nLet's have a little remember about the modern world now: it's not just mirrors we're surrounded by but billboard advertising, television and cinema, pornography in every household and magazines in every supermarket. Women women women, undressed women, lingerie-clad women, smooth-contoured sex-faced women, busty, luscious, flat-stomached women, glowing, poreless, young, unwrinkled women. Photoshopped women, digitally enhanced women, fifty foot high, staring right at you, aggressively threatening women. How you coping with that, ape lady?\n\nBoth men and women have their attention caught by attractive women, so attractive women are used to catch our attention. In advertising, that attention means money, with the wonderful bonus that making women feel insecure makes them spend even _more_ money. Especially on all the crap that's supposed to make us look better or hide imperfections. Looking at pictures of semi-clad models makes all women's self-esteem plummet \u2013 scientists have tested it. Even model types downgrade their own attractiveness after viewing the kind of photos you'd find in any women's magazine. But we know that, right? I know not to buy glossy-paged rubbish that's going to make me feel inadequate, but what about all the stuff I can't ignore? What about when they plaster my environment with images that I can't escape?\n\nI'm not stupid, I know if you're selling a body lotion or some tiny lacy knickers then a long-legged beauty is the ideal canvas and even if I cry myself to sleep with jealous rage at least the advert makes sense. But, BUT so often it DOESN'T. Like there's this charity, okay, and they're working to highlight the depletion of the world's oceans. And every year they create a celebrity campaign and every year the campaign is naked women holding dead fish. The photos make it on to the front page of the newspapers and the accompanying article is always: here is a naked famous woman, she is holding a fish. The publicity is fuelled by nudity, and there is quite a _lot_ of publicity because for a couple of days the papers all have licence to put naked women on the front as this is actually about a really important issue which is \u2013 sorry, I thought I saw a nipple, what were you saying?\n\nThis fish campaign fascinates me. The photographs are very arresting, existing somewhere between porn and comedy, the airbrushed glamour of the well-groomed, stripped human horribly undermined by the shiny-scaled corpse obscuring boobs and fanny. Last year on a train I saw twenty Helena Bonham Carters topless astride fish, and I tore them all out and took them home. I felt ashamed for her, discarded as she was all over the Northern line. I felt patronised on behalf of all human beings. 'Even _charities_ are exploiting nudity now, even the good guys... none of us are expected to engage with anything any more unless it's scrawled on or next to bared flesh,' I ranted to John when I got home. 'Let's have a look,' he joked, so I went for a quick cry in the bathroom, watching in the mirror to see how my face looked when I was disappointed with the media.\n\nI feel affronted by female nudity; sometimes I feel attacked by it. On a bad day I'll count how many women in their under wear I see on posters on my way to work, but what am I supposed to do with that information? I might mention it when I arrive at my gig, moan on and on about it if I'm with someone, but there's no catharsis. Bombardment, that's the word that I would use, I am BOMBARDED. Once on an escalator at Oxford Circus station, I passed by fifty-six women in their pants, sleepily cunning and looking through me. Fifty-six against one, that's bullying. And I hate myself for my inability to ignore them. Posters for burger restaurants or shiny Jeeps blur into the background of my journey but not the women. I hate the meat industry and I loathe cars (sorry Einstein) but they don't sadden and dismay me like a Wonderbra ad.\n\nOf course I don't blame the stupid sea charity, this is how the world works and I understand their position; stats on declining fish populations, descriptions of water pollution and insufficient governmental regulation do not make it to the front page on their own. Beautiful women do. Only women do. Because we were built to like looking at women more than absolutely anything else. But doesn't the use of nudity undermine the importance of the message? Since when has a woman with no top on been taken more seriously? We don't pop our bras off before important meetings. From my experience, we tend to feel more pressure to cover up when we want to be listened to because we _know_ our body is distracting, which is another shit thing. We should be able to go to work and church and round the town centre wearing whatever we bloody like but we're too accustomed to the assumptions and reactions caused by our bared skin to be truly free. When baring does take place it is brave and raunchy, it has to be owned. I am thinking of Jodie Marsh wearing two belts as a top \u2013 look that up if you've never seen her \u2013 she embodies this. Any kind of serious underdressing is a visible act of defiance and acknowledgement. When girls go out in tiny skirts or in their bras the message is loud and what they're _always_ saying is 'I know you're looking \u2013 so look then.'\n\nAnyway, these are thoughts I'm thinking now after years of noticing and reflecting. When I was a child, posters were just posters, magazines were mere magazines, not PROPAGANDA OF THE PATRIARCHY. But I started feeling fat very young. It was the ultimate insulting adjective at primary school. Cheryl and I called each other fat all the time. My mum would stand in front of the mirror and call herself fat; we'd call her fat too if we were arguing. There is a picture of me at about eleven, I am up a tree, very high up actually because I'm amazing at everything. Someone came over to take a photograph and I asked them not to but they did. I am doing Princess Diana face, shy and ashamed, because I knew I looked fat in my stripy leggings and I didn't want anyone to look and the camera embarrassed me. The girl in the photo is so skinny. At every age I have felt revolting but when I look at pictures of past me I can't believe the slim young woman I was can have felt like that. I've tried to think, 'Future you will look back and think that about you now,' and that did not help, it merely made me realise I'm only going to get _fatter_ and _older_ until I die.\n\nI was fourteen when I realised I had cellulite. I had been given a red-and-white gingham bikini. There was a girl at school who wore a see-through swimming costume, you could see her bum crack and her nipples when it was wet, and I wanted to check my suit wasn't similarly flawed. I wore it in the bath and then bent over in front of a mirror, only to find I had leg cancer all down the back of both legs. I checked the bath for wicker matting, I moved the curtains in case the dappling was a trick of the light. How could I have been walking around looking like this? From waist to knee (these were the heady days before the big C found my arms and stomach) I was lumpy bumpy broken. 'Orange-peel skin', _More_ magazine and _Just Seventeen_ would call it, but oranges are delicious and purposeful and my thighs were porridgy idiots letting me down. I couldn't afford any kind of anti-cellulite cream so I didn't buy any. I read an article about how Pamela Anderson massaged her bum and thighs on the toilet for up to two hours a day to keep cellulite at bay, so I tried that for three minutes before giving up and lightly carving 'FAT' on my thigh with a razor blade instead.\n\n(Step behind the curtain for a sec. When I handed in a first draft of the book to Julian, my editor, the above line was focused upon as being, I dunno, I guess harsh? Or a bit shocking \u2013 which really surprised me. 'Julian, have you never _met_ a teenage girl?' I shrugged off his concern. I explained to him that girls between twelve and twenty spend a great deal of their time hurting their bodies in different ways. He suggested this was not normal, while I thought it was. Everyone I know hurt themselves a bit. Tried it out. Had low points and recovered. Julian then very rightly pointed out that I would have to be responsible in case any young women were reading this and might be influenced or incited \u2013 and that is a very good reason not to be flippant about what he referred to as 'self-harm' but I called 'something girls do sometimes'. But it is serious. If I think of a young woman currently feeling alone and self-loathing enough to put a razor on her skin in such a way \u2013 even to write a _complimentary_ word \u2013 I would do anything I could to stop it. I wish I was friends with all the teenage girls in the world because I could cuddle you all and tell you how much better life gets, how much more reasonable and bearable. And that you are never to blame for the pain that you feel and that's why hurting yourself is an injustice. Also, exercise helps: have an angry run or swim, ache a bit that way. And talk to people you know and trust or to strangers who understand and are trained. Big hugs and back we go. Xxx)\n\nI always believed that cellulite was caused by toxins because THAT IS WHAT I HAVE BEEN TOLD, repeatedly, by journalists and copywriters. Cellulite is caused by alcohol and chocolate and coffee and cat videos and joy, they said; deny yourself, avoid all pleasures or you get the thighs you deserve. Turns out they're liars and it's actually hormones. Oestrogen, insulin, noradrenaline and thyroid hormones all affect how fat cells are connected to each other. With oestrogen it can result in some cells bulging out of their little clusters, giving the bumpy-rump look we know and despise. So two-hour rubs aren't gonna help you unless they can erase your genetic predispositions, and any time you see some ointment advertising itself as an 'orange-peel' antidote, ask the man at Superdrug: 'REALLY? Does this fifteen-quid cream that is probably tested on animals _actually_ get absorbed inside my body to restructure my hormonal interplay and destroy my fat deposits which, BY THE WAY, are future possible babies' brains, MATE?'\n\nThey make so much money off us, you know, so much cash leeched via our self-hatred. Billions a year spent on useless pointless crap. I don't believe in conspiracy theories, I don't think The Man has meetings with other The Mans where they plan how to do this but... there is complicity. Think of us, fifty-one per cent of the population all crouching in bathrooms, pummelling our bum cheeks like imbeciles, when we should be taking over this crazy world and stopping all the wars.\n\nBUT IT'S _SO HARD_ NOT TO CARE. Or rather, _I_ find it hard not to care.\n\nWhen I was little my mum would stand in front of the mirror, maybe she was getting dressed or into the bath. She would ask me if she had small boobs, she would ask me if she was fat. I thought she was beautiful, with massive tits, and I always told her that for as long as I can remember. What I struggle with now is that it's a body I inherited. The tops of my arms became my mother's at the end of my twenties. My breasts, when they finally arrived, were equally small. 'I don't mind the size,' she would say, 'but you ruined them.' I was the first baby and a big one and I stretched all her stomach skin and drank all her pertness and I always regretted it. I took her body when she was still a teenager, and I scarred her. My father was unravaged so he could leave and seduce other women without my marks of ownership on him. As a child I felt guilty when I was told I looked like my dad, that I reminded my mum of him, but now my face is all my mum's \u2013 I am now the age she was when I was fifteen. My smile, eyes, voice, phrasing, thighs, bum, arms and boob disappointment are all inherited. And when I hate my body I feel guilty of matricide. And I wonder how much of this I learned by imitation. And even wondering that, I feel bad for blaming her.\n\nMy friend Katherine\u2020 has a daughter who is currently six. We were all in Australia for work, and after breakfast one day I called myself a pig. 'I'm a piggy, I don't know when to stop,' I said to no one as we walked to the lift. And Katherine asked me, so sweetly and rightly, not to say things like that in front of children: 'You teach them it's wrong to like food.'\n\nOf course, OF COURSE we perpetuate a cycle with what we say in front of children, and of course we reinforce what we believe when we allow each other to call ourselves fat and ugly. So we've got these three routes of attack \u2013 the people around us, the messages of culture (people not around us but able to affect us), and then the inbuilt propensity to care. And it is different for women and it _is_ emotional. When men and women were shown digitally altered images of themselves in an MRI, only the women's brains showed engagement of the pre-frontal cortex and parahippocampal area. This included the amygdala which is crucial to our emotional functioning. So the female response was emotional while the male counterpart was visual and spatial. Seeing a fatter image of themselves was _felt_ by women, but only _seen_ by men.\n\nThis means something. It restricts how we live our lives. The connection between our body image and our happiness isn't superficial. Seventy per cent of American women were found to believe that being thinner would make them happier \u2013 seventy per cent isn't a small problem in a varied society, it's an epidemic. And it affects more than just mealtimes. It influences the choices we make, our energy, our confidence. It's physically restraining \u2013 you can't rule the world when you're feeble from starving yourself.\n\nI've eaten variations of a constrained diet since I was fourteen. I have seriously starved myself for two periods in my life and have only stopped skipping meals since I became vegan and gained a different type of control. Veganism helped me break a guilt cycle, and now I eat much more and I reflect on my fainty, light-headed earlier incarnations with much self-sympathy. Both my big starves were heart-related. After breaking up with Colin, I didn't feel hungry very often. It was like a switch went off. But whenever I _did_ feel hungry I'd imagine him having sex with his new girlfriend and it would go away. On a 'good day' I would eat two green apples and drink two Diet Cokes. A 'bad day' would mean a sandwich and maybe alcohol. I got skinny. I could afford to buy clothes from Bay Trading with the dinner money I was saving, because the clothes in my new size were all reduced to clear. A teacher at sixth form stopped me in the corridor and asked me what had happened. She told me to 'go eat a burger' and I sulked off after telling her I was vegetarian, but I felt amazing because she'd noticed. I checked myself for symptoms of anorexia \u2013 I wanted hairy arms; when you had the hair, you knew you'd made it. I joined a dance class but I had to stop going because I fainted every week; I pretended to be embarrassed but I was proud. I had one friend Hayley who could make herself sick, but I couldn't, and a different friend Hayley (the one who wanted Peter Andre abs) who told me about laxatives you could shoplift from Boots. I took Chocolax because I can't swallow pills. Chocolax you could eat and it just tasted like the worst thing you've ever eaten. That's when my mum started to notice because the bathroom always smelled so bad. I didn't care that I stank. I was sewagey, like a drain full of the dead. My stomach went concave and I got obsessed by the comparative bulbousness of my arse. I was the saddest I've ever been, and yet I was euphoric on skinniness. I looked at myself constantly. I was my own project, I was my own work of art and I owned myself for the first time.\n\nMy second starve was after another break-up. His name was Steve, he smelled smoky and had a concave chest. He was so clever about science and, he warned me, incapable of love. I spent months with him, eroded by how much I loved him and how he cringed whenever I said so. He was a comedian, so when we split I started stand-up, partly as an exercise in combating grief with creativity but mostly as a revenge move. I wanted to understand why he couldn't focus on me properly; why gigs I'd thought he'd done fine at would follow him and bother him for days; I wanted to know where his mind went when I was talking, because afterwards he never remembered anything I'd said. AND I wanted to be more successful than him, and now I _am_ more successful than him and WHAT IS THE POINT of being on television if it doesn't make your exes want to get back with you? Maybe when I get that Oscar.\n\nSo this was 2007, I started stand-up, I started swimming and I stopped eating. I wouldn't let myself eat anything until evening. Sometimes I would let myself drink calories rather than eating them, get pissed on a large glass of wine and go on stage happy with forgetting. The only time I didn't think about Steve was when I was on stage talking about him. I had to teach myself to swim, because I was scared of getting my head wet since a school trip when I was nine \u2013 they took us to Hainault forest for a week, and midway through marched us across fields to a communal shower. This was the term after we'd finished our project on the Holocaust. My teacher ordered me to get undressed as I begged her not to gas us. I have been traumatised by a Nazi\/water death certainty ever since, but now I was twenty-six and I was forcing myself to put my head under and provoking myself up and down the pool. I whacked and slapped at the lengths with my arms until I felt too weak to hate and then I allowed myself to get out. There was another woman who went every day and I watched her shrink and wondered what pain she was escaping. I looked out for her at gigs but she doesn't seem to have found the obliteration of stand-up. She also never learned to put her head under.\n\nMy new stand-up friends didn't know my real size. Tania once said I was 'naturally tiny', ha ha ha ha. Lou hugged me after a gig and said, 'I didn't realise you were going to be so bony!' and I replied, 'I've put on so much weight recently,' which wasn't true but it felt it. After months I saw Steve at a rehearsal for something. I took a chocolate brownie out of my bag to eat in front of him so he would know I was fine. He said he was worried about me and it was the best day of my life, but I crashed when he left and didn't kiss me or need me and it didn't feel like he was very worried. I had to move out from Katie's house \u2013 I lived with my best friend and her mum, and Katie saw, I couldn't deceive her. She knew the food in my cupboards, she witnessed my new drinking habits and the state I came back in. I said I wasn't on a diet, and I wasn't. It wasn't a diet, I wanted to die. Every time she tried to talk to me about it I avoided her more, until she cried and said I hurt her when I hurt myself, and so I left. It is very difficult to accept any claim of love or affection when you are in a hole of worthlessness. You can't trust anyone who tells you are beautiful or lovable or even 'fine'. And that is how the person who loved me best became my secret enemy for many years.\n\nBoth the phases I describe above were a few months of what would be called 'disordered eating'. Everyone I know has eaten in a disordered way sometimes. I assume this is a normal part of the modern western woman's experience. It's a side effect, isn't it? Of the constant availability of food, our mother's attitude to food, the daily information about what's healthy and what should be avoided, and the images \u2013 acres of tits and ass to cross on every journey, and a lady's heart full of feelings sometimes can't cope with it all.\n\nAnorexia is an eating disorder, but should be considered separately from disordered eating. Most people are familiar with anorexia and will have seen pictures of emaciated bodies with protruding bones, but the disease itself is not well understood. It could be perceived as a step further than a strict diet, a more extreme, committed version, but it's a much more complicated disease. While it might be triggered by emotional stress or media images just like disordered eating, anorexia is far more compulsive. Most doctors would now agree it is a pre-existing condition, a propensity that some people (mostly women) have that can be activated by environmental events or conditions. Anorexia is not a diet, it is a topsy-turvy existence where food and sustenance become 'bad'. Whereas people who are dieting or suffering from disordered eating are denying themselves something that they want, anorexics are protecting themselves from something they believe will do them harm. Does that make sense? It's why anorexia is so difficult to treat \u2013 it mutates what the body most needs into an enemy.\n\nAnorexia nervosa was recognised as a condition in the nineteenth century, in 1873 to be exact. By Sir William Gull of all people, do you know him? He was one of Queen Victoria's doctors and was posthumously accused of being Jack the Ripper by many theorists and a film with Johnny Depp. But just to keep this in perspective, every single person alive in 1888 has been posthumously\u2021 suspected of the murders, including Victoria herself, so let's not go ringing the _Daily Mail_ with 'Jack the Ripper Invented Anorexia' just yet.\n\nIt's easy to believe that anorexia is a modern affliction, a response to our visual and terrible culture, but its origins predate that. Catholic girls in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are recorded as starving themselves to death and have since been sainted for their endeavours. Apparently Mary Queen of Scots displayed symptoms. Early records in many cultures describe purges or self-imposed famines: ancient Roman women punished their bodies by refusing food and old Chinese and Persian manuscripts describe the ailments of eating disorders. Because anorexia frequently manifests during adolescence psychologists surmise that it could be a denial of sexuality: a wish to remain a girl rather than transitioning into womanhood. I've read evolutionary psychologists' claims that eating disorders could be a response to stress, useful as a way of freezing fertility. Because starvation stops ovulation, eating disorders could be a subconscious way of avoiding pregnancy during dangerous times. Nature's brake pedal gone haywire in modernity.\n\nMore recent research links anorexia to autism. Some claim that anorexics don't empathise effectively with themselves and that there are similar obsessive behaviours in both groups. There is an interesting theory that there could be a genetic disposition for autism which tends to be expressed differently depending on gender, but there's a lot more research needed in this area \u2013 I can't tell you that it is proven fact. I'll just reiterate how complicated this disease is, how irrational it can appear to family members and loved ones who can't comprehend what a sufferer is experiencing and why they won't just eat. Why they can't believe that they are not fat. But imagine if everyone around you suddenly started telling you the sky was green \u2013 'It's green, it's green, it's green,' everyone would say, and you would stop trusting them, you'd be suspicious or you'd feel mad or you'd want to agree with them but how can you distrust your own senses when they are all you have to decipher the world? Your eyes would tell you the sky is blue and that would be your only reality and no amount of conversation could change that.\n\nThere is certainly something inbuilt that makes girls more susceptible than boys to eating disorders, something that predates the billboards and pornography. But there is also clear evidence that such conditions are exacerbated by the messages of our media. In the 1990s there was a study in Fiji \u2013 a society of people who had no access to television and who celebrated bigger women, _really_ big, more than curvy, robust. 'You've gained weight' was a Fijian compliment. Bigger brides were rewarded with bigger dowries and there were even fattening camps to feed up teenage girls. And then TV arrived and within three years the number of girls with symptoms of bulimia rose from three to fifteen per cent, with fifty per cent of girls now describing themselves as 'too fat'. The male Fijians continued to have the same pre-television ideals of beauty for men and women, but the women's changed, and changed quickly.\n\nWhat seems obvious to me is that we've evolved to be aware of our bodies and those of the women around us but have no protection against the effects of mirrors and images, exactly as male glow worms evolved to be drawn to light but are unable to discern between electric bulbs and real females. Evolution couldn't predict our synthetic environment. My forty-thousand-year-old brain cannot defend itself from women on screens, pages and billboards. While intellectually I can discern between fictional and actual, my instincts react to all of those women as real, real tribe members, real ideals, real local women that I can't compete with. If I lived in a regular tribe there would be twenty women older and twenty women younger than me and all at different stages of pregnancy or lactation and I would have a middling sense of security and confidence. Instead I am in a tribe of millions and on every surface I lay my eyes I see falsified female perfection. My _Homo sapiens_ life should contain five or six goddesses, not thousands, hundreds of thousands, and my conscious brain can't protect me \u2013 I know about Photoshop, make-up, lighting, Spanx, botox, chicken fillets, liposculpture, I know Barbie couldn't give birth because of her dimensions, I know TopShop mannequins are only vaguely human-shaped and that cartoons are drawn to satisfy the fetishes of fantasy, but still. I am crushed.\n\nSo I would say I have two types of fat, good and bad. Right places and wrong places. There is the fat I dislike and think I have too much of (all that body below bra), and there are two places where I do not have enough. Or rather, I have the correct amount of fat but it's wrongly distributed. Time to meet my boobs.\n\n_SARA's boobs enter._\n\n**SARA**  \nHey guys. Should I address you together or as individuals?\n\n**LEFT BREAST**  \nWell, we are usually considered as a unit, even though there are two of us, and we are different\u2014\n\n**RIGHT BREAST**  \nI am bigger and more optimistic\u2014\n\n**LEFT BREAST**  \nRight's right, I'm a bit depressed. And more sensitive.\n\n**SARA**  \nSo you're twins, but non-identical \u2013 like my mum and Aunty Juliet?\n\n**BOOBS**  \nYes.\n\n**SARA**  \nOkay, so how is _our_ relationship? Is it healthy?\n\n**BOOBS**  \nYour main job is moving us around. You help us get from A to B, pop us in a crop top so we don't get too tired\u2014\n\n**SARA**  \nYou don't need a proper bra.\n\n**RIGHT BREAST**  \nWe know. And that's fine with us, but you\u2014\n\n**SARA** ( _not fine_ )  \nIt's fine. Honestly, I'm used to it.\n\n**BOOBS**  \nYou wish we were bigger\u2014\n\n**SARA**  \nI'm okay about it now.\n\n**LEFT BREAST**  \nWe swell up when you are due on and you like us more.\n\n**SARA**  \nUm, ONE of you does\u2014\n\n_From under the table, a booming voice._\n\n**BOTTOM** ( _O\/S_ )  \nYOU THINK I AM TOO BIG AND THEY ARE TOO SMALL!\n\n**SARA** ( _to_ **BOTTOM** )  \nThis is not your interview, butt out \u2013 THAT IS NOT A PUN. Stop picking on me, I don't want to be defined by any of you\u2014\n\n_SARA grabs her boobs and bum and leaves the cafe. Everyone claps because she is trying so hard to deal with her issues and if that can't be applauded, what can?_\n\nI read something a man wrote (I'm _very_ open-minded) about women's bodies. He was a bit obsessed with the idea that evolution had disabled us with the impracticality of our breasts. 'Can't run naked without pain,' he kept repeating; 'their breasts make running nude very uncomfortable,' he'd interrupt himself. LET US WEAR SPORTS BRAS THEN, let us wear sports bras even in your imagination, writer man. Despite my uneasiness at the book's constant conjuring of undressed joggers, I do acknowledge his point. In pre-civilised times, before nylon and Lycra, women evolved unnecessary appendages on their chests that would make hunting and escape far more difficult for us than for boobless men.\n\nYes, you heard me right, 'unnecessary appendages'. The year-round chest fat that adult women have is not needed for milk production and bigger boobs do not mean (as I would've presumed) that you can make or hold more milk. All female mammals have nipples, all female mammals feed their young via lactation and none of them have surrounding fat deposits the size of ours. That's why they can sprint about happily without clothes on.\n\nSo why is this, please, nature?\n\nIf you look in an anthropology book from the 1970s, it will tell you that breasts developed as a result of human beings walking upright \u2013 which doesn't answer our question, which was _why_? And then Desmond Morris or one of his peers would come in to tell you:\n\n**DESMOND**  \nTo emulate the buttocks.\n\n**YOU**  \nAre you insane?\n\n**DESMOND**  \nNo. You know how breasts look like buttocks\u2014\n\n**YOU**  \nNot in any way.\n\n**DESMOND**  \nYeah they do, this is science. So anyway, the buttocks were the main sexy area\u2014\n\n**YOU**  \nWhy?\n\n**DESMOND**  \nBecause we had sex from behind.\n\n**YOU**  \nWe did not\u2014\n\n**DESMOND**  \n_Human beings_ did, so men liked looking at bottoms. They found bottoms arousing, associated them with sex\u2014\n\n**YOU** ( _dubious_ )  \nOkay...\n\n**DESMOND**  \nUh-huh, and then once we were walking about, four million years ago or whatever, we started having sex face to face\u2014\n\n**YOU**  \nWhy was that?\n\n**DESMOND**  \nLogistics? Politeness? Anyway, then the bloke needed something to look at, and so women grew breasts.\n\n**YOU**  \nWe grew them so that men could like them?\n\n**DESMOND**  \nYes. For sure.\n\n**YOU**  \nAnd where is the evidence?\n\n**DESMOND**  \nThe _evidence_ is that men like breasts.\n\n**YOU**  \nSo men\u00a7 find breasts sexually exciting, so women must have grown them so that the men could be sexually excited?\n\n**DESMOND**  \nNow you get it! Yes!\n\n**YOU**  \nIsn't that what they call a circular argument?\n\n_DESMOND shrugs and runs back to the 1970s. He doesn't need a sports bra._\n\nBecause of their non-essential nature, the obvious conclusion is that breasts are a sexually selected trait, like peacocks' tails. But it's an unsatisfactory answer and it feels unfeminist to accept it. There are other theories, like the claim that changes in the shape of our faces millions of years ago meant that babies found it too difficult to latch on to a flat chest. Other apes and most mammals have snouty faces that can feed easily from fatless nipples \u2013 maybe as our faces got flatter our breasts had to get pointier? The aquatic ape theory (the little-credited claim that we lived in water for part of our evolution) argued that breasts needed to dangle down a bit so that a mother could feed a babe in arms while standing up in water or crouching on a rock.\n\nRemember that every other mammal's young can suckle while the mother lies about or gets on with her business. Not so human babies, who need their heads supported and cannot hold on like our ape cousins. So it's probably truest to say that breasts came to exist via a combination of natural and sexual selection. The fat deposits on a chest enable survival in lean times just as they do elsewhere on the body. Our ancestors may have looked to breast size for endurance, pertness for an honest indication of youth, and symmetry for an honest indication of health.\n\nThe most fascinating thing I found out is that when a woman breastfeeds her child, her brain releases oxytocin, that gorgeous hormone which promotes bonding. This makes perfect evolutionary sense \u2013 women need to be well loved up with their babies to put up with all the annoying stuff they do. Many women really enjoy breastfeeding and recognise it as an emotional communion between them and their child. And babies' brains also release oxytocin when their stomach is stretched by milk during feeds, so that love is building in both directions \u2013 it is so amazingly clever. But guess what? When a non-lactating woman has her breasts sucked, touched and stimulated her brain _also_ releases oxytocin. The result is that she will feel lovely and warm towards the sex partner who is paying her boobs lots of attention; she will feel more attached to him or her. What this means is that something that evolved for better mother\u2013child bonding has been hijacked to promote monogamy and pair bonding. So there's an argument that the males who were most fascinated or obsessed with breasts would have touched and caressed them more during mating, which would have resulted in stronger pair ties. More parental input via that cohesive partnership then increased the odds of the infant's survival and so strengthened the genetic propensity for breast fetishisation in future generations. A fun hundred thousand years later and we end up with boobs on every billboard \u2013 thanks nature!\n\nFor our pre-civilised ancestors, the exposed breasts of a woman would have been a quick and easy way of assessing exactly where she was in her life. Uncovered and unbra-ed they announce a history of our body, our nutrition and our fertility. Perhaps that's why we are so sensitive to what our breasts say about us. That's why we want them to fib, to tell a better story. We want them to tell everyone we're younger and fitter than we are. We want to be well represented \u2013 and that leads us to disguise and adapt our breasts, to lift them, pad them and alter the shape of our silhouette. Or have surgery and amend them permanently.\n\nObviously some women have breast surgery because they have suffered cancer or pain and some women need reconstruction to their breasts after illness or dysfunction. But other women, physically healthy women, choose to have their breasts operated on because they don't like the way they look. When these operations first became widely available, in the 1990s, over ninety per cent of the women who requested them were recorded as having 'psychological difficulties' or 'psychiatric issues'. That's because back then, wanting to be sliced open to have a globule of plastic or saline shoved inside was absolute madness. But the odd thing is that the statistic is now inverted, and over ninety per cent of people who want boob jobs are recorded as being entirely sane, because who _wouldn't_ want to improve their rubbish tits when there are options available? When something's common enough it can't be mad any more; we just upgrade our definition of sanity to include unnecessary and painful surgical procedures. Except I still think it is baffling and crazy \u2013 I think it's a terrifying sign of how toxic the world has become, and yet I feel incorrect and intolerant in my anger towards it. The lone troglodyte ruining the parade by refusing to admire the emperor's new boobs.\n\nIn Essex, where I'm from, breast enlargement is relatively common. I reckon one in five women I know have had a boob job. And people are super-relaxed about it. Like repainting a house or something, these operations are viewed as a decorative tweak. When a young lady from Basildon or Romford announces, 'I'm getting them done,' she is greeted with reactions ranging from nonchalance to congratulations. Her family and friends will giggle or check they'll be allowed a squeeze to test realism and they'll be accepting. Breast enlargements are discussed as a sensible corrective: 'Oops, did God forget to give you boobies? Let's have a whip round.' No one stands on a table and says, 'YOU WANT YOUR HEAD CHECK ED, MATE, DON'T YOU DARE HURT YOURSELF LIK E THIS, I'M GOING TO SHOUT AND SHOUT UNTIL YOU REALISE THAT YOUR BODY DOES NOT DEFINE YOU,' except me. I'm no longer welcome in that fine county and it's my own fault for being judgey and preachy.\n\nWhen I was sixteen one of my aunts had an appointment in Harley Street and I went too in an attempt to change her mind. I was exceptionally opinionated as a teenager, never afraid to rant and ruin a birthday party or cinema trip. I was moralistic and 'right on' and had very few friends. Growing older is helping me to become empathetic to other people and their reasons for making choices. I used to think there was a definitive right and wrong and that only I knew what they were and so I should be DICTATOR OF THE WORLD! Now I realise that we all have our own subjective realities that affect our decisions and that it wouldn't be fair if I was in charge of everyone. Unless I was elected.\n\nHarley Street is superficially attractive (ironically). It snakes off from the top end of Regent Street, so you walk along thinking you've run out of shops and only have houses to look at until you reach Regent's Park. But Harley Street is FULL of secret shops where you can buy cheeks, noses, lips, thinness and wrinklelessness, they just don't display that stuff in the window. But they _should_ as it would probably put people off to see all the bits and pieces hanging up, pre-embodied. So we were in the waiting room and I was quiet. It was here that I'd planned to berate my aunt for what she was doing, using clever arguments about how she was an idiot and everyone at her work would notice. But the waiting room wasn't empty as I'd planned, but busy with everybody chatting, full of excitement and apprehension. I stared at wood-panelled walls as people began to cross-pollinate, introduce themselves and ask 'What you here for then?' and then 'HA HA HA,' they would laugh, because it sounded like they were in prison or something. People laugh at nothing to put each other at ease. It's a social sign of reassurance that everything is okay. This is very handy for a professional comedian because even at an awful gig you can probably get the audience to pity-laugh in some embarrassed, encouraging way. Then you come off stage and say 'NAILED THAT' really confidently and everyone believes you and you get to go on _Live at the Apollo_. Twice.\n\nIt must have been Implants Day at the clinic because all the women were there for the same operation in a variety of sizes. They were intoxicated by the proximity of their lumpy goal, and each shared her back story unguardedly, encouraging and praising each other, while I pretended I wasn't listening and judged them.\n\nThere was a woman who was getting hers 'done' on the NHS. Everyone said she was so lucky, getting freebies. People were asking how, wondering aloud if they should have tried that. Freeboobs said it wasn't luck but that she couldn't afford to pay, so she'd had to go to the doctor loads of times and cry and cry and say she was depressed. Then she'd gone to a psychiatrist and said that she would kill herself if she didn't get them. She had to get the doctors to agree she was mentally unstable and couldn't function until she got this operation; that was the only way to get the NHS to buy them for you. But of course she WASN'T REALLY CRAZY, she added, she'd just cheated the system. I would have argued that pretending to be crazy is pretty crazy and she should stop bragging about it. It seemed unfair to me that she would be getting the same surgeon as these other women who were paying thousands of pounds, although maybe her NHS implants would be shoddier? Crude and unsophisticated, like when you got NHS glasses in the olden days.\n\nAt the time I was still wearing a thickly padded bra every day, and when I went out at night I wore two, one on top of the other. I let boys feel them up when I was getting off with them, believing that the padding was passing for real body, trusting they couldn't tell the difference. This kind of amateur tryst would happen in classy nightclubs in Romford. I was sixteen, so would only go to over-twenty-ones nights because on over-eighteens nights everyone was about twelve. All the kids there were from local schools, and my pulling technique was to go up to a guy and accuse him of being gay until he got off with me. I'd let him pummel my cottony sponge boobs for about three minutes and then walk away, stealing his drink as I went. He'd assume it had been cleared by a bartender while we were snogging. I didn't feel anything sexual about these encounters, just the achievement of proving I wasn't repulsive plus getting a drink without having any money.\n\nI wore a padded bra every single day and night from the age of fourteen until I was thirty-one. Giving up padding was my New Year's resolution. I had known for ages that wearing a stuffed bra was a form of hiding my real body. I realised I was walking around with two lies on my chest: 'Wanna squeeze my tits? They're in the washing basket.' And that's ages ago now, I should be used to my new honesty but I still feel insecure without padding, and I have to fight the urge to fake it. Especially if I am on TV or something; who would know? I'd just look like I had a slightly fuller bust, no harm would be done... except. I think that is where the harm is done. If all small-breasted women are wearing padded bras and look bigger, then the teenage girls with small breasts feel they are alone in their small-boobedness. They aren't offered a vista of unenhanced, bottom-heavy, perfectly contented three-dimensional women to combat the pneumatically proportioned two-dimensional ones in the media. The young women are duped and begin to pad and enhance and the cycle continues. It only stops if we accept ourselves. We are all responsible for a little slice, whether we want to be or not.\n\nI used to be so outraged with friends and relatives who had enlargement surgery. I believed that when a woman felt her figure was insufficient or incorrect she should be FURIOUS with the culture that generated those feelings, not change her body. Sara _circa_ 2010 would tell you that when a woman got implants she crossed over, she ceased to be a victim and became part of the problem: 'She walks around with her enhanced measurements and increases the pressure on women around her to conform,' I would bellow. 'The more women who get breast enlargements the more difficult it becomes to be flat-chested!' I would rant at you and you'd notice how my nostrils flared and how inflexible I was and make a mental note not to take me to the cinema again. I am an idiot for my anger and I regret it, and I've had to learn that women telling other women what to do is not feminism.\n\nFor ages I was very anti the topless Page 3 girls in the _Sun_. Through my teens I was uncomfortable about it although I couldn't articulate why. I felt embarrassed when I saw pictures on the wall of the garage that fixed my mum's car, or left discarded on the District line. Boys at school would occasionally rip that page out and shove it in my face, a hilarious form of intimidation. You had to act very disgusted when this occurred as it was a homophobic version of the 'buttercup under the chin' test and anything less than nauseous horror proved you were a lesbian. When I was eighteen my boyfriend Mark had an obsession with glamour models. He thought my rage at him was down to jealousy of their curvy perfection but it was _more_ than that, I didn't want them objectified. Not because _I_ wasn't good enough but because all women are _too_ _good_. If this was how some women were looked at, if we accepted that, then _all_ women were commercialised, compartmentalised \u2013 for sale, you know. Mark would argue that these models were being well paid and were ambitious business women in control of their lives and then we'd sit silently, unable to understand each other.\n\nSo I thought the 'No More Page 3' petition that started in 2013 was brilliant. It was a focused, targeted attack on one instance of objectification in our society, and getting rid of it seemed achievable and symbolic. But as the campaign gained momentum I became aware of criticisms, people saying that this was an example of feminists attempting to control and oppress other women. That we live in the _western world_ , no one is coerced to become a Page 3 model, they do this by choice and feminism should be liberating women, not limiting their choices or taking away their livelihood. I agreed with this, of course, and sat silently once again, thinking that the whole issue was an unsolvable problem... until I did solve it in a dream. I dreamed that we made Page 3 like _jury duty_. So suddenly every woman over the age of eighteen became eligible, and all that happened was you got a letter one day and it said:\n\nDear ______,\n\nPlease come to the Sun offices at 9 tomorrow morning. Bring some snazzy pants and a pithy quote about Syria.\n\nSo you would _have_ to go, and you would _have_ to do it. Because if Page 3 represented the whole spectrum of what it looks like to be a woman, it wouldn't be objectification any more, it would just be nudity. It wouldn't be dangerous any more as Page 3 would portray all the different kinds of breasts: there would be small ones, saggy ones, different-sized ones, hairy ones. And straight men would still like it, cos it's still boobies. And the other difference would be in the model's face. Currently the facial expression they all have is 'coquettish', an expression that says, 'Oh, you just found me in the garden, and I don't have a top on, and you shouldn't really be looking cos you're my best friend's dad!' It's permissive. But now with our new system the model would be a fifty-two-year-old dinner lady, aghast and horrified at what they're going to say at work the next day and staring straight down the lens knowing _exactly_ what you're doing... so Page 3 might just die out on its own, people might just lose interest with no one having to oppress anyone. And we can still give the Page 3 ladies all their wages and anything else they want and make sure they know that it's not them or their beauty or their decisions we're attacking. Maybe we could keep them in a donkey sanctuary so they can run around with their breasts flowing in the wind, safe from prying eyes? Or not, if they don't like that idea. So if you know Rupert Murdoch or can hack his email, let me know as I would love to get the ball rolling on this ASAP. I saw how having a dream launched Martin Luther King's career and think this could be really big for me. And also for society and donkey sanctuaries etc., we'll all benefit!\n\nBack in the waiting room, one of the women had a huge folder with her. She was very confident and assured as she talked through all the research she had done. 'It's vital, it's _vital_ ,' she kept repeating as people asked questions like she was Jeeves. Every plastic leaf of her folder contained a diagram or article she'd printed off the internet. She knew about incision areas, nipple placement, silicone versus vegetable oil,\u00b6 round versus teardrop, under muscle versus over muscle, and everyone listened to her respectfully: 'You've got to research, ladies; it's your body here!' This was 1997, so cosmetic surgery was not yet as prevalent as it is now. Recently I worked at a fundraiser for a breast cancer charity|| and I met a cosmetic surgeon and she** was telling me stories of how flippantly some people approach their operations. She gave me an example of getting a phone call on 20 December from a woman wanting breast enlargements. The receptionist had explained that they couldn't do the operation until January, because otherwise the appointment to check recovery would have to be during the holidays when the clinic was closed. 'But I need it now, I need it before then,' the woman kept saying, and so the surgeon was brought to the phone to find out what the emergency was, and it turned out the woman had bought a dress for New Year's Eve which was 'too big up top' and she wanted implants so it would fit her properly. I look back on Folder Lady and her keen research more fondly now.\n\nThe spooky truth is how little is known about the dangers of breast implants. A medicine would go through about twenty years of testing before getting official approval to show that it's _probably_ safe for humans. Implants were not studied until doctors were already performing operations. In fact, all women who get their breasts enlarged are part of an ongoing experiment that could be called 'What happens when you do _this_ to breasts?' It's been trial and error ever since the first op; they've used substances that are poisonous and have migrated around the body, like vegetable and soy oil, they've used substandard and industrial-grade silicone, PIP implants were found to have a one-in-six chance of exploding, all implants make it more difficult to screen for breast cancer and can interfere with breastfeeding and\/or reduce breast sensitivity, and that's only the success stories. That's without the awful reports of operations gone wrong, the unqualified butchers, the backstreet conmen and the deaths they've caused.\n\nI read this horrible account of Japanese prostitutes after the Second World War injecting military silicone directly into their breasts before becoming, as you'd imagine, horrifically sick. Their story felt symbolic for me of the brutality of self-hatred and what we are willing to undertake because of it. Those women sought enlarged breasts because they could earn more money when selling sex. The white-coated, handsomely bricked facade of Harley Street disguises similar desperation in other women, normalises it. If breast enlargement is advertised on the tube, talked about nonchalantly in newspaper columns and on chat shows, we are all complicit in making it an understandable response to body issues. We continue a culture where women who _don't_ depend on men wanting sex with them for income behave as if they do.\n\nWant to know a disturbing statistic? You know I said that all women who have boob jobs are unwittingly part of an ongoing study; well, lots of studies are conducted using their data \u2013 health complications afterwards, further cosmetic procedures, etc. And a meta-analysis of all these studies found that women who've had breast enlargements are two to three times more likely to commit suicide than women who haven't. We need to think about that. About why this is happening, about the vulnerabilities of the women who choose cosmetic surgery and the normalisation of such choices. When they asked cosmetic surgeons about this rise in suicides they didn't understand: 'they were happy with their operations,' they said; 'she didn't show signs of depression.' But someone who wants to have their body cut open, to pay for it, is already self-harming. Carving criticism on their body. The expense and clever doctors persuading us surgery is more reasonable than razor work in your own bathroom. Psychologists are now paying attention to this suicide increase, asking whether it could be a result of surgery or a predisposition in those who seek it. But the whole thing feels too casual to me. I wonder if a pill or tablet that made you three times more likely to kill yourself would get approval from government departments?\n\nWe know that our body _means_ something, that we can never be invisible. We will naturally be concerned with our body shape. A little vanity is built in. But the way in which human beings communicate with each other has dramatically changed in the last century. For the bulk of our evolution female body fat was valued for health and aesthetics. Look at the Stone Age 'Venus' figurines, images of women with chunky drumstick limbs and round bulging bellies from twenty thousand years ago. Walk round any art gallery and notice that the women considered beautiful in all eras of human creation had dappled thighs and undulating stomachs. Skinniness is a new fashion. It reflects obsession with youth, a suggestion of pre-adolescence when a female's fertility can be dominated. It implies vulnerability, feebleness and fragility. The attractiveness of such traits is of no benefit to women's lives.\n\nWhat I find most troubling is the recent expectation for sudden weight loss after pregnancy. It's perverse that the finest compliment given to a woman who has just made a person is that she looks like she hasn't. Magazines and websites and newspapers all trill about the speed with which famous women regain their figures, high-fiving anyone who has erased signs of the life they made and is ready to be found attractive again, to be prospective. The extra fat of post-pregnancy is not a fashion faux pas, it is stored energy for keeping a baby alive. We need to start congratulating the generously flabby for the healthy lives they are enabling rather than expecting them to burn it off on a treadmill. Here for me is our ironic position \u2013 women's bodies being scrutinised after making babies because our whole species is programmed to assess women's _potential_ to make babies. Even though loads of us don't have children, or haven't yet, our reproductive capability underwrites every day of our post-adolescent lives. Let us think more about this as we jiggle on to wombs.\n\n* Easier for him though cos he had curly hair, which makes your head seem bigger, which makes your body look smaller. That's general relativity.\n\n\u2020 Katherine Ryan is an immensely brilliant comedian who you are probably already familiar with and jealous that I know her. You should be jealous: she is the most composed and strong person I have ever met. And generous and compassionate and sensitive. A hero. And her daughter called their cat 'Sara Pascoe' and I get so happy whenever I remember there is a little male cat with my full name.\n\n\u2021 I recently learned to pronounce this word and am celebrating by using it twice in one paragraph.\n\n\u00a7 Heterosexual men, obvs.\n\n\u00b6 Using vegetable oil in boobs is now illegal, fact fans.\n\n|| Because I'm a grown lady baby Jesus.\n\n** I've made this surgeon a woman even though in real life she was a man haha!\n\n# Blood and Babies\n\nThe day I found out, I was with my friend Hayley (laxative Hayley, not make-herself-sick Hayley) and we were walking from college to go and hang out in the Queen's Theatre foyer like _real_ actors. As we went down the hill I continued to talk about how in love I was with Colin. 'Are you guys using condoms yet?' she asked. We were about to cross the road, the car that'd stopped was beeping, it was Aunty Sandra! 'Hello,' we said. 'Hello,' said Aunty Sandra. She asked if we were okay or needed a lift and we were and we didn't and she waved and drove off. 'Condoms?' Hayley repeated.\n\n'Not very often.'\n\nI could tell Hayley the truth. She was very sensible about those kinds of things, yet tolerant of my irresponsibility. She knew Colin and I had loads of condoms, a massive box full. At the beginning when we'd got together we couldn't afford any and Hayley had taken me to a clinic in Romford where they'd give you MILLIONS of extra-strong Durex in exchange for an hour of your life spent in the worst waiting room in the world. I explained to Hayley that we hardly ever used them, they were so stupid to put on and I couldn't be bothered. And then every month when my period was due I'd regret it and hate myself. 'What if this time I...?' but I wouldn't even finish the thought, I would just resolve that I definitely wouldn't risk it next month, I wouldn't put myself through this worry again. I would tell Colin we had to use something. I would go on the pill. I had tried a pill before but it made me feel sick and I'd kept forgetting to take it and then had mini periods every few days when I'd missed two pills again. And so I had stopped and now we were supposed to be using condoms except we weren't. And I would count days in my diary and feel stupid and then TA-DA, it would arrive all over my underwear! Happy days, oh the relief of this womby pain, and it would be heavy and clotty and I would think, 'Is this clot a tiny baby?' 'Am I miscarrying quintuplets?' but I would be happy. I would swear to whatever god or ghost lives above the toilet bowl that I would not be so stupid again. I would be a wise and mature lady, in control of her fertility and destiny, not a pregnant teenager like my mother.\n\nBut when I had my period it was fine to have sex because I knew you couldn't get pregnant then. The magazines I read said that you should still use condoms just in case, but I knew you definitely couldn't conceive because the baby would fall out with all the blood. And the first couple of days after my period I'd think, 'I should probably introduce the ol' box of condoms sitting next to the bed,' but there never seemed to be a good time. And I knew that those days were safe really because women ovulate in the _middle_ of the month. And when it had been a week, well, it was awkward to bring up 'We should probably put a condom on now' so I didn't. I always thought, 'We can use a condom tomorrow,' but then after a bit it is tomorrow, and it's weird \u2013 when _is_ a good time to bring up putting a condom on? At bedtime? When you're kissing? When he's been in for a bit but he hasn't come yet? I would wonder all these thoughts, and those stages would pass me by and I would be mopping up with toilet paper and very in love and musing, 'This time will be fine, but we'll definitely use a condom next time.'\n\n'So do a pregnancy test,' said Hayley. She says that stressing about your period being late makes your period late \u2013 'Find out you're not and then you can relax!' Hayley is wise.\n\nI have always had a late period, or what I thought of as late. If I had met you two weeks ago and you'd asked about my menstrual cycle, which would have been a bit odd for a first meeting but I wouldn't have minded, I would've answered, tutting, that I was always 'about a week late'. I have just found out \u2013 while researching for this chapter \u2013 that women have different-length cycles. How did I not know that? With the deluge of 'twenty-eight days' and 'four weeks' in the literature I had missed the fact that this is a composite average, and that healthy women range anywhere between twenty- and sixty-day cycles. So if I met you this week and you asked \u2013 and please feel free to enquire \u2013 I have a reliable-ish thirty-five-day cycle. What's yours?\n\nHayley and I went to a chemist in Hornchurch and looked at pregnancy tests for a bit. They were very expensive, I think \u00a39 or \u00a310. I currently earned \u00a314 a week from my Saturday job at WHSmith. I told Hayley I would prefer to wait for my period to come or have a baby, it would be much cheaper. Hayley loaned me the money and I felt really grown up as we popped into a pub next door and Hayley bought a lemonade so they wouldn't bother us. In the toilets she did her mascara and I did a piss on a bit of plastic and then we chatted through the door about a bitch from drama club who had recently started being nice to Hayley, so Hayley was sticking up for her and saying she wasn't a bitch any more. But the bitch was still ignoring me so she was still a bitch, a bitch who looked like a combination of Bebop and Rocksteady from _Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles_ , and I was about to say so when\u2014 The box had said 'wait three minutes' but it only took twenty seconds and the stripes came up. So I said, 'Oh fuck,' instead and Hayley said, 'What?' and I said, 'Oh fuck' and then I read the box again and it repeated what it had told me earlier in the same 'not judging you, just giving you the information' tone. Two lines meant pregnant and I was pregnant and that meant\u2014I laughed a jaded, been-around-the-world, seen-it-all-before cackle and opened the toilet door. 'I'm only fucking up the duff, babe,' I told Hayley. A woman who was washing her hands politely gave her congratulations and left.\n\nAt the time I didn't know how pregnancy tests worked, what element of my urine was sending up that second stripe. If I'd had a guess I would've plumped for 'extra oestrogen' or something. I now know (because I recently Asked Jeeves) that the wee-on pregnancy tests react to a chemical called human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG). But let's go back a bit and work out what had been going on inside me to get us there.\n\nOvulation begins in your brain, or just underneath, in the pituitary gland which releases a follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH). Follicle comes from a Latin word which means 'little bag' and in your ovaries there are tons of little bags with tiny clumps of cells we call ova or eggs inside them. The FSH travels from your brain to your ovaries in your bloodstream and causes your follicles to ripen and ripple, to ready themselves. Your ovaries are stimulated to produce and release oestrogen into your blood, and when that arrives at the pituitary gland, luteinising hormone (LH) is released. The luteinising hormone blocks the follicle-stimulating hormone; those follicles have been stimulated enough. When LH reaches the ovaries this prompts one follicle to open and release an ovum. It's a tag team of hormones flowing back and forth which results in a tiny ripe ovum travelling towards the Fallopian tube. This hormonal interplay means that your body understands which ovary has released an egg, and, incredibly, the nearby Fallopian tube will reach out to it, stretching towards the ovum and easing its trajectory.\n\nMeanwhile, the follicle that has released the egg luteinises (turns yellow) and starts to act as a gland. It begins secreting progesterone into the bloodstream. This progesterone is shouting instructions to your body; your brain knows that an egg is released and on its journey, and your womb responds by beginning to build a thickened lining ready to receive it. There are two possible outcomes at this point, depending on whether your egg meets a sperm and is fertilised, or reaches the womb unencumbered and flying solo. Your emotional response to either state will depend very much on you, and what you are looking for in your life at the moment.\n\nThe night I found out, after Hayley and I had soberly left the pub and continued with our plans, I kept forgetting and remembering. It felt very exciting, I was hyper on it. 'This is really really properly it,' I thought, 'this is life, it has started.' I knew I was making a mess, that I was hurting myself. But I also needed to, I needed life to be interesting. The experience felt vital. Or it did at this dramatic 'oh my god I'm pregnant' point. I don't remember telling Colin, that bit can't have been important. I can't picture his face or whether I called him about it or told him face to face. But when I went home that night I was suddenly worried about telling my mum. The fun left. She was in the bath and I spoke through the door. 'I need to tell you something.' She let me in. I sat on the toilet seat as she lay back down in the water and said, 'You're pregnant' \u2013 not a question. The witch could read my mind.\n\nMy aunty Sandra had phoned up after she'd seen me. She'd told my mum she thought I was pregnant, that she could see it in my eyes. I hadn't done a test when she saw me so I hadn't even known. It's the oddest detail and I still think about it. What did she see? Softness? Fear? My mum had thought Sandra was being crazy until I knocked on the bathroom door and suddenly it was true. Mum said, 'Have a think about what you want to do.' I wanted a time machine. I went to sleep desperate to be undone.\n\n## Possible Outcome A) Fertilised\n\nYou'll know loads about this process already. Men make millions of sperm and can ejaculate them inside a woman via sexual intercourse. Sperm travel pretty slowly, it takes them about ten minutes to cross the distance of a full stop. Luckily there is not much punctuation inside a woman, instead there is mucus which is impenetrable if she has not ovulated but much clearer, stringier and perfect for the sperm to travel through if she has. Mucus is so necessary, vital, for conception it's _unbelievable_ that it is not more respected and popular. Sperm can't reach ova without it \u2013 we all have mucus to thank for our brilliant lives, yet when you hand out fliers for your Mucus Appreciation Society no one wants to join. #ungrateful\n\nIf\/when sperm reach the egg, they press their heads on the outer layer, trying to burrow in. You'll probably be familiar with this image. For ages I thought I could remember being in the womb. I would argue with people that I could recall _every_ moment, the orangey light and the muffled sounds. I could even remember being a sperm racing towards the \u2013 and then I realised my 'memory' was the beginning of the film _Look Who's Talking_ , which you're probably too young to remember. Ask your grandpa \u2013 it was very popular.\n\nIf a sperm breaks through the outer layer of the ovum into the inner layer (zona pellucida), an enzyme is released which acts as a barrier preventing any other sperm from following.\n\nSomeone has begun.\n\nMy morning sickness started the next day, as if once I consciously knew I was pregnant my body could stop hiding it from me. My mum recommended crisps and dry toast. I went into college when I felt a bit better, although I now felt nauseous all the time. I told my teachers I was pregnant and might miss morning classes. I told my football team I was pregnant before we practised. I fainted in Law and told everyone in the class. I kept telling people until a girl came up and said she didn't believe me. I didn't know her very well. 'I just don't believe you' \u2013 she was shaking her head \u2013 'if it was true you wouldn't be talking about it.' I felt no reservation about letting people know I was pregnant because it was just a fact of life, just this thing that could happen to you, like getting the flu or having feet. I didn't think people should keep these things secret. I was going to be open and unashamed. I was revolutionary. And a drama queen.\n\n'It's a clump of cells,' I told my mum, 'like cancer. You wouldn't be annoyed with me if I was having a tumour removed.' She told me I wasn't allowed to think of it that way, she gave me this unbearable lecture about how those cells made a _person_ , about how I had once been such a clump of cells myself. She insisted that I might regret this forever. She suggested I should have the baby \u2013 'STOP CALLING IT A BABY' \u2013 she offered to bring it up for me, do all of the work, all of the getting up in the night and the arse-wiping. 'I'm not cleaning up anyone else's bum,' I'd insisted early on in our 'going through the options' talk. Mum explained that she had got pregnant very young and that I was the best thing that had ever happened to her. She told me of the love she felt as I grew inside her, of the tears when she held me for the first time. Mum said she'd been so happy when I was a tiny baby and that I had given her a love she'd never felt from her family or from a man and that it was complete and unconditional\u2014\n\n'Oh fuck off Mum.'\n\nI'd heard various versions of this. A few years earlier, when I was twelve or thirteen, the story of my creation had had some details added. My mum explained how my dad 'didn't even want you'. That when she'd told him she was pregnant he'd insisted that she 'get rid of it'. The idea of my being aborted was quite traumatic for me at the time. But I am a wise older lady now and experience means I can make sense of that conversation. I understand the elements involved without feeling it as an act of aggression towards myself. It's so common to have doubts. Most people who find themselves unexpectedly pregnant have a conversation along the lines of 'What shall we do?' or 'I don't think I can do this,' but, and perhaps this is obvious to you, I believe the rule should be DON'T TELL YOUR ADOLESCENT CHILDREN ABOUT IT. The mere sniff of rejection is magnified to unbearable proportions at that age. It was metaphysical murder and I couldn't conceive that it wasn't personal. I asked my dad about it recently; we are very good friends and I'm sure he enjoys my foraging pain truffles from the past. He said he couldn't really remember and then he went quiet. I'm pretty confident he felt embarrassed about how he'd nearly denied planet Earth somebody as brilliant and kind as me. 'Imagine if Mary had wanted Jesus aborted?' I thought to myself. 'Now _that_ was a surprise pregnancy!' Then I felt grateful that nobody could read my mind and find out how often I compare myself to Jesus.\n\nI begged my mum not to tell Dad I was pregnant so she rang him straight away. I had an awkward conversation with him on the phone. He'd recently moved to Australia, which I'd accepted as abandonment. He was very relaxed and 'hey, do what you gotta do' about me wanting an abortion. I thought he didn't care and I preferred that to how much my mum clearly did. She thought I should have it. So did Colin's mum, so did Colin. I was very, very sure that I wasn't going to.\n\nThere were lots of things I didn't appreciate at the time, or that I understand differently now. I really thought Mum's sadness at my decision was an act of cruelty towards me rather than a genuine response. I couldn't grasp that if you'd had your own babies, if you had held them when they were really tiny, if you had experienced the entire process of gestation inside your body then maybe you couldn't help empathising with them even as cellular embryos. When my sisters had children over the last few years, the affinity and attachment I felt to their bumps and ultrasounds and the animal rush of holding my nieces revealed to me a sliver of what my mum might have been feeling when I refused to contemplate continuing with my pregnancy, when I stomped down the street referring to her grandchild as a tumour.\n\nThere are so many cultural clich\u00e9s about grandmothers \u2013 pressurising their kids to procreate, embarrassing us with questions, telling us to 'hurry up' and then being overly involved, bossy and controlling when babies come along. It's another sweeping stereotype that appears to be based on universal instincts. We _evolved_ to depend on grandparental care in raising children. We are almost unique among mammals in that we undergo a menopause, a cut-off of fertility many years before we die. Lots of apes have a slowing down of fertility as they age, but never a complete cessation. Female animals usually retain their ability to create offspring as long as resources and environment support them. The evolutionary theory of human menopause is that it allows a woman to concentrate her efforts on caring for her children's children, foraging for their food supplies and assisting their mother in protecting and educating them without the distraction of having her own young children to care for. This input of effort has been proven to make a huge difference in children's survival rates in modern tribal cultures, and in fact a meta-study of developing and developed world nations found that the presence of a maternal grandmother was more beneficial for the survival and health of children than any other relative except a mother \u2013 that, statistically, kids are better off with a grandma around than a father.\n\nEverything I read about the generosity of mothers and grandmothers makes me want to apologise to mine. I should send them some flowers and nice jackets. Then I remember how they were simply ensuring the survival of their own genes via me and I keep the flowers, jackets and sorrys all for myself. It's what they would want. Also, would you like to learn an incredible fact? Female children are born with their ova already in their ovaries, so a mother gives birth to half of each of her grandchildren with her daughter. Isn't that weird and great? A layer of Russian dolling in us flesh-and-blood women.\n\nI had a doctor's appointment that I went to with Colin. They said I could wait for an NHS termination in a few weeks or organise one immediately if I went private. Going private meant paying \u00a3400. I needed it to be quick, I felt so sick and disgusting and my mum agreed to loan me the money. And I realised while writing that sentence that I never paid her back. I just emailed her \u2013 'I still owe you for my abortion' \u2013 and she's written back: 'oh dear! X'. I've replied, 'Can you write something funnier so I can put it in my book?' and she has texted me her bank details with an aubergine emoticon.\n\nThe clinic was in a posh part of Essex I hadn't been to before. My mum drove us there early on the morning of my seventeenth birthday. Colin seemed like a child in the passenger seat and I felt like a child in the back. He'd bought me sweets for my birthday, Jelly Babies, and we laughed at the inappropriateness but I still ate them. When the car stopped, I got out and was sick in several colours onto the kerb. It was momentary, a few gags and gone, but when I stood up I was blurry-eyed and suddenly surrounded by people. They held placards with bloody, mangled pinkness, black-eyed, fish-looking, mashed innards and death. They asked me to look at the pictures and said they would help me and Colin shouted at them, 'Fuck off,' and my mum said, 'Don't swear,' and I was walking up towards the clinic and I felt embarrassed that they thought they knew something about me. No one asked my side of things. It was just a cluster of cells, a blastocyst six weeks into development, not a rabbit-looking baby thing like on the placards they were using to block my way. Late-term propaganda, split skulls and whisked-up limbs. As we turned towards the building they followed us and when we opened the door, they put their hands together as if to pray and a man said softly, 'There go the parents of another dead child.'\n\nWe're never all going to agree on when life starts. I don't think aborting foetuses will ever be an unemotive issue or occurrence. I don't think women will ever have abortions unthinkingly or unfeelingly. The upset, the rage of the prolife people who stand outside clinics or send hate mail or shout on the internet, I get. Morality and the ego are connected. When we feel we are absolutely definitively correct about something, when we have no doubts or concessions, it is extremely physiologically powerful. When we live in a society that disagrees with us, it makes our will to be heard stronger. It makes us want to shout louder. To persuade more forcefully. You can try this with a thought exercise. Imagine something that you are completely, undeviatingly sure of \u2013 like 'paedophilia is wrong'. I use that as an emotive example. It's not an issue one could be on the fence about. If you woke up tomorrow morning and 'Newsflash, newsflash,' said the radio, 'Prime Minister David Cameron has repealed all paedophilia laws. Do what you like to kids now \u2013 have a nice day,' imagine how you would feel. The world would be crazy to you. How could something that was so obviously and utterly morally disgusting be permitted? Imagine how frustrating it would be to know something, deeper than an intellectual idea, to be _convinced_ down to the foundations of your being and then be contradicted by those around you \u2013 it would feel like insanity. It would make a dictator of any of us; we all have a few beliefs which we're so sure are correct that we'd force other people to comply and not feel guilty about that. I can't imagine a person who didn't have some conceptions of rightness that they wouldn't budge on.\n\nHappy Seventeenth Birthday Sara!\n\nLet's have another look inside me. Sperm and egg collided around six weeks earlier. They travelled slowly, incrementally, through the fluid in my Fallopian tube, waved onwards by minuscule cilia towards my womb. Twenty-three chromosomes from the egg paired up with twenty-three chromosomes from the head of the sperm (its tail had been discarded) to create the DNA of a brand new organism. The DNA was replicated, so that there were forty-six chromosomes, and the original cell bulged and divided until it was two. These two cells replicated DNA and doubled. The four cells doubled. And so on, doubling and replicating and arriving in my womb. On attaching to the uterine wall, the building of placental cells produced human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), an analogue of the luteinising hormone we met earlier, which signalled that an embryo was present. That was why the pregnancy test looked for it \u2013 it is a hormone that appears only when there is an embryo, and any trace of it is a sure sign of fertilisation. Hour by hour, week by week the embryo increased very gradually in size until at week six it was tadpole-like. It had transparent skin, organs forming in the correct positions and a heart the size of a poppy seed that was already beating.\n\nWhen we discuss the rights of the unborn, we're thinking about non-conscious, non-sentient beings. But that doesn't mean they don't have rights. I do believe that unborn foetuses have rights, and they should not have to wait until birth to be accorded the respect we endow on the living; believing a woman is entitled to choose to abort a pregnancy doesn't mean the rights of foetuses are dismissed and disregarded. It means there is a hierarchy. It means that I believe the rights of the woman who is pregnant take precedence. It doesn't mean that I don't think that it is sad, it doesn't mean you are not allowed to be outraged and upset by it. Sometimes in pro-choice arguments we can get stuck in defending what seem to be morally stronger arguments: pregnancies that have resulted from rape, children who are impregnated by their abusers, women who may die if their pregnancies continue. These examples may help soften some pro-lifers, or help them empathise with the complexity of some women's experience and choices. But I am going to stand, hands on hips, and tell you that a woman like myself \u2013 healthy, wealthy and with love in my life \u2013 if I am pregnant and I don't want to be, it's top trumps and I win. It's harsh and horrible that a possible person can be unexisted and it might make you want to cry, but if you want fewer abortions then you should devote yourself to helping women who don't want to be pregnant not get pregnant, not terrifying and humiliating the ones who are.\n\nI gave my name to reception. My mum left. Colin sat on a plastic chair where the Christians outside were still audible. I was called through for my 'counselling session'. I'd been told about it at the first appointment: everyone who wants a medical termination has to convince a doctor that they know what they're doing, persuade them they are making the right decision. I was really looking forward to it because I had seen counselling on TV and it looked great \u2013 you get to tell them how fucked up your parents made you and cry on free tissues \u2013 but this session was rubbish. A man said, 'Are you sure you want to terminate your pregnancy?' and I said, 'Yes,' and he said, 'Why?' and I thought, we'll start with the basics, 'Because I don't want a baby,' and a box on a form was crossed. He told me to jump on a couch \u2013 oh yes, here we go, this was far more Freudian, lie down, top up \u2013 the man put jelly on my lower belly and said, 'We just need to find out where it is,' and then I still hadn't realised what he was doing but I'd seen this on TV as well. Grown-up women with clear skin and happy faces, men gripping their hands, joyfully worried as they asked, 'Is it healthy?' and were told, 'It's a boy!' TV didn't show seventeen-year-old birthday girls with sick in their hair. 'Have a look,' the doctor said \u2013 I'd turned away, I didn't want to see, but I am obedient and looked back and there was a mess of static that meant nothing and the man pointed with a biro and said, 'It's very small,' and the counselling was over. Afterwards my mum said they don't have to do an ultrasound. She said that maybe they do it to check that you're sure, that maybe seeing it would change some people's minds.\n\nI'd told my family that I was on the contraceptive injection but that I'd forgotten to go back for the next one after three months. I told the nurses and doctors that we'd had a split condom and that the morning-after pill hadn't worked. I did not admit to anyone that I was a really, really stupid person. And now I waited with my naked bum on a chair, in a cold corridor, queueing for an abortion. I realised I must really hate myself to have done this to me. I hadn't visualised this bit, I didn't know they would make me take my knickers off, put me in an operation gown, tell me where to wait and not look me in the eye. This bit was too hard and I would have liked to say 'Stop'. Very politely and firmly. 'Stop all this. Can I get dressed and go home now please? This is a mistake, I don't want to have an abortion. But also, I also don't want to be pregnant so can we all agree that I have made a terrible mistake, whizz me back to the past and undo this?'\n\nThat's the bit I would describe to my fifteen-year-old self. The moment when the realisation hit and I was alone and frightened with a cold bum. I always wonder what might have made me take better precautions. What I could say to my nieces, not to scare them, but so they could visualise the connection \u2013 hey guys, I hope you're enjoying this _Peppa Pig_ episode. Did you know that twenty seconds of awkward condom conversation can save you an hour of corridor purgatory waiting to have your womb vacuumed?\n\nAre you gonna call Aunt of the Year Awards or shall I?\n\nI was taken in to lie on a bed in an operating room. I was incredibly, incredibly embarrassed to see the two stirrups in the air and putting my feet into them was an out-of-body experience. My mum had warned me about stirrups, she said they make abortions as horrible as possible so that you don't go back. There was an anaesthetist and a nurse and a doctor and they could all see up me and I wanted to die. I had a rash on my bikini line from shaving. I wanted to apologise for it. A woman put an injection into the tube in my hand and said count to ten, and while I counted I thought, 'Oh no \u2013 the sleep stuff isn't working, I'll have to tell them,' and then I woke up sobbing. I was in a different bed, on a ward. There was a curtain around me and I was alive again and it was done. A nurse came and was nice, and she explained the sanitary pad in the knickers they had given me, to expect pain and treat it like a normal period. She said no sex for an amount of time I intended to ignore. And she got me a cup of sweetened tea that tasted like freedom. While I drank it a bed went past transporting a sleeping body. Curtains went round. She woke up sobbing, got the same speech and tea, and when the curtains were opened we chatted. She was from Dublin and had come on a boat because abortions weren't allowed in her country. I told her about my boyfriend and she told me about her boyfriend and I had to ask again: 'Are you sure it's illegal in Ireland?' I thought she must be unintelligent or mistaken. Because she was just like me, from a country just like my country and right next door.\n\nWhat if abortion was illegal in England, what would I have done? People who are anti-abortion and want it to become more restricted, less available, might say, 'You wouldn't have got pregnant, you'd have taken better precautions if there was no escape route.' I can tell you honestly, having _been_ me, that I don't think I _would_ have made more effort with contraception. I took risks, not with silent awareness of an undoing process available for \u00a3400, but because I believed pregnancy was something that happened to other people. It was their disaster, their bad luck. I have always felt immortal and that's been reinforced by years of undeath. I smoked secure that I would never get cancer. I cycled drunk certain that cars would bounce right off me. Having unprotected sex I knew I was dancing with something, that there was danger nearby, but I didn't think it would dare touch me. Until it did. And if legal termination hadn't been an option I would have done something else. I would have starved myself and tried to kill it, I would have got really drunk and taken boiling hot baths. Maybe pushed something inside me and done my best. Maybe visited some non-legal doctor. It must be difficult to imagine if you've never had some alien growing in your body against your will, but wanting rid of it is not a mild desire. And it is not a modern affliction. Techniques for ending pregnancy have existed for as long as medicine; Hippocrates himself recommended an abortion method of 'kicking yourself on the buttocks until the seed fell out'. If only that worked \u2013 any Irish girl in trouble could Riverdance herself out of it. I hope the law in Ireland has changed by the time this book is published so it's me that seems outdated rather than their legal system.\n\nMy mum picked me up after work. Colin was very quiet, I was exuberant with relief. The nausea had gone, I already felt better, even internally bruised with a bloody fat sanitary towel in my knickers. In the weeks afterwards, my feelings about sex changed. It was now connected to something painful. I had lived its consequences, I knew the damage it could wreak and so it wasn't sexy any more. I began to silently resent Colin and he resented me back. If he loved me, why had he let this happen? Why hadn't he protected me? He hadn't put his legs in stirrups, he was unscathed. It became clear that I was still in charge of whether we used contraception or not: if I didn't mention condoms then he wouldn't. In reverse, he hated me because I'd made a decision without him. I hadn't known enough to make a pretence of including him. When we broke up months later, when he was suddenly with someone else, someone unsullied by this operation, I was angry. I was glad I hadn't listened to him, but I wondered if he'd have stayed with me if I had. Would I be pregnant and with him or would he have abandoned me pregnant?\n\nThe male experience of a partner's abortion is interesting. Thinking about it now, I realise that none of my boyfriends have talked to me about whether it has happened to them. (I must write and ask on their Facebook walls immediately!) There is an obvious separation \u2013 the embryo is not growing inside the man, the father does not undergo the procedure \u2013 but I am sure, if a man wants children and his partner is aborting one, there must be an out-of-control and existential suffering that deserves compassion and consideration. I always think it's noteworthy that the ancient Greeks did not believe a woman was related to her children. Guys like Aristotle told how women and their wombs were just vessels that grew the male seed, like the soil grew plants. To me this seems more than a pre-science misunderstanding; it's an undermining of female power, it's a firm insistence of male ownership and responsibility. Fighting their terrified disconnection from their growing children by reducing women to flower pots.\n\nPeople told me how I'd feel about my abortion. I was to expect regrets and tears and guilt and bad dreams, and perhaps I'm an awful person, but I was not sorry. I only felt relief and buoyancy as if cured from a sickness. I have been haunted since but the ghost is gentle and suggestive. Every year on my birthday, I do a little sum in my head to work out the unborn's age. Enjoy a flicker of imagining height and hair colour, and how different my life might be. The ghost child is now the age I was when I had the abortion and that is odd to consider. But it is nothing stronger than odd. I am not racked with sobs. I am not shaking my fist at the past. I did not make a mistake. Or I did, but I was not wrong to abort my mistake.\n\nThere's been some discussion amongst people who care about my professional life as to whether I should be writing about my teenage abortion. My agent Dawn, my brilliant career mum, warned me that once it was 'out there' it could be brought up in any interview, mentioned in any review. I don't care. I stand by it and I will talk about it every day if people want me to. Sex education in schools should involve women who've had terminations talking about them and answering questions. No shame and more prevention, that's my motto.\n\n*\n\nLet's forget the undone now. Instead we shall consider the terrifying business of babies that are actually born. The history of childbirth is a horror show. Our evolutionary combination of walking upright (producing slim hips) and massive brain development (necessitating huge heads) has made the natural process of birth dangerous, potentially fatal for the women undertaking it. Until very recently all women would have considered pregnancy and birth like a disease \u2013 something that you might not come back from. In developed countries maternity wards now have excellent facilities, antibiotics, anaesthesia and sterilisation that help make the process less deadly. But the majority of the world's women do not have access to this kind of medical care and around 350,000 women die giving birth every year.\n\nSomeone needs to write a book on the topic of patriarchy and childbirth. For swathes of recorded history the delivery room was all women taking care of women. The word 'gossip' apparently originated from 'God's siblings'. These were close family friends (think godparents and godchildren) but over time the term became used for the women attending local births and helping out. It conjures such a great image of a room full of bossy ladies, nattering away and sharing local news while mopping brows and cutting cords. It seems male involvement was a relatively recent response to the number of deaths and infections caused by childbirth; male doctors began to mistrust inherited female wisdom and local midwives, and wanted to invent forceps and get involved That is my very biased and abridged view of the matter \u2013 but here are a couple of examples of men interfering that are... perturbing.\n\nFirst meet Dr Marion Sims, don't be fooled by his girly name, this man is a man. He lived in the US in the nineteenth century and was fascinated by the fistulas that some women are left with after giving birth. You don't know what a fistula is? Well, let me tell you: the skin around a woman's vagina can often rip while pushing her baby's head out. In some cases the tearing is deeper and can create an opening between the vagina and the bladder or colon. This alone indicates how _almost_ unfit for purpose evolution has left our bodies. If women were a product you would take them back to the shop.\n\n**CUSTOMER**  \nOh yes, excuse me, I bought this 'woman' for the purpose of making people, but whenever it makes one, it breaks.\n\n**SHOPKEEPER**  \nAh yes, it's a very clever design. Despite great agonies and physical risks these 'women' are continuing to make people even though it rips and stretches them.\n\n**CUSTOMER**  \nCan I have one that doesn't break?\n\n**SHOPKEEPER**  \nThey have to break to make people\u2014\n\n**CUSTOMER**  \nCould the people be smaller?\n\n**SHOPKEEPER**  \nWith smaller brains this whole product line would've died out.\n\n**CUSTOMER**  \nWow! You mean the sacrifice 'woman' makes in childbirth has enabled the continuance of human life on the planet?\n\n**SHOPKEEPER**  \nI surely do!\n\n_SHOPKEEPER and CUSTOMER turn to camera and do a thumbs up._\n\n**CUSTOMER and SHOPKEEPER**  \nThanks, 'woman'!\n\nSo this vagina\u2013bladder\/colon rip is called a fistula. It is incredibly painful and it's an injury that ruins lives. With a fistula urine or faecal matter may leak constantly out of the poor woman's genitals. This incontinence leads to infection and smelliness and embarrassment. Nineteenth-century women were becoming disabled and housebound; their husbands were leaving them. Forget what you know of medicine in your lifetime \u2013 there were no tablets that killed viruses for these women to take, no creams to kill germs and no painkillers. Just hundreds of thousands of suffering women. I can only slightly imagine how upsetting that must be, not just the grossness and pain of it all but the constancy of focus. When I have cystitis it's all I can think about; a continual nagging, unsettling ache as my body throbs and reminds me 'something is wrong, everything is wrong'. And that's only stupid cystitis and I have a cure in my bathroom cabinet... those poor women \u2013 anyway. There was no cure and Dr Marion Sims decided to find one, hooray! So he decided to buy a load of slave women \u2013 oh no, hang on \u2013 and experiment on them until he found one.\n\nI want it noted that I have taken my hooray back.\n\nReading different accounts of Dr Sims's work, you'll find a variety of opinions ranging from 'He was a despicable disgrace' to 'He was a product of his culture'. Are we expected to forgive people's atrocities if they lived in an atrocious time? The women used in Sims's experiments were young slaves. They were stripped naked, told to hold each other's legs open and then had their vaginas cut and stitched repeatedly with no pain relief while student doctors or medical voyeurs craned and watched. This continued for months and years and many operations. Sims's peers started to consider him obsessed and crazy, but eventually he worked out how to repair fistulas. He became very famous, and very rich now that he could use what he'd learned on the young slaves to cure wealthy white women. There are no records of what happened to the slaves afterwards, and some historians wonder if they were probably happy to have been cured or whatever. I find that notion really creepy, this modern-day defensiveness: 'Well, they got something out of it too.' In one description I read, the women were described as 'brave' and I don't like that either. If we assume these women sacrificed themselves for a greater good we are inserting a choice they were not given. Sacrifice is something related to will, something that can only be given willingly \u2013 not bought or taken. They are closer to martyrs.\n\nIt's so tempting to make what he did okay on some level because, you know, now women in many countries can have their fistulas repaired, but. It doesn't feel okay. It's an unhappy seesaw where the great medical breakthrough cannot obliterate the abuses that enabled it. And enabled it only for rich, fortunate women, still. Between fifty thousand and one hundred thousand women in developing countries get fistulas each year, and the World Health Organisation estimates about two million women worldwide are currently living with untreated obstetric tearing. There are charities trying to help as many women as possible with this, and I have listed a few at the end of the book. Along with a pattern for a knit-your-own Dr Marion Sims voodoo doll.\n\nNow let's meet Dr Grantly Dick-Read. No, that's not a name I've invented to cheer you up, but a real-life man from the 1950s who wrote books telling women how to give birth. His main observation was that other animals didn't seem to make a huge fuss when delivering their young; a weird look in their eye, a grunt or a moo, and out the little one slipped. So, Dr Dick-Read wondered, how come human women are doing all this screaming and going bright red and everything? His conclusion was that they must be _imagining_ the pain. Everyone had been telling women to expect pain during childbirth, so their fear made them _think_ that they felt it. Lovely bit of logic from a medical man there, and all built entirely on nonsense. On the one hand you had the subjective experience of women who'd actually given birth; all the variety of things that they'd felt and undergone. On the other hand you had Dr Dick-Read shouting, 'WRONG! All Wrong! I am the only one who understands \u2013 ignore your sufferings and read my books!' And many people listened and agreed and did their best to believe their pain was psychological and HOW WAS THIS ALLOWED?\n\nWe understand that the danger and pain of giving birth are caused by those big-skulled babies we've evolved to have, but in the olden days people didn't realise that. They constructed myths of explanation and considered the female body cursed and mysterious. Those myths still linger even in our post-Darwinian, all-information-available-on-the-internet times, resulting in so much babble and rubbish. Remember Eve from the Bible? You know the one, always with Adam, big fan of fruit \u2013 when God was doling out punishments after the tree of knowledge debacle he told Eve that he'd 'multiply her pain in childbirth'. The explicit message here is that birth does not _have_ to be painful but it is because women deserve it, because of... apples? I am not a biblical scholar.\n\nI guess this combination of 'birth is the most natural thing in the world' and 'birth is agonising and dangerous and can kill everyone involved' is difficult for us to absorb. Consequently pregnant women are bombarded with contradictory and impassioned instructions on how and where to have their children. Our vulnerable physiology is still widely misunderstood. Of all the stuff I've read, the most consistent piece of advice is that stress is very unhelpful to childbirth as it tenses the body, and that relaxation will lead to less trauma for mother and her baby, but it's paradoxical that pregnant women are having that information _shouted_ at them: STAY AT HOME! GO TO HOSPITAL! GET A BIRTHING POOL! NIPPLE MASSAGE! PUT MUSIC ON! CANDLES! ORGASMIC BIRTH! RELAX! HAVE A NICE PERINEUM RUB! GET HYNOTISED! Plus all the conflicting advice about pain relief versus 'natural' birth. There's an insinuation of nobility in denying anaesthesia when available. Some sense that the pain is _supposed_ to be felt, which seems medieval to me. How can 'natural' birth be sanctified in any way, when according to nature, at least one in every hundred women would die from it?\n\nDon't answer that, it was a rhetorical question.\n\nWe've been thinking a lot about what happens when the ovum meets a sperm but I'd like to talk now about something I have much more experience of. My monthly _non_ -fertilisation and the madness it brings with it.\n\n# No Babies Just Blood\n\n## Possible Outcome B) Unfertilised\n\nPlease delete as appropriate: Hooray\/Boo hoo.\n\nI am a complete expert about the menstrual cycle. My mum bought me a book called _Have You Started Yet?_ when I was about ten. It gave me all the information I needed, I knew exactly what to expect from my first period. It would be like a gushing wee, but made of blood and it would mean I could have children. And so for a couple of years, every time I went to the toilet, if the wee felt particularly smooth I would have a look in the toilet and check what colour it was. Sometimes I pressed very, very hard into my belly button to see if that might get everything started up, but so far, nothing. I wasn't desperate for it to start or anything \u2013 just curious. And one day, after having stomach aches all morning, when I went to the toilet and found a smear of brown blood on my underpants I put two and two together \u2013 tummy pain, blood \u2013 I knew exactly what was happening and shouted downstairs to my mum, 'I'M PREGNANT'.\n\nGood old Mummikins ran up to find me in the bathroom. I wouldn't let her in as I needed my privacy, but I described my dirtied knickers in detail and she told me I was now a woman. Which I was not, I was twelve. My mum said some spiritual, beautiful things about cycles, magic and the moon while I sat quietly waiting for her to finish talking about rubbish that had no relevance to me.\n\nMum then took me to our local Tesco, where she proceeded to put every single sanitary item available into our trolley, and there was a lot because this was a megastore, and when we got to the till and my mum was loading up the conveyor belt with cotton in different shapes, sizes and absorbencies the lady behind the till gave us a questioning look. My mum answered that look by explaining, 'Sara's just started her period,' which was true. She continued, 'She's a woman now,' which had already become my most hated phrase. 'We didn't have anything in the house,' my mum told the complete stranger; 'she's only got toilet paper in her pants!'\n\nEmbarrassment doesn't cover it. I was flooded with adrenaline, my face bright red, what's called a 'fight or flight response', except neither of those responses was appropriate \u2013 I couldn't hit my mum, could I? And I couldn't run away, she was driving me home. So my body reacted in the noblest way it could, by having a nose bleed, while I stood there, frozen and ashamed. And the lady on the till, clearly a bit of a wit, said, 'Oh look, she's bleeding from both ends now,' and then she laughed and my mum smiled politely and I wished I was dead and wondered how adults could be so insensitive and so cruel. I already loathed my period, not because of anything physical but because it encouraged other people's input and judgement. It didn't feel like it was mine, rather something external, taking me over. I begged my mum not to tell my dad; it was nothing to do with him. But she rang him when we got home \u2013 I heard 'She's a woman now' echoing through our little house. I couldn't bear that people were talking about a thing that was taking place in my underwear. And that my mum was trying to make it mean something that it didn't, trying to make it special when it was actually gross. My sister Cheryl learned from my horrible experience and never told my mum that she'd started her period, and thanks to that shopping trip she didn't have to \u2013 we had a lifetime's supply of pads and wads under the stairs.\n\nAfter my first period (five days, medium heavy, medium pain) I didn't have another one for a year. I thought that was it, I'd tried it out, decided it wasn't for me and gone back to girlhood, great stuff. Some time in between we had a special assembly at school, after regular assembly had finished. All the girls were asked to stay where they were and all the boys to get up in their rows and follow their teacher back to their classrooms. We watched them leaving and wondered why we couldn't and they stared at us as they left, wondering which group of us was being punished. What strikes me now is why did they send the boys away? Why don't boys get educated about menstruation? Is it because the teachers think girls will be embarrassed? I feel like the secrecy of it, the action of segregating us, sends the message that we _should_ be ashamed. That our periods are something to hide from the opposite sex. I still \u2013 and I am thirty-four flipping years old \u2013 when I take a couple of Nurofen in front of someone, and this usually gets a comment because I can't swallow pills, I poke them down my throat with my fingers \u2013 YES, I am cool, I'll show you some time \u2013 well, this could be at a gig or a meeting or with someone I don't know and they'll say, 'Headache?' and I'll say, 'I've got period pain,' and then there is this awkward beat like I've said something gross and personal when I'm not supposed to. I'll wish I'd lied, 'Yes, headache,' instead. I've got male friends who say 'urgh' and 'yuk' about periods, I had a boyfriend who didn't want me to ever talk about being on because it made him not fancy me and I've had boyfriends who liked to use code words and silly phrases about painters and decorators or Arsenal's playing arrangements and surely, _surely_ , if boys had been included in those assemblies with their female classmates they wouldn't be such idiots about it. They would have been given their chance to ask questions about bodies that were different from theirs. They'd have been taught that the menstruation that affects fifty-one per cent of the world's population for one quarter of most of their lives also concerns the non-menstruating forty-nine per cent. Little boys grow up to have female co-workers, female friends and maybe female lovers and female children. Isn't it dangerous to have given them this early indication that female bodies are mysterious and unknowable? Doesn't their exclusion suggest dirtiness and shame? Surely it's this lack of information that creates a taboo? Boys may not physically experience menses but they still owe their very existence to it.\n\nWhen the last of the boys were banished, a nice woman stood at the front and she told us about eggs and tubes and monthly bleeding and cramps. We were told about hot-water bottles for the pain, and sit-ups and hot baths. And then we were shown tampons and towels and that old belt thing that female dinosaurs used and asked if we had any questions.\n\n'Why are these sanitary products taxed as \"luxury items\" with VAT payable, despite being considered a necessity by those who have no choice but to use them?' I could have asked if I had known or cared about that then.\n\n'What about girls my age in other countries, those who have to be sent out of villages \u2013 is there anything I can do to help?' would've been a good question if I hadn't been a privileged western chick who didn't yet realise how fortunate she was.\n\n'Is there any truth to the rumour that chemicals in tampons make you bleed more and thus need more tampons?' is the kind of thing I would ask now, because that's what I worry about and I have looked up about on the internet but am distrustful of every source, so \u2013 I don't know. I _have_ found a charity that helps refugees make their own sanitary products though. It's listed with the others at the end of the book.\n\nThe first question came from Jordanna, who asked, 'Could the string come out of tampons?' The lady called her to come up on stage and have a go, and Jordanna tugged and tugged at the blue thread but she couldn't pull it out and we all laughed and clapped. The atmosphere was relaxed and convivial now and I felt safe and excited and so I asked, because they hadn't mentioned this and I couldn't work out the logistics: 'Can you have sex with a tampon in?' I knew that people had sex in their vaginas and, apparently, vaginas were where you inserted these max-flow Tampax and whatever. 'Can you have sex with a tampon in?' I repeated in the quiet. The lady looked around at everyone and laughed. A couple of teachers laughed too. Like it was obvious or unimportant. It bugged me for years, this conundrum. It didn't even say on a tampon leaflet that I read. The vagina was such an unreal place to me, a portal to another galaxy, the sandpit the Psammead lived in, Mary Poppins's never-ending bag. I apparently had this space inside myself that things would go inside and where people could grow and I didn't know what shelves there were, how many compartments and doorways. But I now knew not to ask questions, because some were right and about strings, and some were wrong and left you exposed as a pervert or something.\n\nMy mum criticised the sex education we got at school. 'They don't teach you about love. They just tell you the mechanics,' she used to say. But I didn't really understand the mechanics either. I was a child without internet access, I don't think I even used a computer until I was at college. I had to look up sexual words in the dictionary. If I'd been born fifteen years later, I probably would have left that assembly, typed 'period sex' into a free porn site and known much more than I needed to. I was obsessed with collecting as much information about sex as possible and trying to piece it all together so I could visualise it. I shoplifted magazines from the 7\/11 near school; _More, Minx, Just Seventeen_. I absorbed details about positions and fantasies and 'tricks' to make boys like you and I filled out quizzes pretending I'd done it all already with nameless guys outside nightclubs and I left the completed pages around school to impress girls like Jordanna, who saw through me. She'd had her period for ages, and boobs since she was about nine.\n\nSFX: RING RING RING RING\n\nHello?\n\nOh hi ovum, what you up to? Just been released by the ovary? Cool. You want us to come and see you? Why of course!\n\nThe sliding doors moment for an egg is after it has been released and before it reaches the womb. I call it sliding doors because this is when its fate could be massively changed by the arrival of a sperm, but it's more accurate to say 'sliding window of a few days'. For our hypothetical ovum no sperm is on the way, but she doesn't know that and floats towards the Fallopian tubes, tiny and determined. During this time the luteinising follicle is producing progesterone and the womb gets busy creating a thickened lining of cells called endometrium. After around two weeks, if the brain detects no hormones indicating foetal development in your bloodstream, progesterone production stops. Oestrogen drops. This sudden reduction of hormones signals to the womb that the sumptuous lining is unnecessary and can be evacuated from the body. It's like a landlord putting down carpet in case she gets a new tenant, but by the end of the month she realises no one is moving in and so she tugs the carpets off the floor and chucks them wastefully out of the window. She's listening to Alanis Morissette and crying for no reason while she does it.\n\nThe landlord womb undulates gently to slough off the endometrial cells (think of the wiggling motions of peristalsis in your intestines to get an idea) while local capillaries restrict their blood supply and oxygen, causing them to drop off. This process is what causes that painful, cramping feeling. The activity of clearing the unneeded tissue takes several days, and the cells gradually leave the body via the vagina along with fresh blood caused by broken capillaries, and some cervical mucus and vaginal secretion. A typical amount of menstrual fluid is between five and twelve teaspoonfuls. It doesn't actually travel out on spoons although sometimes it can feel like that.\n\nThere it is then, menstruation, a basic bodily function integral to the process of making people. It's simple physical mechanics, an external signal of cyclical fertility. So why has everyone always been so weird about it? From the earliest human records people have been chatting crap about periods. In ancient Rome, Pliny the Elder said that if a menstruating woman took her clothes off she could scare away hailstorms and lightning and cause all the caterpillars to fall off the trees. Even with her clothes on she would turn wine sour, rust metals and cause 'a horrible smell to fill the air'. Aristotle in ancient Greece told everyone menstrual blood was women's semen and that it stopped us from going bald. This was shortly after Hippocrates had spread the word that menstrual bleeding was a healthy way to get rid of poisons and cool down, and that it helpfully turned into breast milk when a woman had a baby. In the thirteenth century a book called _The Secrets of Women_ revealed the previously classified information that menstruating women would poison the eyes of any baby that looked at them and that children conceived during menstruation would have epilepsy and leprosy because of all the venom. AND THAT'S JUST THE SCIENCE BOOKS LADS.\n\nWhen you look into the world's religions you find that virtually all have taboos around menstruating women. In the Hindu faith they are considered 'ritually impure', not allowed to enter kitchens or temples, to have naps in the daytime or touch anyone or drive a car. The Torah dictates, in the book of Leviticus, that anyone who touches a menstruating woman will be 'unclean until evening', and Orthodox Judaism forbids all sexual contact between husbands and their menstruating wives. In Japanese Buddhism menstruating women are banned from attending temples and in Orthodox Christianity women are supposed to abstain from Holy Communion while on their period. The common theme through all is 'dirtiness': a woman's menstruating body is considered sullying, contaminating the objects and people around her.\n\nNowadays many faiths have softened in their attitudes and don't take ancient writing about menstrual impurity literally, but there are still villages and towns where women on their period are banished, sent away to separate dwellings for days at a time. In Nepal apparently ninety-five per cent of girls have restricted lives during their periods, having to stay off school or sleep outside. Twenty per cent of girls in Sierra Leone have to skip school when menstruating and thirty per cent in Afghanistan. In India twenty-three per cent of girls stop attending school altogether after their first period. When we're considering menstrual stigma we have a spectrum of consequences: at one end, the erosive effects of embarrassment and shame; at the other, actual physical restriction and oppression based on a bodily function. Missing one fifth of their education or having to quit school at eleven or twelve has a massive knock-on effect on a girl's later life \u2013 her work opportunities, her income and thus her independence and autonomy.\n\nThere is residual, old wives' tale misinformation about women's wombs and their business everywhere. Throughout my teens I was given a range of advice I was _nearly_ certain was rubbish: don't go swimming\/don't wash your hair\/don't bake cakes when you're on your period, but never a proper explanation as to _why_. In 1920 Professor Bela Schick attempted to support age-old taboos with scientific evidence. He proposed that 'menotoxins' were emitted by menstruating women; that they were present in their sweat and on their skin and were poisonous. He then conducted a lot of not very reliable studies which proved that if a menstruating woman held a flower it eventually wilted. Whereas flowers in water, well, they don't wilt. Da da da da da da, SCIENCE! That was less than a century ago and we continue to live with the consequences of 'periods are disgusting' indoctrination.\n\nWhile I was in my early teens, coming to terms with my own menses, all the slang terms were so negative. 'The curse', old people called it; boys at school accused teachers of being 'on the blob' and then laughed; my dad called it 'women's troubles'. WOMEN'S TROUBLES. Something we brought on ourselves when we ate that blooming apple without permission. Something that was none of men's business. Mine to experience, mine to deal with. And 'troubles' is such a belittling word. I have been in agony for nearly a quarter of my life. AGONY. Can't leave the house, can't get off the toilet sometimes \u2013 it's not a trifling trouble, it's been a monthly apocalypse. Sorry for shouting, Daddy, it's not you I'm angry with.\n\nI am relieved to be talking about this actually.\n\nI am a modern lady, a cutting-edge, very recent woman. And yet the only menstrual blood I have ever seen is my own. Is that weird? I can see sex on all the movies and TV programmes, I can watch murders being enacted and people pretending to shit themselves in the street, yet no periods. All the advertisements inviting me to select sanitary products prove absorbency with a clear blue fluid, the exact opposite of the mushy muck that ruins my underwear. The absence of public dialogue about periods is implicitly instructing us to shut up. The scandal and shock of a used sanitary towel explicitly tells us we're gross. When I started stand-up comedy I occasionally fielded questions like 'Do you just do jokes about your period?' 'No,' I'd reply defensively, 'no, I don't do any,' and I thought I'd passed some kind of test. Well done me. Women aren't allowed to talk about their periods because some people don't like to hear about periods. When I started comedy I thought I was being ever so clever avoiding topics that were seen as 'things women talk about' and it took me a while to realise that I had been coerced into not expressing my experience as a human because I happen to be the kind of human that is not male. If you are repulsed by periods that is completely fine but you have to understand that the problem lies with you, and not in a bit of blood and cells escaping the vagina. Menstruation is not going away (or it will, but it'll be back in a few weeks). People's responses are the only thing that can change.\n\nTo be disgusted by periods is illogical \u2013 we know from science that women aren't more germy or polluting around this time. The cells being sloughed are the purest imaginable, suitable for a tiny vulnerable foetus. Yet the prohibitions and stigma are almost universal, so where have they come from? Do they have a communal origin?\n\nIt's quite easy to imagine that before knickers, showers and mooncups women were a bit smelly on their periods. The oldest evidence of tampons is from the time of the ancient Egyptians, who made them from softened papyrus, and most civilisations have had versions ever since, made out of lint or grass or whatever. But even then, without access to running water I'll concede that women probably did find it difficult to manage their menstrual blood. Hence all the banishments and 'don't touch my food' stuff. I mean, it's awful but I can see _some_ logic to it. Another thought I had was that as women are unlikely to conceive during their period and religions are always insisting that sex be for procreation rather than pleasure, maybe that's the root of all those religious proscriptions? No better way to ensure marital sex occurs during fertile times than spreading rumours about menstruating women being toxic. But then I found out that periods weren't even linked to ovulation until 1831, when Charles N\u00e9grier worked it out and told everyone. So the ancient cultures that produced these taboos hadn't even connected periods and the fertility window yet.\n\nMy new theory is that without education and comprehension, menstruation does seem magic. It ignores the rules of nature; women feel pain, they bleed, they exhibit the symptoms of illness or disease and then suddenly recover their health and appear unharmed. It's so at odds with the rest of human experience \u2013 no wonder early people didn't trust it. We are the first humans to ever understand it properly. By measuring hormones and watching the body on ultrasounds and MRIs, scientists and doctors can now witness the womb at work. Our physiological processes are common knowledge and so we can make sense of our internal manoeuvres while our poor ancestors had to make up stories and whisper at the moon.\n\nMost animals don't menstruate. Monkeys and apes do, and some bats and the elephant shrew,* but none as much as we do. All other mammals have 'triggered decidualisation', which is when the body waits for the hormonal trigger of an embryo before building up those uterine walls, which seems sensible. Their landlords wait until someone is moving in before laying the red carpet. We lucky _Homo sapiens_ bitches have 'spontaneous decidualisation', which means we build it up first, ask questions about embryos later. Why don't we wait?\n\nBecause:\n\na) We enjoy it.\n\nb) The ironing's finished and there's nothing else to do.\n\nc) We think it burns calories.\n\nd) We need more endometrial lining than any other animal.\n\nCORRECT, we have to build up more of a womb reception than other animals, and why might that be? It's because human embryos are incredibly needy, very hungry, greedy, they attach deep on to the uterine wall, as deep as they can, and if there was less endometrium, mothers would become vulnerable to the vampirism of their unborn children. In what scientists refer to as an 'evolutionary arms race' (one side improves and adapts slightly, and the opposition adapts and responds accordingly), human mothers and their tiny cellular pre-babies have been evolving together so that each gets enough and neither destroys the other. Can you guess why even at a few days old humans are so desperate for nutrients? Sing it with me: because we have massive brains!\n\nToot toot on the 'we all knew the answer' trumpet!\n\nWhen a woman is pregnant, and usually while she's lactating, she will stop having periods. Scientists who study women's bodies and understand our evolution say that tens of thousands of years ago, when we foraged for food and lived outdoors, the average woman would've had about fifty periods in her lifetime because she would have been reproducing and breastfeeding so much. Nowtimes, a woman might have between 460 and 500 periods in her life. Our great fatty diets mean we start our menses earlier, and our quality of life and lower infant mortality mean we average a lot fewer children. I have had absolutely no children. None. I don't know if I will ever have them and I am not sure how I feel about that. It changes.\n\nI have a special kind of jewellery called ovarian cysts. They are super-common, one in fifteen women have them, and they're caused by insulin resistance, which makes your pancreas release more insulin and then all that extra insulin confuses your ovaries, lowers your oestrogen and results in a too-high testosterone level. This interferes with the follicle-ripening egg stuff we talked about earlier, so instead of an ovum floating off towards your tubes you get a cyst and Madame Ovary ends up looking like a cloud covered with grapes. I saw mine cos I went to the hospital. A nurse put a camera wand inside my vagina \u2013 she put a condom and lube on it first and explained that the condom was 'for hygiene, not because you could get pregnant'. It was very kind of her to assume I'd be confused and be expecting a baby wand in nine months. The camera sent a grainy video to a small telly and I saw the mess of my grape clouds and the nurse said, 'Oh yes, sorry dear,' in a sad voice like I was going to cry. But it was a relief for me.\n\nI had suspected something was wrong because of my up-and-down women's troubles moods. Books and articles aimed at helping women understand pre-menstrual tension (PMT) describe emotiveness and 'feeling crabby'. Crabby sounds so sweet. I imagine an American woman apologising to a supermarket worker she forgot to smile at while she packed her groceries \u2013 'Forgive me, Mary-Sue, and have this $5 tip, I'm in ever such a crabby mood.' My menstrual moods are monsters, not crabs. I am hit by the pointlessness of everything. The futility. I think of death and I am filled with hate. And I've done nothing about it except taking evening primrose oil and fantasising about the menopause.\n\nI have blamed my 'hormones' for all my negative behaviour since I was about seventeen. But when I met John, he didn't believe me. He said I had some much more serious mental disorder. 'Surely all your girlfriends were like this while on their periods?' I asked, head spinning round like that bit in _The Exorcist_. Apparently not; he has had a sheltered life. John told me to go to the doctor so I did. I explained all my symptoms and she told me I was depressed and I said, 'I'm not,' while tears fell onto my lap. She agreed they would test me for polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) because I had all of the hairy\/weight gain\/irrational mood symptoms.\n\nI insist I am not depressed because I shouldn't be. I have a stimulating life and neither of my parents is dead and I'm really enjoying series 3 of _The Bridge_ , yet for a few days every month everything is turned inside out and terrible. I think of it as reverse alchemy; my menstrual hormones touch my life and turn it to sludge and slurry. Knowing it's my hormones, that it's episodic and will pass, does not help me. That was John's advice: 'If you know it's hormones just ignore it, it's not really you,' but when the monster arrives it doesn't feel 'not real'. Instead it seems it's the rest of the month that's a fiction and the true me with my true feelings has been waiting underneath, coping, repressing, and now here she is to CRY ABOUT IT.\n\nI cry very regularly anyway, let us say on average one small cry a day in frustration or disappointment or whatever. But seven days before my period it goes into overdrive. My boyfriend jokes about how much I cry; sometimes he laughs when I start, because what I am crying at is so stupid. He has written a funny list of 'things my girlfriend has cried at' to do in his stand-up routine, and if you heard it you'd think he'd made them up but he didn't. I cry getting dressed, I cry thinking about how big space is, I cry at the thought of an animal being stuck in our bin, I cry if John can't hear me from the other room, I cry when I remember Amy Winehouse is dead, and Samuel Beckett and Nanny Babs, I cry at all television, advertising, music and some print media. And John doesn't even know about all the times I cry on my own. It's like I'm leaking something that I can't hold in. I am a TSUNAMI of tears for all the people in all the world and I am not separate from anything any more. I am misery, sadness and self-indulgence personified for seven days out of thirty-five. Come round some time, I'll show you.\n\nI am interested in finding out what causes this pre-menstrual sadness and I am reading around on hormones and their effects but it has really surprised me how many books say 'We don't know why this happens' or 'This is another mystery of women'. Oestrogen and progesterone both completely plummet just before a period, so this hormonal drop must be something to do with it. Things like drinking and smoking make it worse \u2013 I had always known this but not understood why; your liver balances the hormones in your blood (or tries to) and when it's working on stored alcohol (which it has to if you drink more than one unit per hour) then the hormones can become more unbalanced. Interesting, huh? And annoying, because downing wine and hoping it will make everything better is one of my favourite nonsensical behaviours.\n\nApparently, with my polycystic ovaries, the extra testosterone can cause a higher sex drive, but it has also caused nobody to want to have sex with me because of the accompanying aggression and facial hair. When I am not crying at John, it's usually because I have taken a break to shout. Usually about wanting us to have more sex together \u2013 there is loads of stuff written about women having an increased interest in sex around their periods; apparently orgasms are really helpful with cramps and the heaviness of the engorged womb imitates arousal. But what no one acknowledges is how difficult it is to seduce someone by raging at them with snot down your face.\n\nThe PCOS can also make it trickier to have children, because your eggs are tied up being cysty. And it's a strange thing; when I was sixteen and planning my abortion, I was so certain that I never wanted to have children. _Ever_. And people told me I would change my mind and I hated those people. And through my twenties even. People don't believe you when you say, 'No kids, not for me.' They act like you're not qualified to know what you want. And I didn't, and I never changed my mind \u2013 but something changed in my body. My body cleaves and clenches and saddens. Perhaps it's all these periods I shouldn't be having, but I'm thirty-four and the baby thing has confused me without my permission. I think I understand why people don't believe you when you say you don't want children, because they know it's a compulsion rather than a choice. That a woman's body changes with age \u2013 it begins as a beautiful, bouncy machine for her brilliant mind to travel about in and some time in her thirties it transforms into BabyWantingBot2000 with her rational 'the planet is so overpopulated already' mind trapped inside.\n\nOr, I should say, that's my experience. I'm not saying it's true for all women, it's not even true for me all the time, I reckon for seventy-five per cent of my day it wouldn't cross my mind to worry about procreation. I am busy, excited by my varied life and the fun and chores and my excellent bicycle with a basket. Then for fifteen per cent of the time I am low-level thinking about it, I have long-game thoughts like 'Once I've bought a house I could register for adoption,'\u2020 or 'I could go to a sperm bank, no need to panic now, I could just buy some sperm when I'm forty.' So it's only the remaining ten per cent of my day when I anxiously fret, 'WHAT WILL I DO WHEN I'M FIFTY?' I don't want to be still living this child's life, I want to be responsible, I want to care about people who aren't me. I don't want to be still talking about sex on stage and having to make jokes through my menopause and barrenness before going to bed with my stupid bicycle. I want to read stories or make them up. I want to complain about the school system, I want to go into assembly and insist that the boys are taught about periods and tell everyone how you can't have sex with a tampon in actually. Then I could show them a used sanitary towel and say, 'THAT'S LIFE, KIDS, DON'T LET ANYBODY SHAME YOU.' I want to share. I have been a daughter for thirty-four years and it's been great but I also want to try being a grown-up. I feel stupid when I worry about this, I'm not sad _now_ but maybe I'll be sad later. But maybe when later happens I won't be sad at all, and then I'll regret the tenth of my time I wasted feeling like a clich\u00e9 and not knowing what to do about it. Stupid stupid thoughts and thinking.\n\nI've said it before but it bears repeating that without the very powerfully embedded drive to procreate any species would dwindle and disappear, ARE YOU LISTENING, PANDAS? We humans are the first species to consider procreation a choice \u2013 or to consider anything at all. Before science created artificial insemination, sex was the only way for our species to procreate. Thus the urge for sex IS the urge to procreate (although that might be the furthest thing from your mind at the time). It's unconscious, most sex isn't 'baby-making sex', but any kind of sexual behaviour has evolved because sex makes babies. Making children is also the most exhausting, demanding and dangerous thing a woman can do with her body.\n\nOur evolution has had to counterbalance this. As our species's brains grew exponentially in size the difficulties of pregnancy and childbirth increased. This meant that women with certain attributes would be 'fitter', would be more successful in their child-producing. There are the body adaptations; wide hips, stored body fat, etc. But there were also behavioural traits that benefited our ancient female ancestors \u2013 for instance really wanting children and being able to love those children very deeply \u2013 which would result in better care and higher survival rates.\n\nAnd sexiness. Women with no sex drives would have left no genes. Even with the widest hips and the hugest potential for bonding with offspring, if the human women of millions of years ago did not want to have plenty of sex, they did not get the ensuing plenty of children. We modern women have inherited the genes of the most sexual women through thousands of generations because they were the most reproductively successful. Yet our gender's sexuality has been repressed, ignored, misunderstood and outright denied by our civilised societies. Take your knickers off and follow me, it's time to find out why...\n\n* You need to image search this cutie pie right now \u2013 you won't regret it! Now imagine her all moody and on her period.\n\n\u2020 For me to adopt a child, silly, not for a family to adopt me.\n\n# You Have Genitals!\n\nWe already know about the meeting and greeting of sperm and egg that makes a person. We've followed the pairing of chromosomes, the floaty swim ending with uterine embedding. We've thought about the six-week-old embryo, developing limbs, the beginnings of brain and lungs and the first heartbeats. We're paddling past that now to week eight, a mere two months old in human time but already past your first birthday in dog years.* Until now you'd enjoyed a warm, watery genderless existence. If there were a soiree for embryos all body shapes would be identical and all foetuses united in their similarities until the clock struck eight weeks, when those with XY chromosomes would glide off home before their penises appeared and embarrassed them in front of everyone.\n\nOur chromosomes hold the instructions for our body's gendered development. XX = a female body and XY = a male body.\u2020 During this 'gonadal phase', male-bodied foetuses are flooded with testosterone. This alters their genital development: their clitoris swells into a phallus, their ovaries descend to become testicles and their labial folds converge into a smooth crest between penis and anus. This unfurling development is pretty magical. There are websites with photographs of male and female foetuses day by day, so you could watch how we mirror and differ while you're at work tomorrow and see if that's enough to get you fired.\n\nDuring the Middle Ages, when anything that happened inside a living body remained mysterious, they believed it was the other way around, that males were the prototype, the basic format for human, and that females were males who hadn't received enough warmth in the womb. That we were failed males. There was a common misunderstanding back then that if a woman got too excited and 'overheated' in adulthood she would spontaneously 'put forth' her penis \u2013 which, while factually inaccurate, would be a brilliant way to end an argument. We now know that a female body is the basic frame for all human beings and while it's tempting to spend a day shouting at boys, 'You're actually women that testosterone came along and mucked up!' we shouldn't place too much importance on this. Nature isn't making a powerful feminist point in our wombs, it's just growing cells in the most efficient way. One sex was always going to be the building block for the other, so let us accept our fundamental category with the composed grace of the vastly superior.\u2021\n\nNow, let's stop concerning ourselves with the other and concentrate on us. Here is a labelled diagram of the female genitals. Feel free to trace a copy for your wall. I have based this on pictures and photographs in books, this is NOT a self-portrait and if you tell anyone it is I will TRACK YOU DOWN and ask you to stop.\n\n1: The vulva. Sometimes people use 'vagina' to describe the whole shebang, but 'vulva' is the truthful name of our external genitalia and it is such a _beautiful_ word, isn't it? Maybe I've been looking at pictures of genitals too much recently, but I love the plush and velvety sounds of 'vulva'. 'It's really quite a pretty name for a girl,' I told John as we travelled home last night and he looked out of the train window and didn't speak for twenty-five minutes. Reading between the lines, I've a feeling he didn't agree, with an added sense of 'please don't use words like that on public transport'.\n\n2: This bit is the _actual_ vagina. It is the interior passage, leading towards the cervix at the neck of the womb. The word originates in Latin and could be translated as 'sheath' or 'scabbard'. Somewhere to put your sword then. The vagina is an adapting, responsive organ. It lengthens during sexual arousal and widens in preparation for childbirth, and shrinks into a closed resting state in between. It is not a hole. Women do not walk around with an empty space inside them (unless they've been shot by a cannon ball in the film _Death Becomes Her_. If you haven't seen it, track it down online and watch immediately in order to get my dated nineties references).\n\nWhen girls are born they have a small slip of skin partway inside the vagina called a hymen (3). There are usually some remnants of this skin inside the vagina years after it is broken.\n\nThe exterior of the vulva features the urethra \u2013 this little hole here (4). That's where urine from the bladder leaves the body, in case you haven't noticed.\n\nThen we have the labia minora (5) and labia majora (6). They sound like constellations, stop looking upwards \u2013 these galaxies are in your underpants. 'Labia' means 'lips' in Lat-in, and 'minora' and 'majora' mean 'small' and 'large', so there's some factually accurate naming right there. There is a very wide range of appearances in these genital lips, just like with facial lips. The minora are sometimes packed inside the majora, while other women have minora that extrude. The labia majora swell up with blood during sexual arousal and are often unsymmetrical, with one being slightly lower than the other. I have tried to draw a vulva here that is less neat than the ones you might have seen in pornography. Pleased don't be offended if you have neat symmetrical genitals, you're normal too.\n\n7: Here is the clitoris. There is a hood of skin that protects the organ a little bit in day-to-day non-sexual mode, but when aroused the hood retracts and the clitoris swells with blood and increases in size. For some women there is only a slight hardening, for others a more noticeable size shift. The word 'clitoris' is Latin although originating in Greek and it could mean 'to shut', or 'key', or 'little hill'. The etymologists don't really know for sure, so nor do we. To me it sounds godlike: 'Oh no, you have angered Clitoris, here she comes flying on her angry sheep to take revenge.'\n\n8: This is your bum hole. Some people consider this a sexual organ and have great fun with it. Not me, I'm afraid, I probably won't mention it again, unless bum hole whitening comes up later. Who knows?\n\nAround here (9) is where pubic hair grows from puberty onwards. And also here (10). And here (11). And sometimes the odd one halfway down your thigh that looks like he has had an argument with all the others and is making a break for freedom.\n\nBefore I had any pubic hair, I had read about it, probably in that _Have You Started Yet?_ book. And it made sense of a picture Aunty Juliet had in her flat. It was a really big painting that a friend of hers had done. The lady in the painting had no clothes on and the lady was my aunty Juliet. And when I went upstairs to the toilet, I would often peek in to look at the naked painting, because she had something all over her botty. It was black and I wondered why she hadn't washed it off but was just sitting there. I asked my aunty Mickey once why Aunty Jools had a dirty botty but she just laughed and told everyone. But after I read the book I understood, I was mature and informed and a grown-up now. 'Don't worry,' I told Mickey next time I saw her, 'I know Juliet has got public hair.' Mickey laughed again and corrected me. 'Nope, I'm pretty sure it's public hair,' I assured her. It made sense to me; this hair provided protection from the gaze of the public when you were naked on a painting.\n\nNowadays the public gaze is very rarely interrupted by pubic hair because hardly anyone has got any. In pornography if you want to see a woman with pubes you have to search for a specialist category like 'unshaven' \u2013 the norm has become extraordinary. Before I start ranting on about this, let's consider the evolutionary theories of why these little tufts of genital hair exist in the first place. Two million years ago our ancient ancestors would have been hairy all over like other apes. Hair is an animal's way of regulating body temperature and is an absolute necessity when living outdoors without clothes or sleeping bags. And then, over thousands of years, our variety of _sapiens_ became a lot less hairy. Persuasive theories argue that we needed to thermo-regulate in a different way, that we were overheating from all our running about and lost our hair in order to sweat more effectively. Others argue that we sexually selected less hairy partners as a sign of youth. Some say we lost hair in order to rid ourselves of the ticks and lice that would have lived in our fur, while the aquatic ape theory pops up again to insist that we evolved out of full body hair to be more streamlined when we lived in the water.\n\nWhatever your favourite explanation, the result is that you are not as hairy as other mammals, though we still grow loads of hair on our heads (to protect us from the sun) and during puberty lush tough hair sprouts around our genitals. In sex education at school I was told that pubes had a hygienic role, keeping unhelpful particles away from sensitive areas, similar to how lashes function around the eye. Another theory is that the hairs trap odours and promote pheromones, adding to sexual attractiveness and aiding partner selection. Then there is the even simpler explanation that the arrival of pubic hair announces adulthood and is a clear visual signal that a female has reached an age where she could bear children.\n\nIt's difficult for me to accept that puberty = adulthood, because I was such a child when it happened to me. I have to remember that my city-bound, modern upbringing allowed and expected this childhood of mine. Had I grown up in a nomadic tribe on an island in the Pacific I might have felt more mature at twelve. I certainly would be more familiar with adult bodies if I had lived in a non-clothed culture. Apart from that painting, I hadn't seen any pubic hair before I grew it, my family kept the bathroom door closed. Indeed I was in a locked toilet when I first noticed the arrival of my 'publics'. They were blonde and soft and I stroked them proudly. Over several months they became dark, coarse and wiry and I wasted many bottles of conditioner trying to tame the tangle. I felt disgusting and horrific. Desmond Morris wrote that women dislike pubic hair because it reminds them of spiders. Or that they dislike spiders because they fear the sexuality which pubic hair signals. Either way this is a terrific bit of nonsense, although I like the idea that my screaming at a spider is because I'd thought a clump of pubes were making their way across the living room. Sadly in the modern world both spiders and pubic hair commonly end their lives down the plughole.\n\nIf some women\/most women\/western women\/you [delete as appropriate] feel that pubic hair is unattractive, is that a _natural_ aversion, a psychological rejection of adulthood, or is it because we've been subtly and explicitly advised that femininity = body baldness? Virtually all the women I know shave some part of their body. The unimaginative mockery of feminists refers to unshorn armpits and legs as often as smouldering bras,\u00a7 and when I make the decision to go unshaved for a bit, it feels brave and political rather than lazy and unworthy of comment. So monstrous is female body hair that adverts for razors depict women running blades down pre-epilated legs. To show a woman's leg with hair, even if that hair was in the process of being removed, would be to signal that it's okay, natural, not a big deal, and that would subtly undermine the sale of such razor blades.\n\nA couple of years ago, while promoting a show, I did a Q & A for a men's magazine. They said they were contacting 'real' women (lad mag speak for 'small-breasted') to be interviewed for a feature about how 'real' women (not those synthetic robot women usually featured in the media) felt about sex. 'Don't worry,' they said, 'we won't need a picture for the interview.' I was stupidly keen to do it \u2013 this type of misogynist drivel magazine is read by young men with unformed minds; I would be able to educate them, contradict the porn they consume and help them learn about female pleasure. I spent hours answering the stupid questions about penis size and how long he should last and then arrived at question 7: 'How can a guy politely ask his girlfriend to get a Brazilian wax?' Like it's the _politeness_ that is the issue in that scenario. 'Oh, everyone else who's asked before has been _so rude_ , I _do_ appreciate your civility \u2013 yes. Yes I _will_ have hair ripped from my genitals.'\n\nBrazilian waxes became de rigueur as I was making my way into my twenties and remained popular, more than popular, _expected_ until relatively recently. I always felt I had to warn people before I went to bed with them, 'Just so you know, I have pubic hair \u2013 stop screaming, I promise it's not spiders.' Also why are they called Brazilians? I know it's probably where the style originated or something but wasn't it insensitive to name a near-total wax after a country suffering from widespread deforestation? SAVE THE RAINFOREST! Leave the Amazon alone.\n\nI obsess about pubic hair because attitudes to it are typical of the pressure on us not to _be_ like us. Something happened about a year ago, I was at the gym near my house. (You mustn't imagine a horrible place full of vain people looking in the mirror; this is a council-run gym so most people are there for free because the NHS thinks they're dying. We have a real carnival atmosphere. No one wears gym stuff, you can go in whatever you're wearing that day, high heels, sombrero \u2013 nobody cares.) For financial reasons we only have one working hairdryer in the ladies' changing room, and what I saw, just over a year ago, was an older lady using that hairdryer to dry her pubic hair. And she was taking her time over it, she was combing, doing a thorough job, and there was no embarrassment; if you looked over at her, she looked straight back at you. BUT because she was using the only working appliance, a queue had formed of other women waiting to use it, and one of them, she's had enough, she decides she's going to use the hand dryer, which is at waist height, to dry her head hair.\n\nSo older lady number two is now crouched down, drying her hair as best she can \u2013 and there is no problem with this whatsoever, it's an ingenious solution, except that because she's got no clothes on she is splayed to the room. Everybody else is okay about this, carrying on with their business in the changing room, and I am frozen to the spot. I am not prepared for such confidence, I am from a shy family. I wondered if perhaps I should go over and say something, in case she didn't realise she was so exposed? But then I reminded myself, 'No, this is just nudity, we are _animals_ , bodies are just bodies, it's only civilisation that makes you think there's something wrong.'\n\nAnd yet I did feel something was wrong, not physically, she was exactly as I depicted earlier, but you can't, can you? You can't go over to a stranger and say 'Sorry, _excuse me,_ I can see in your womb' \u2013 but luckily the gym has a tannoy.\n\nSince then, I think about those two women often. After I'd gone home I kept pondering what my problem was, why I'd felt so concerned with their behaviour, and I realised it was because they were accepting of themselves and relaxed with their bodies in a way that I am not. I don't even get undressed in the changing room because I'm so anxious about being judged. I wouldn't have a Brazilian wax and then wander around confidently because I would worry other women would look at me and think I was a bad feminist. That I had succumbed to social pressures; that I wasn't resisting as I should. But I also wouldn't go into the open showers with all of my pubic hair because I worry everyone will think it's spiders assume I haven't got a boyfriend. And it's frustrating because when you think about it, women's genitals are like men's faces. They grow hair because they're ADULT and they should only be fully shaved if you've got a court appearance or job interview.\n\nThose naked ladies are my heroes. They prance around my memory, inappropriately using drying appliances and reminding me that it is always society that's wrong, never our bodies. I have a number of friends\u00b6 who have no pubic hair. I must stress that these are _adult_ friends. They've chosen to have laser hair removal, which is permanent, and to hear them speak, it's like they have corrected something that was wrong with them. Erasing an unsightly blemish. And I hate it and they are bored of my lectures, but I feel like they are denying something animal about themselves, maybe even encouraging the fetishisation of the pre-pubescent, and \u2013 AND I think they are going to confuse future generations. When they're in their seventies and drying off after a swim some kid's gonna turn to their parent and ask, 'Mummy, why is that baby so old?'\n\nI am BORED of being told pubic hair is unsightly. There is an advert on TV at the moment, not _right_ at this moment, I am giving you my full attention, it's an advert that has been on for a few months and it's for a razor blade aimed at women. Pink, of course (the women and the razor), and the woman in the ad, she is talking to the camera, all relaxed and sharing her story of when she was at a BBQ and having a great time when everyone decided to jump into the swimming pool. And the lovely razor lady, she was worried, she points down her groin, reliving her pitiable plight, and asks, 'Am I beach ready?' Then she smiles to reassure us and we know it's going to be okay as she announces, 'Of _course_ I was beach ready!' It was a happy ending and we were silly to doubt her and the moral of the story is, if you've got pubic hair, please don't come to parties. Just stay at home, there's food here, it wouldn't be hygienic. Also, when did we start using that stupid phrase 'beach ready'? Beaches are inanimate meetings of land and sea, why are we trying to impress them?\n\nI should tell you now that I spoke to my aunty Juliet, yes, the one from the painting, about this the other day, moaning about all my friends being pubeless, and she said, 'Maybe they're all having fun \u2013 experimenting, having a sexy time?' and she's right and I shouldn't be preaching to people. I am not telling you that you're not allowed to shear off as many pubes as you like, I just want to strongly assert that you should never feel like you have to.\n\nEnough with physical appearance, let's move on to genital aroma. 'Is that the name of your celebrity fragrance, Sara?' You wish. I'll never release a perfume because I am pretty sure they're all tested on animals by bastards.\n\nThe female genital system, interior and exterior, is a self-cleansing organ. It has a delicate and specific pH level which alters incrementally throughout the menstrual cycle. This affects how the organ smells. Some women find that they smell more pungent or earthy at times, just before their period, for instance, or mid-cycle during ovulation. Recent sex can change the smell a bit, use of condoms or lube or vibrators, anything that introduces new bacteria; menstrual blood can have a tangy smell \u2013 but all this included, healthy vulvas smell like vulvas. And that smell only reaches as far as the people with their head in your crotch. In fact the guy who put forward the theory of sperm competition, Robin Baker, claims in his book _Sperm Wars_ that oral sex may have evolved as a way of checking genital health pre-intercourse; that the instinct for a full face-to-genital meeting may have prevented mating with diseased, infected or weakened partners. I have no idea if that is true or how you could even prove it, but what I _am_ certain of is the taboo\/disgust\/fear of smelly fannies.\n\nAt school it was a semi-common insult, the kind of thing boys shouted to embarrass you and girls bitchily commented on behind your back. With boys the theme was usually fish-related, whereas with girls it was either that they could smell when you were on your period or that your sexual promiscuity had to led to some kind of rotting or decay of the groinal area. Yes, you're right, I did go to a horrible school full of awful people but I'm free now, FREE. If you're still at school you too will be free one day, I promise. They're not allowed to keep you there.\n\nYears after I'd finished school, a man approached me in a bar. He gave me a meaningful look and dribble-spoke into my ear: 'I could smell your cunt from over there' \u2013 he gestured to the far side of the room. What would have been a nasty playground taunt, his sleazy tone and demeanour meant me to receive as a compliment: the first line of an invitation for an evening of what would've certainly been the most inept love-making of all time. A few years later, on my first panel show,|| one of the rounds was 'Worst Ever Chat-up Lines' and I tried to make this guy in the bar into a funny story. As soon as I said it I really wished I hadn't. It was too gross and personal, I should've said it happened to a friend, not to me. The other comics made a few jokes and I sat there brave and blushing and it felt like school again. No one meant to be mean to me, it was a topic I had introduced and they were just, you know, riffing on it. Wondering how far away my genitals could be smelled ha ha ha ha, maybe he was doing me a favour, sending me to the toilets with a wet wipe ha ha ha. Even in the complete jest and hyperbole of it I felt diminished and so, so ashamed of myself. To be reminded that one is the owner of female genitals is weird. It makes me feel vulnerable and repulsive. And belittled. Less respectable.\n\nDespite all this, I am not paranoid about my genital smell. There I go, bragging again. And while I understand, you know, washing every day, changing underwear, a quick flannel wipe if you're about to have sex with someone you want to impress, I don't get the whole Femfresh thing. I name them although I know there is a whole load of speciality vulva cleaning products available; I'm guessing that Femfresh are the market leader. And I name them because their adverts made me want to \u2013 not hurt anyone, I don't condone violence \u2013 but their adverts made me want to shut down the whole department of advertising execs who created the campaigns and find them new and fulfilling jobs where they could put their understanding of female insecurity to good use. Counselling maybe? Writing self-esteem quizzes? Moulding the public persona of a boy band? Something they could be proud of when people asked at dinner parties.\n\nI must have known that Femfresh existed as a concept \u2013 that there was a range of products (wash, wipes and deodorant) created specifically to prey on women's and girls' fears. There is no male equivalent of Femfresh; there is no market for specialised penis wash because it is an idiotic and unnecessary idea and no one would buy it. People only fall for that kind of rubbish when they've been brainwashed (and wiped and deodorised) into believing there could be perilous consequences otherwise. So \u2013 I was vaguely aware of Femfresh, though I had never bought any or spotted it in a friend's bathroom, and then in London near my house there was suddenly a huge poster: an ecstatic and beautiful woman frozen in celebration as a mega-font yelled across her body: 'WOOHOO for my FROOFROO'. Her happiness, according to the poster, was due to the effects of Femfresh. The subtextual message was that when your genitals were properly cleansed, you too could be happy and beautiful. The explicit message was that this grown woman called her vulva a 'froofroo'. Baby talk and flippancy and an assault on our natural odours all wrapped up in one billboard by the station.\n\nI spent all day arguing with the poster in my head. I hated the infantilisation of the language, sure, but I hated the separation of genitals and body even more. The compartmentalisation of who we are and this extra (gross and idiotic) appendage. 'Whatever you call it make sure you love it' was the tagline. What is this IT? I wondered all day, some add-on? A parasite or mollusc that wasn't truly me but hung around in my underpants and needed caretaking? The billboard was not alone, it had siblings that used alternative words: 'mini', 'twinkle', 'hoo haa', 'fancy', 'lady garden', 'kitty', 'va jay jay', 'nooni', 'la la', 'privates' and 'down there'. And I know the advert was supposed to be a bit of fun, that all those silly slang terms were supposed to make us smile. Lots of people have childish names for their genitals and if this advert had been for something like, I don't know, a cancer charity I would've been less angry, just thought it sad and pathetic. Actually there is a poster campaign at the moment raising money\/awareness of cervical cancer. There are little posters all up the escalator on the underground and they show different kinds of pink shoes on a staircase and I tut at it daily because how could anyone who cares about women think we can be symbolised by, be reduced to, pink footwear? But their heart is in the right place (if not their advertising account) and I don't go on about it. But Femfresh can go f**k themselves,** they were double-damning us. 'You're not clean enough,' they targeted us from the streets, 'and and you don't own your body.'\n\nAround the same time, maybe a couple of months later, Gwyneth Paltrow advocated a 'vaginal steam' on her website Goop.com. Before we go any further let me say that I respect and admire any woman who pursues health and happiness. I love Gwyneth and her incredible work as an actor and I am not criticising her personally. However, she does occasionally channel some BS. 'It is an energetic release \u2013 not just a steam douche,' she reassures us. She claims it 'balances female hormone levels', which it definitely doesn't, that is not how hormones work. Remember the interplay of oestrogen and progesterone communicating via your blood during your menstrual cycle? Imagine if their behaviour was altered every time you sat on something warm. Your 'female hormones' would be 'balanced' every time you had a bath or leaned on a radiator. 'If you're in LA, you have to do it,' says Gwyneth. Well we aren't, and we don't. This treatment (which involves sitting above some herb-flavoured steam with no knickers on) may be very relaxing, and being less stressed is certainly very good for your health (as proved by a little old evidence-validated practice called science). But the websites for V-steams claim to 'energise the uterus', which is meaningless nonsense, and to 'detoxify your vagina', which, by the way, isn't toxic. Any time you see the word 'detox' someone is trying to sell you absolute waste-of-time crap. Your liver detoxifies you, with help from your kidneys, lungs and skin. Face cream doesn't detoxify you, nor do fad diets, or tablets or expensive spa treatments. Vaginal steam is just Femfresh for people with money, it's the same forces at work. Presumably even movie stars were sometimes called 'fishy flaps' at school.\n\nI Asked Jeeves to see if he knew how much money is spent on genital cosmetics each year, but he kept sending me to pages with stats on regular cosmetics and finally to a website that sold little boys' foreskins, so I have stopped looking now. Let's just say that some money is spent by some women each year on just the most unbelievable, surreally weird stuff. I already knew about anus whitening creams, I'm not Amish \u2013 I'd learned about such potions from an article I read about Simon Cowell. But I was very surprised when (because of all the stuff I've been searching for lately) the sidebar on my homepage started offering me labia paints. YES, pastes for women to apply to their genitalia because they are \u2013 well, I guess they are not pink enough. Following the rabbit down the hole to its vendor I was invited to purchase labia lightening creams if my crotch was too dark, and tightening gels if my vagina was too wide. All the language seemed to be describing a scary walk home rather than human genitalia. If I was a women's magazine I would describe a 'growing trend' and a 'worrying increase' in women wanting to use such products on themselves, but more interesting, I think, is the _why_? Cos people take pictures of their vulvas more now so vanity is rising? Because of porn? Maybe women are more familiar with other women's vulvas and are thus more critical of their own? Do their partners demand prettier labia like men in the seventies expected their dinner on the table when they got home from work?\n\nLet's just remember that cosmetics of all varieties \u2013 whether for your face or your fanny \u2013 are never providing a service you need. They are always, in their advertising and in their very existence, telling you that something is wrong with you. The entire 'beauty industry' is the financial exploitation of people's inbuilt, animal insecurity. Wanting to be attractive is not new, it's just that the fashions change. The Victorians had bustles and corsets, we have boob jobs and lighten our bald pudenda. We're all mad, but it's been this way for ages.\n\nNot all of this genital embellishment remains superficial. Some women go to extreme lengths and have surgery. The operations have names like 'labiaplasty' or 'vaginoplasty' and involve cutting and reshaping the external genitals (for instance making the labia minora even minora-er) or cutting and stitching the vagina itself to make it feel smaller and tighter. I'm not going to sit on the fence with this one (impossible after this kind of op). I am sure a small percentage of the women undergoing such surgery do have medical conditions that need correcting. Perhaps their labia minora are so long they trail behind them and act as a parachute, slowing them down when they're running for the bus? Maybe their vagina is so wide their lungs and gall bladder fell out at Zumba? I'll stop being silly for a second \u2013 of course there will be women with injuries caused by difficult births. But having such an operation for aesthetic reasons is ridiculous. 'Designer vaginas', the women's magazines call it; their letters pages feature women who want to have a smoother contour in their gym gear, to look like the women in pornography or to be a 'virgin' again. We discuss female genital mutilation (FGM) as something that occurs in African nations or other faraway countries with exotic and unknowable cultures but all women are subject to the same pressures to be attractive, to be sexual _in the right way_. 'Designer vagina' is upbeat and rhymey but it's still a form of physical mutilation.\n\nI would say that the stigma of having a loose vagina is worse than smell. It was another angle for the boys at school to terrify me. (Where the hell did they learn this? From their dads? Do they teach boys sexual bullying \u2013 is that where they went when we were learning about periods?) The idea of being baggy or having a massive fanny was an easy insult in the nineties, and is something I still hear male friends say occasionally about women they have slept with or wouldn't want to. And of course it's denigrating because tight vaginas = youth and sexual inexperience, and not tight enough = the opposite. This idealised, vice-like grip of the vagina is for the penetrating male's pleasure and reassurance. Olden-day sex guide the Kama Sutra (look out for it on a friend's parent's bedside table some time) is matter-of-fact about males and females having a variety of genital sizes. It suggests that it is sensible to match up with someone who is a similar size to you; women range through deer, mare and elephant and would well suit men with small, medium and large penises accordingly. This information is given without judgement or scorn, it's a genetic reality that our bodies are built differently. Sexual experience is not implied.\n\nDespite what we start off with, our bodies _are_ affected by childbirth. The sexual openness in our culture has allowed pop stars to talk about elective C-sections to protect their sex life, and male comedians (not all of course, but a few) to do funny routines about the state of their wife's genitals after giving birth. The oldest joke, recently recycled by Robbie Williams, is that watching your partner give birth is like 'watching your favourite pub burn down'. Implicit in this quip and others like it, is that the vagina exists for men to have a beer in male penetration. That it is his place, and it is he who is suffering from its transformation. OH LOOK!\n\n_ROBBIE WILLIAMS walks in and tells me to chill out in a Northern accent._\n\n**ROBBIE**  \nDon't take it so seriously, don't analyse it, it's a gag to make you laugh!\n\n**SARA**  \nI'm not laughing, jokes like that make me paranoid.\n\n**ROBBIE**  \nYou've not even had a baby\u2014\n\n**SARA**  \nBut the implicit ownership\u2014\n\n**ROBBIE**  \nI never heard of that kind of ship.\n\n_ROBBIE turns to imaginary laughing crowd and winks and waves._\n\n**SARA**  \nOur vaginas are ours. Not our partners'.\n\n**ROBBIE**  \nYes, you're the brewery, you own the pub\u2014\n\n**SARA**  \nWe are the brewery _and_ the patron and the landlord and you, you are just someone who walks past the pub and are lucky that you're even allowed on the same street actually, you aren't even a shareholder, you don't own even one share, you\u2014\n\n**ROBBIE**  \nI'm leaving. It was just a joke.\n\n**SARA**  \nOkay. It was nice to meet you! I'd like to write a sitcom for you one day I think you're very\u2014 He's gone.\n\nRich people sometimes have cosmetic procedures at the same time they're in hospital having their baby. Liposuction to reduce their weight, a boob job while they're swollen and people won't notice and maybe a vaginoplasty while their genitals are being stitched anyway. If a woman who's literally just given birth feels compelled to rapidly return to her pre-pregnancy state that's because she believes that appearing fertile and sexually available is her cultural duty. Of course such women are a minority, but they are symbolic. They are the women who have bowed furthest to the pressures of their culture. Similarly, some women who have been infibulated as young girls (infibulation is a form of FGM where the labia majora are cut and stitched so that scar tissue forms and the vagina is virtually sealed), some of them ask to have their labia resewn again after giving birth. When I read about this I was so baffled. The vagina would be resealed, scar tissue would form, and before she could have sex her husband would have to break through that skin again, maybe even with a knife, causing much pain and discomfort \u2013 and it was the women asking for this and women sewing them up. This wasn't explicit patriarchy, it wasn't male demands. It was something the women assumed (rightly or wrongly) was attractive. It denied their own sexual pleasure, their experience of sex, in order to reclaim virginity, or rather to imitate it.\n\nBut why would sexual inexperience be attractive in a conscious mammal?\n\na) You can teach them how you like it.\n\nb) You can tell them you're the best and they won't know otherwise.\n\nc) Paternity certainty.\n\nThat's right, we've evolved to value virginity (well, straight men have) because it is the only way of being definitely sure that your partner isn't already pregnant by somebody else. Dominating a young, virginal partner would have been an evolutionary tactic for males to avoid bringing up children they weren't related to. Women can be pretty certain they're related to their babies so we haven't evolved to fetishise youth and sexual innocence in our partners. Instead we carry the burden of our experience, and if we can trick our way into appearing younger, we will often do so.\n\nI could quote that Madonna song, but I've decided instead to tell you about when I was in either Scunthorpe, Blackpool or Hartlepool (I can't remember which because I am so jet-lagged from all my great travelling). Waiting for my gig to start, I was wandering along the seafront towards a huge black building, and as I got nearer the sign clarified that it was 'Fallen Angels'. For some reason I assumed it was a bakery and sped up, only to arrive a minute later and be disappointed by the truth: it was a strip club. Fallen Angels made sense for a cake vendor because the suggestion is all like, 'Who can resist our delicious cakes; even though you're a good girl on a diet you'll still want one.' And I guess there's sort of the same thing going on with the strip-club brand. 'Fallen' offers 'flirty, dirty, up-for-anything birds' while 'Angels' reassures patrons, 'These birds are clean and shiny new, don't worry, you won't catch anything.' They are wholesome women who have very recently decided to filth up for your pleasure. Sexual inexperience = good; sexually available = good, and so illustrated is the restrictive sliver of women at their sexiest: virginal but willing. Look like a porn star but have cellophane-wrapped, unused genitals. The hymen: nature's cellophane.\u2020\u2020\n\nMany women in the world are still expected to be virgins when they marry, usually because they or their family have strict religious beliefs. An intact maidenhead is often necessary for securing a dowry or bride price. In very extreme examples it can affect a woman's role in a restrictive society, for instance there are countries where women have to undergo 'virginity inspections': Egypt forced them on female protesters in 2013 and Indonesian students are given them yearly in order to remain in education. Up until 1979 a woman entering Britain for marriage purposes could be subjected to one, which is like, WHAT???? In lovely presentday Britain we have a wide range of cultures and subcultures ranging from the sexually relaxed to the very exacting. For some British women shame, dishonour or punishment remain the price for engaging in pre-marital sex, consenting or otherwise. This prevents me from making a generalised statement about how we aren't virginity-obsessed any more and us ladies can go out and get some whenever we want \u2013 that's not true for all of us. It's better for me to say that we are emerging together gradually from a history that was unbelievably controlling of women, but we are gaining our liberty at different speeds.\n\nThe very oldest record of lawmaking, going back to 9000 BC, is indicative of the male fear of paternity uncertainty and aggressive attempts at ownership of women. It's called the Code of Ur-Nammu and it states that a woman who cheats on her husband should be killed. Thanks a lot, Ur-Nammu, whatever you are. Records from all ancient societies seem to have had variants on this; Assyrian women were killed if they were seen talking to a man in private, Hebrew brides were stoned to death if discovered (or suspected of) not being virgins on their wedding night. Ancient Rome is interesting: records show that all women were officially and explicitly owned by father or husband \u2013 a woman who didn't have either was given a guardian by the state. The only exception were the Vestal Virgins, who were owned by everyone \u2013 their magical virginity was believed to protect Rome and make sure they won all their wars and stuff. If things started going badly, if they lost a few battles or someone nice got struck by lightning, they would blame the virgins: 'One of you must have done it with a guy,' they would shout, and if it was proved, the lady would be buried alive in a hole. People believed in this. They kept the Vestal Virgin system going for five hundred years or so. The virgins' only job was to keep the fire of Rome going and not have sex, and if they failed at either of those things, everyone would cry and line the streets as the girl was taken to her hole to suffocate. Even if she had been raped \u2013 didn't matter, into the hole.\n\nWhenever I find out about things like this I realise olden-day people were _insane_. Before there was science and evidence anyone could just say anything and use it as an excuse to kill someone. Even now when we have lots of medical knowledge available, myths endure and are detrimental. There's this commonly accepted connection between hymens and virginity \u2013 an intact hymen can be expected as 'proof' that a woman has not had penetrative intercourse, while in fact hymens are very unreliable indicators of that kind of thing. At birth the thin sliver of skin seals the entrance of a girl's vagina, and as she grows it splits. During puberty it becomes more elastic and remains in a crescent shape around the edge of the vagina But many things apart from sex can diminish a hymen further, such as tampons, exercise and masturbation; also some rare women are born without one. So any kind of hymen-based virginity test can only ever be a guess. Yet some women are choosing to undertake 'hymenoplasty',\u2021\u2021 an operation where the hymen is reinstated for the purpose of bleeding during sexual intercourse. The frequency of this operation is rising in the UK, although it is still very rare (less than a hundred a year). And while my aunty Juliet could pop up and say 'Maybe people are just having a fun and sexy time?' I don't think the people choosing to do this are spicing up their sex lives, I think they're fearful of the consequences of not seeming virginal enough for new husbands within prescriptive religions.\n\nWhy do we have hymens at all? It's another lady mystery, although we are not the only animal with one; horses, elephants, manatees, whales and hyenas have them too. Good old Desmond 'spider pubes' Morris reckoned hymens were naturally selected so that first-time sex would be painful for girls and we wouldn't be flippant about it and put out too easily. We would wait for a great guy who would stick around and help with the kids and thus ensure evolutionary success. Presumably our ancestors without hymens were a lot free and easier with their first shag and just died out from being such slags? Everyone's favourite crazy conjecture, the aquatic ape theory, says that maybe we developed the hymen while we were in the water to stop sand and small shells from going up into our vaginas. Some scientists say that the hymen might be an important part of genital development while we are in the womb and that what remains during puberty is just a by-product of that phase, not worth thinking too much about. Try telling that to the guys over at 'virginity hypothesis', who reckon that hymens were sexually selected because our ancient male ancestors preferred sex with women who had hymens. I mean, come on \u2013 how did they check? At what point did they bring this up on dates? Did prehistoric women have labels stating 'Do not consume if seal is broken'? Guys, seriously, so many of these ideas are ridiculous.\n\nPeople generally accept that a woman's first experience of sexual intercourse will be painful, which is perturbing. Speaking as a lay person with my own personal theories, most of the pain during losing of virginity (or any sex after that) comes from being tense or not aroused enough. Yet girls growing up are taught to expect this pain rather than being told to spend more time in foreplay to prevent it. Girls should be informed: 'First-time sex can cause a bit of pain unless you wait until you're so aroused that it doesn't.' I will tell them that, GET ME ALL THE GIRLS ON THE PHONE, I'VE GOT SOME IMPORTANT INFORMATION. With first-time sex we expect men to enjoy themselves, but not women. It sets a terrible precedent, but is easily shifted if we can make an effort to teach young people more about a woman's body and how to give and receive pleasure. When I say 'we' I mean society, not you and me with diagrams and pointy sticks in a blue tent outside the shopping centre.\n\nFor a long time, pleasure and sex were supposed to be unconnected. The Christian Church has spent two millennia bossing everyone about and telling us not to enjoy sex. The urges of our loins were the inherited punishment of Eve's sin, and marriage was perceived as a sensible way to contain this disgusting behaviour. 'Sex is for making babies, so you probably have to do it but you absolutely mustn't like it,' they told people. Pope Gregory the Great (his words not mine) claimed that marital intercourse was blameless only when there was no pleasure involved (blameless = you won't go to hell for it). All this suppression of sexuality worked, you know, and the population of Europe declined between ad 500 and 1050 because there were so few days when a married couple were permitted to have sex \u2013 it was banned on Sundays. And Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, saints' days, festivals, the whole of Lent and for ages around a woman's menstruation. If you weren't married you were permitted to have sex never. And of course the Church also banned homosexuality and masturbation and punished and terrified those who were caught or accused of doing either. Most modern branches of Christianity have become more tolerant and accepting but still have a focus on procreation when it comes to sex. Fundamentalist churches remain as dictatorial as anyone adhering to a two-thousand-year-old rule book tends to be. But whether we are religious or not, the ramifications emanate through our culture, and none of our lives are free from ancient attempts to quell and control sexuality.\n\nAnother form of sexuality control is genital cutting, which is thought to have originated in Africa over five thousand years ago. Certainly the ancient Egyptians practised it; there's a rumour going round that Cleopatra herself was probably 'circumcised'. Nearly a hundred million women in the world are currently living with some form of FGM, 137,000 of those in the UK. If you have never been sure what FGM is, there are three main types: 1) clitoridectomy, where the hood of the clitoris is removed; 2) excision, where the clitoris is completely removed, sometimes with the labia minora; 3) infibulation, I mentioned this earlier, which is when the clitoris and the labia are removed and the vulva is sutured together, leaving just a very small hole for urine and menstrual blood to escape.\n\nSo why?\n\nWell, the first type, clitoridectomy, sometimes referred to as sunna circumcision, is thought to be the female equivalent to male circumcision, with the hood of the clitoris acting like the foreskin of a penis. Trauma aside, if the operation is undertaken very carefully and without damaging the rest of the clitoris, it does not necessarily harm a woman's ability to enjoy sex. The clitoral exposure may even enhance sexual sensation. With excision and infibulation, the intention and result is to reduce or destroy a woman's pleasure. To cause pain, to diminish sex drive and to subjugate women. The cultures who practise these forms of FGM have many strong beliefs in support of these operations (don't imagine white coats and anaesthesia, imagine women with razors or scissors while girls are held down by family members). Girls are told that the procedure will make them healthier, folklore tells them it will make them more fertile or prevent them having stillborn children. In societies where FGM is the custom, girls who don't undergo it are considered 'dirty' and unmarriageable. Some cultures consider all uncircumcised women prostitutes. In such circumstances, despite the agony, the risk of infection and death, many girls would much rather face these operations than not. Their mothers, who have survived the practice themselves, often consider these mutilations to be a part of growing up as a woman. For millions of female children there is no choice; girls who refuse are forced. Families succumb to social pressures, just like all families everywhere. Generations are moulded, boys are taught to be aroused by compliance and distrustful of passion, women are taught that sex is for a husband's gratification or to make children.\n\nFor huge swathes of the modern world, female sexual enjoyment is considered dangerous because if a woman likes sex, she might have it with people that she wants to, rather than being made to endure it by the person that owns her. The clitoris is feared as the headquarters of female pleasure, so let's get to know it a little better.\n\nHere is a diagram of the clitoris:\n\nYou can see the external nubbin (1) is connected to a much bigger internal organ (2) composed of connective tissue, erectile tissue and a dense network of nerves and sensory receptors. The position and size of the external part of the clitoris varies from woman to woman \u2013 all the books say 'pea-sized' but it is often much smaller. Or bigger. I read about a tribe where they call the women with large clitorises 'chickpeas' but when I tried searching for it online just now I only found delicious recipes.\n\nIf you have a clitoris, you are probably already aware of how sensitive it is. Despite its small size it is completely packed full of nerve endings and is by far the most responsive organ on your body. The dorsal nerve connects your clitoris to your spinal cord, meaning that for most women the clitoris is the centre of their sexual response, arousal, pleasure and orgasms. However, the way that women's bodies are composed means that penetrative sexual intercourse is possible without the clitoris being stimulated at all \u2013 and this is confusing, it doesn't seem to make sense. How can it be a sexual organ if, for women, sex seems possible without it? The clitoris has suffered a history of misunderstanding and mistreatment as a result.\n\nLike I only recently realised how SEXUAL the witch hunts of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries were. The claims against women were often variants of: 'She had sex with the devil,' 'She lets the devil do her,' 'The devil takes the form of an animal and shags her proper.' After accusation (usually from another innocent woman being tortured) a 'witch' was stripped naked, her pubic hair shaved and her body examined for 'marks of the devil'. As her relationship with Satan was presumed to be sexual, her genitals were closely scrutinised and often a little bump was found between the labia \u2013 'the witch's teat', they called it. One is described as 'a preternaturall Excrescence of flesh between the pudendum and Anus much like to tetts & not usuall in women'. It was claimed that this bump was incredibly sensitive and sexy and that the devil could suckle from it and use it to manipulate the woman. During torture, they might prod and poke this blameless clitoris as the woman writhed and screamed in agony. When these poor women were taken to 'trial' (usually saying whatever they'd been told to in order to get the torture to stop) the men questioning them were _obsessed_ with the size of Beelzebub's penis, how hard it was, what it was made of, etc. This historical phase epitomises societal fear of a woman's sexuality. Through prudish culture and religious puritanism, sex and bodies had become mysterious. Genitals that throughout our evolution had been functional and knowable were now alien, and this strangeness became dangerous. In the thousands of years when humans were post-animal yet pre-science, the bodies we should have taken for granted became unfamiliar to us. Women make children, and female desire is (in nature) a prerequisite to this, but the hundreds of years when sexuality was repressed by religion meant that we only half understood things. We knew that women had blissful potential in their loins, but Christianity taught that this was temptation. That it was ungodly. Women's potential for pleasure became potential for evil instead. The male imagination transferred a subconscious fear of cuckoldry into symbolism, a large-phallused enemy of God who seduced anyone he wanted. And women's bodies were punished to assuage his fear.\n\nIgnorance about female sensuality has continued until the present day and still exists right now this second while you're reading this book. We live in a world where penetration is considered as the main aspect of sex, the very definition of it, and because most women do not climax via this process, and men do, our entire gender is considered broken in some way. We are maladapted. We are taught that something is wrong with us if the conventional penis-inside-vagina sex does not get us going. The fact that this kind of sex makes babies is proof, PROOF, that it is the correct, best kind. The sort we've all evolved to want and enjoy for thousands of years. If the majority of modern women are not enjoying it as much as men, well, they must need therapy, say some psychologists. 'Women get their enjoyment from the pregnancy that follows sex, not the act itself,' the olden-day scientists used to say. 'They need to work harder, try different positions, buy sexier underwear and take more toys into the bedroom,' rant the women's magazines.\n\nIf you can bear another of my younger self's sexual tales: I went out with a guy called Dan in my second year of college. I had liked him for ages because he was a bit older and always had very smart clothes; his navy jumper and neat trousers stood out in the crowd of Kappa tracksuits in the canteen. Dan was the third person I'd ever slept with and it was \u2013 fine, it was fine. It wasn't _really_ fine, but it was fine, it was just very thrusty. I felt very thrusted upon. I kept thinking I would have to ask him to change what he was doing, to calm down a bit, but it was too embarrassing so I broke up with him instead. He didn't care very much and we remained friends. At the pub months later, he was telling everyone at our table how great he was in bed. 'Tell them, Sara,' he insisted. 'I've got a system,' he was telling everyone, 'I worked out how you can _guarantee_ that a woman comes.' Everyone was very intrigued, no one more than me who'd never managed to get anywhere close to orgasm in his vicinity. 'I worked it out with my first girlfriend,' he boasted calmly. 'All you have to do is hit the cervix thirty-five to forty times with the tip of your knob and it starts to tremble and that's an orgasm.' So there you have it, a perfect example of how a little bit of information and a dose of ignorant presumption create a terrible sex partner.\n\nIn Dan's defence, many anatomists and biologists have proposed equally baffling theories perfectly illustrating how the female orgasm is half known. We can be certain of _some_ things, like the names of body parts and that it's nice when it happens, but the mechanics don't make any sense compared to the male framework \u2013 there _must_ be a system to it, we just haven't figured it out yet.\n\nSigmund Freud had a good go at ruining women's sex lives for ever. He knew that some women could orgasm from penetrative sex while other women needed clitoral stimulation to climax (people told him everything) and he decided that the difference between these two types of women was psychological. The clitoral types were 'immature'; they were stunted in a pre-adolescent 'girl' state and needed years of psychoanalysis to move through to a 'mature', appropriate state of womanhood when they'd be able to come via the poking of a penis. To clarify, Freud believed that there was a right and a wrong way for a woman to orgasm, and that the wrong way should not be encouraged. Women and girls should not masturbate, as that would increase their difficulty in reaching a vaginal orgasm. There was a brief Victorian trend of removing the clitorises of female children who masturbated. There are documented cases in the UK and the US, and Freud was very supportive of the practice and recommended it. It's impossible to stress here how much the Victorians feared masturbation. They thought it 'moral leprosy', blamed it for epilepsy and insanity and ugly children and anything else you can think of. Consider the difficulty for our gender, who mostly require clitoral stimulation to enjoy sex, during a time where desiring such stimulation was considered indicative of nymphomania and perversion. At least one woman responded by having her clitoris moved. DON'T WORRY, I am obviously going to give you more information, that's not the kind of fact you can drop, shrug and walk away...\n\nMarie Bonaparte was one of Sigmund Freud's patients. She was Napoleon's great-grandniece and a brilliantly bright woman who enjoyed freedom in a restrictive society thanks to being very rich. Marie had clitoral orgasms, which she knew from therapy were 'wrong', and she became obsessed with 'fixing' herself. She had a theory that rather than being purely psychological, perhaps the position of a woman's clitoris made a difference to whether she could orgasm from penetration. She conducted a study \u2013 YES, she measured the distance between the clitoris and the vagina (C\u2013V) on around 240 women, asked them how they orgasmed and published the results under a male pseudonym. What she found out should be common knowledge, but it isn't because everyone apart from you and me is an idiot.\n\nMarie B. found out that if a woman's C\u2013V distance was 1 cm or less, then she could have these vaginal orgasms. If the C\u2013V was between 1 and 2.5 cm then the woman was on the cusp; she might sometimes be able to reach orgasm this way but it was unreliable. And if a woman's C\u2013V\u00a7\u00a7 was over 2.5 cm then she would always need extra clitoral stimulation, penetration would never be enough. Maybe it is not in our minds but in our measurements? Over fifty per cent of women are unlikely to experience orgasm without some excellent clitoral work. Including Marie: her C\u2013V was 3 cm, so she decided to have an operation to move her clitoris closer to the entrance of her vagina. It didn't work, she still couldn't orgasm from penetration (I'm amazed she could walk afterwards, let alone screw), so she had another operation that moved her clitoris back again. That's how powerful the hetero-penetro norm was, Marie Bonaparte decided her _body_ was wrong rather than the type of sex she was having. Just like modern women who have their labia trimmed and vaginas tightened, blaming their bodies when it is the cultural ideals that are wrong.\n\nOrgasms are difficult to describe. In fiction they are depicted as explosive and satiating; in movies\/porn women make gasping, animal sounds as they convulse and writhe about. There is a broad definition of orgasm being a 'climax of sexual feelings' or 'release of tension'. More scientifically it is a series of muscle contractions or spasms which induces a pleasurable feeling. Even more scientifically, stimulation of erogenous zones (usually including genitalia) activates the pudendal and vagus nerves, which send pleasure signals to the brain. More and more of the woman's brain becomes activated, including the amygdala, ventral tegmental area, cerebellum and pituitary gland. Blood floods to the genitals and engorges the clitoris and labia. Heavy breathing oxygenates the blood and thus the brain. As orgasm nears, the lateral orbitofrontal cortex appears to shut down \u2013 this part of the brain controls behaviour, civilises us. This shutdown results in a loss of inhibitions and a visceral, animal response to sensations for a number of seconds until climax ensues. Vaginal and cervical muscles contract and release. Then the hypothalamus sends out oxytocin, which promotes loving feelings and relaxation. If I worked on a sex line this is the kind of shit I would be saying to guys who called: 'Ooooh, my amygdala is so activated right now, uh yeah, I can feel my cervix contracting... Hello? Where's he gone?'\n\nYou will no doubt be familiar with the idea that men get sleepy post-orgasm whereas women don't. It's a bit of a clich\u00e9 that men roll over afterwards while women want to cuddle. There is a theory that this reaction evolved so that men wouldn't stop women leaving after sex, they'd be all curled up in dreamy land, leaving our lady free to pursue her next sex partner and benefit from some excellent sperm selection. Scientific tests have proved that men and women do have different patterns of sexual response. Masters and Johnson (sexologists working in the 1960s and 70s) created a model which outlines the four stages of sexual response in humans: excitement, plateau, orgasm and resolution. The difference between the genders is that women may be re-excited after orgasm rather than quickly returning to a pre-excitement state like men do. This seems to support theories that a woman could go off and enjoy more sex partners after exhausting one guy \u2013 go sister! Literally, go, he's snoring and won't notice. Studies have also discovered that women always make more noise during sex than men \u2013 that our gender is more vocal. It has been argued that this could have been a way for our ancient female ancestor to allow future suitors to locate her while she was in the mating mood, all her gasps and grunts letting someone in a nearby tree know: 'Hang on, mate, he'll be asleep in a minute.' This is just one theory, of course, and not a proven validated thing, but I most enjoy the explanations that keep female choice and action in mind when understanding our sexual responses. To contrast, another theory claims women make more noise during sex because it arouses their male partners. Studies prove that male orgasm is quicker when the female partner is vocal, but then that's another circular argument \u2013 'it turns men on so women do it to turn men on'. And surely that could be flipped on its head? A circular argument driven by female activity: if sex noises are a signal of female arousal then men get turned on by it because aroused women are sexy. Perhaps I'm quibbling \u2013 anyone turned on by that?\n\nUnfortunately for us, the female scope for pleasure and multiple orgasms has not resulted in widespread sexual satisfaction for women. And that is because our difference from men, our need for stimulation other than penetration, has been interpreted as dysfunction. Freud was not alone in considering orgasms achieved through penetrative sex as the only viable type. Many other doctors and therapists agreed. In the 1950s psychoanalysts Edmund Bergler and William Kroger stated that they believed between eighty and ninety per cent of women were abnormal in not being able to orgasm from sex, which has me LOL-ing out loud over here. The majority _is_ the norm; that is the very definition. These men's subjectivity is similar to that seen by the Victorian anthropologists. Their idea of 'normal' and 'right' and 'female' blinds them to the evidence in front of their eyes.\n\nI'm also laughing at a doctor called Alexander Lowen. He was writing later, in the 1960s, when more was known and clitoral stimulation was becoming more accepted as a reasonable part of heterosexual foreplay and intercourse \u2013 but not for Lowen. He couldn't imagine at what point during intercourse men were supposed to be doing this stimulating. It couldn't be beforehand or the man would lose out on 'intimacy' and his erection would wilt. He couldn't possibly rub a clitoris _during_ sex or it would put the poor man off his 'genital thrusts' and deny him his pleasure. And he couldn't be expected to do it afterwards as that would interrupt his relaxation time, which was his reward for exertion. This for me sums up perfectly the inequality in sexual approach \u2013 _his_ pleasure, _his_ exertion and _his_ reward. If a woman didn't come, well, that was her fault for being so fiddly. Two decades later and a _Playgirl_ survey found that three in four women believed their male partner's pleasure was more important than their own. So it's not just men that have disregarded female satisfaction \u2013 we have too. And that means that no one has ever got round to understanding it properly. There is no agreement about vaginal and clitoral orgasms or whether they are the same thing, or blended orgasms, which are apparently a mix of both except some scientists say they don't exist. Some women ejaculate when orgasming and no one is sure why or how and evolutionary theories of the female orgasm are a tangled mess.\n\nSome claim that an orgasm is a vital part of pair bonding because it produces a large amount of oxytocin. It could've been naturally selected because, as we already know, bonded parents = better offspring survival rate. A further take on this is that it affected mate choice; women stuck with partners who could make them come. Others claim that the female orgasm promotes conception but there is a lot of disagreement about how. Perhaps the waves of the womb's contraction help move sperm towards the Fallopian tubes? Maybe orgasm makes a woman more likely to lie flat and exhausted after sex and that helps her retain sperm? There does seem to be some evidence that if a woman orgasms within a few minutes of a man coming inside her, she retains more of the ejaculate. But all of these theories are undermined because female orgasm is not imperative for conception and doesn't improve conception chances enough to be a genetically selected trait. A woman who has never had an orgasm could have the same number of children as a woman who has, which supports the arguments of those who believe that the female orgasm is an accident, a by-product. Not important. That it's a mere consequence of the way our genitals develop in the womb, that the mechanisms that went into making men orgasm champions have been left as an awry afterthought in women. So we have this tricksy, unreliable machinery that we don't need. 'It has no relation to baby-making so no useful function,' they say; 'let's just stop thinking about it and put it in a drawer with all the other bodily disjecta.'\n\nThere is an interesting theory that our genitals had to adapt a lot during the millions of years when babies' heads were getting larger and childbirth was getting more difficult and dangerous. It could be that to prevent a mother's urethra tearing every time a baby was born, we gradually evolved to its current placement, slightly further away from our vaginal opening than it was for our prehistoric ancestors. This in turn edged the clitoris higher. Perhaps our ancient ancestors had much more pleasurable penetrative sex than we do? So we evolved to have orgasms as an enjoyable sex incentive, but now the system doesn't work as well as it used to?\n\nWhether that is true or not, my hypothesis (not scientist \u2013 amateur lady) is that the female orgasm does have a function, that it _was_ sexually selected, but that scientists get confused in only considering completed orgasms as important. Orgasms are potential. Female arousal, the early stages of engorgement and lubrication have a sense of direction, of purpose, _because_ the orgasm exists as an end point, whether it is reached or not. Anyone who has grown up with a female body will understand the urge to touch yourself, wanting more of the things that feel nice \u2013 our vulvas have a hunger. I believe that the unreliable nature of our orgasms was an evolutionary strength. Rather than being irrelevant, our ancestors who were sexually frustrated, who got close but not quite there \u2013 maybe they had more sex than the women who came easily? They might have demanded more sex from a regular partner, or they might have multi-partnered more and then had more genetically successful children via sperm selection? That would explain why women display such a wide range of orgasmic responses.\n\nWomen are not complicated, we're just not the same as men and we're not the same as each other. That's why I can't tell you what will sexually satisfy you, you'll have to find out for yourself. What I CAN tell you, what I wish was common knowledge, is that we have a dual-response method of sexual arousal, what sexologists call 'accelerator and brake'. So some things turn you on (accelerator) and other stimuli might make arousal impossible (brake). Understanding your body and its responses in this way will help you remove 'brakes' (bright lighting, living with parents, overly energetic thrusting) as much as exploring and exploiting your accelerators. There is a great example of this: after some MRI experiments, scientists found that women wearing socks orgasmed more easily than those who weren't and they were like, 'EVIDENCE, women find wearing socks super-sexy,' but it was actually that the women with cold feet couldn't get aroused. Cold feet _are_ really distracting \u2013 or maybe you're into that? We're all different.\n\nAnd we're ACTIVE, that's the main thing to remember. The impractical, almost impossible difficulty of pushing out a baby and keeping it alive has been combated by the development of two powerful forces in women: the potential for deep love and a filthy hot sexual instinct. If women were passive and unsexual, human beings wouldn't be here any more \u2013 giving birth got too deadly and childrearing too costly, who would've bothered with it? Our gender's around-the-clock, any-day-of-our-menstrual-cycle lust ensured that no matter how ill-adapted our species to every single type of terrain and weather, there were always humans on this planet. Probably there's too many now, we've ruined the place because we're too damn sexy. But we're often treated as passive, expected to be compliant and available and that is wrong. My aunty Juliet corrected me once when I was a teenager; I was telling her about how one of my friends had fucked some guy and she was like, 'No, she was fucked. Women can't do the fucking.' She wasn't making a political point, she was correcting my grammar but I always believed she was wrong. At sixth form I remember someone telling me that all the difficulties between genders were based on this \u2013 men oppress because they are the penetrators and women succumb because they are penetrated \u2013 and I just don't recognise that. We are not penetrated, we consume, we engulf, we devour. We do not permit, we DEMAND; we are not gatekeepers, we are diners, yes, diners eating penises with our ravenous sopping wet vaginas, I've gone too far.\n\nAt university I was lectured in a more sophisticated version of this theory, I was told that 'all penetrative sex is rape'. I could see their point, and I had some very enjoyable debates ending in angry crying, but for me, my very definition of sex is a meeting of equals. When it is not that, it is something else. And that is something we have to think more about now. I have so far spoken as if all of the mating undertaken by our ancestors would have been consensual and that is not the case, it would be wrong to assume that our evolution has only been moulded by willing sex.\n\nThere is a really famous experiment where the psychologist Meredith Chivers measured men and women's arousal when watching different sex videos: homosexual, straight and bonobo. The results showed that men were aroused by the videos you'd expect (gay porn if they were gay, straight porn if they were straight) but women were more surprising. They lubricated to all of the videos. Even the bonobos. This is confusing, right? If lubrication is a sign of being turned on then women get turned on by watching apes mating. When the women were asked, they might say that they were not aroused by any of the films, or maybe that they enjoyed the lesbian porn or the straight porn \u2013 but their vaginas suggested otherwise; they had responded to ALL. At first the media and social commentators were like, 'Women's bodies know what they like more than they do.' People started saying it was only repression or civilised expectation that stopped women having sex with everyone all the time. People discussed the plasticity of female arousal, said it was proof that we could get turned on by _anything_. Perhaps this was our evolutionary strength? It enabled us to fancy whoever was around.\n\nThen along came much more astute scientists and sexologists and they said that this lubrication, rather than being a lady-boner, was probably a protective measure. That women's bodies respond to all kinds of sexual stimuli not always because they want to have sex, but because sex might ensue anyway. That lubrication is not an 'I'm turned on' signal so much as an 'I don't want to be damaged' response. And we evolved it because we had to. Our bodies are clever enough to do what they can to protect us from sex that is not consensual, to stop us tearing or ripping as much as we might. This is an unconscious response, no more a sign of wanting sex than blinking or sweating, and it is the result of our gender's exposure to forced intercourse.\n\nRape is part of women's history and part of our present and it is the last section of this book. I want to say 'I have tried to make it fun' but that would be misleading. I've tried to make it bearable \u2013 readable, an exploration of ideas and grey areas. Stop dawdling, come on!\n\n* Not all families celebrate the seven birthdays a year as specified by dog time.\n\n\u2020 It is worth reminding ourselves here that some people are female or male but born into a differently gendered body. This is something we are learning more about as it becomes more commonly discussed in public. If I slip up in my sweeping descriptions of women, in my use of broad strokes, I apologise. I intend to always include anyone who identifies as a woman even if her body is different to the one I am describing. I also should mention that there are a variety of chromosomal disorders that affect sex development in the womb, e.g. females who have testosterone flooding at eight weeks' gestation, males who do not receive _in utero_ testosterone. It's a fact that some women have penises and some men don't. It's a long washing line of bodies we're all sitting on, our perceptions and experiences will all be disparate, and I am writing in such a subjective way that I'm sure I will occasionally appear ignorantly unaware and uncaring about many people.\n\n\u2021 Joking, obvs.\n\n\u00a7 HISTORICAL CORRECTION ALERT: there is no proof that any feminist ever burnt a bra. Protesters at the 1968 Miss America contest threw some underwear in a bin, but nothing was set fire to. It's a powerful image that stuck in the public consciousness without ever happening.\n\n\u00b6 Bragging.\n\n|| If you are not familiar with the genre, a panel show is a long boring conversation between arrogant people edited down to look funny and interesting. I love doing them so much. I'm not being sarcastic, I love them.\n\n** I have not disguised my swearing, I put two bum holes inside to make it worse.\n\n\u2020\u2020 This is a great advertising slogan if you are planning on selling some hymens. You can buy it off me for \u00a365.\n\n\u2021\u2021 Obviously I'm completely anti these kind of operations, but to the surgeons involved: remember I do have that advertising slogan if you fancy it? Only \u00a365.\n\n\u00a7\u00a7 I know you're waiting for me to make a joke about sending out your C\u2013V when you're looking for work but I'm not going to \u2013 this orgasm stuff is vital information and you need to concentrate.\n\n# Consent\n\n# Musings on Fear\n\nWhile I was at university, a girl I knew had her house raided by the police. Someone living there (not her) had been selling drugs and they'd arrested him and searched the whole house. And then my friend got arrested too because in her room they had found loads and loads of books about Hitler. She was in the second year of a history degree, and guess who she was studying? So she had to sit in an interrogation room and answer questions about how much she 'liked' the F\u00fchrer and which of his ideas was her 'favourite', until the police were convinced she wasn't planning something awful.\n\nWhile I have been researching this book, I have occasionally imagined a similar situation happening to myself. If I was assaulted, by someone I knew or didn't know, I would go to the police. I would undergo physical examinations and scrapings and I would provide as much detail and evidence as I could. And if I was one of the 'lucky' few, if the Crown Prosecution Service thought they might have enough for a conviction, I would go to court.\n\nI play different versions of this trial in my head all the time. I am always practising it. This could be my pedestal to correct notions of female sexuality, how I could confront the routine terrorising of the victim, if the victim was me. Point out how inappropriate they are \u2013 but I couldn't be too calm, too collected, or the jury wouldn't believe me. No, I'd still have to be broken and weepy, just composed enough. I go through the things in my life that would be brought up to sully my reputation. Most of them were pre-twenty; I prepare arguments in explanation that are not ashamed or apologetic but that point out the irrelevance of my sexual history to the night of the attack. But I always get caught on how I would explain all my books:\n\n**DEFENCE COUNSEL**  \nYou were obsessed with rape\u2014\n\nI worry about it every day, I have done ever since I was a child and found out what it was. And now I worry about writing about it and possibly upsetting people who have personal experience that they do not find reflected, or who just plain disagree with me. I worry that writing on this topic might encourage a twisted psychopath to come and get me. And then in the trial that I have been preparing for all my life, this chapter will be judged and inspected for clues that my obsession was based on desire rather than fear, or that I had engineered this situation for research or point-making.\n\n_DEFENCE COUNSEL rises and walks towards the victim._\n\n**DEFENCE**  \nIsn't it true that you like sex?\n\n**SARA**  \nYes.\n\n**DEFENCE**  \nThat you have stood on stage in front of hundreds of people proclaiming yourself to be horny\u2014\n\n**SARA**  \nThat's a _joke_ I do\u2014\n\n**DEFENCE**  \nDone long routines about being sexually unsatisfied with your partner?\n\n**SARA**  \nI'm a comedian\u2014\n\n**DEFENCE**  \nAdvertising your willingness and availability\u2014\n\n**SARA**  \nNo I didn't\u2014\n\n**DEFENCE**  \nYou yourself told this court that you have slept with over twenty people\u2014\n\n**SARA**  \nYes. And I didn't accuse any of them of raping me, suggesting that I can tell the difference between when I wanted it and when I didn't\u2014\n\n**DEFENCE**  \nYour flat is full of books about rape, case studies and  \ntextbooks. Your web history is all sex-related. You've  \nbeen planning this, and now you're _enjoying_ it.\n\nI worry about not being believed. I worry about the people who are hurt twice \u2013 once by their assailant and then further by the way our legal system treats victims. I worry that rape is being accepted as part of life, something that happens to people. I worry that many of us do not agree on definitions or that we can't empathise with each other's experience. And the only solution I can think of is that we have to talk about it, as upsetting and stressful as that may be, we have to talk about it more.\n\n# Fantasy Versus Fiction\n\nIn my first year at university we studied an eighteenth-century novel called _Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded_ by Samuel Richardson. The story is told from the point of view of a fifteen-year-old servant girl who finds herself repeatedly harassed and assaulted by the young Squire who has inherited the house where she works and lives. She is trapped with no escape. Pamela writes long letters to her parents, who advise her to keep avoiding the attentions of the Squire, in order to protect her honour and maidenhead. Pamela always faints from fear when he attempts to touch or undress her, and luckily he finds that a turn-off. The Squire becomes increasingly frustrated and imprisons Pamela, steals her letters and stops her communications with her parents, all the while pressuring her to have sex with him. She fights and fights and swoons and swoons and eventually, just when she thinks he is about to kill her, she earns his respect, nay, his love. The Squire decides to _marry_ Pamela because she is so good and chaste and fainty. Everyone is thrilled, including Pamela's parents \u2013 she has proved herself _worthy_ of his love by not succumbing to his molestations. And it's NOT EVEN FINISHED! Post-wedding, Pamela finds out the Squire has a daughter with a woman who didn't manage to fight him off as successfully as our heroine. Pamela decides to adopt the daughter and teach her to be virtuous, unlike her brazen birth mother who was clearly well up for it if she couldn't even be bothered to faint. The end.\n\nI HATE SQUIRES!\n\nThe explicit message of this book was that not wanting to have sex isn't enough, saying no is insufficient. Men bear no responsibility for their actions, their urges and instincts are completely understandable and it's up to women to control them and keep everybody virtuous. This is a world where the girl is blamed if she can't defend herself, if she's _allowed_ herself to be overpowered. Because that's how _overpowering_ works, right guys?\n\nThe term before this we had read _Don Quixote_ by Miguel de Cervantes. It's a really bloody long book, and somewhere within it there is a trial scene, Sancho Panza is sitting as a judge and hearing the town's cases and solving them, and then this woman accuses a rich man of raping her and the man claims that it was consensual, and then Sancho orders the rich man to give the woman a purse full of money. She leaves, then Sancho tells the guy to go and get his money back. The pair return to court after a couple of minutes, struggling over this purse, and the victim is told by Sancho that if she had cared as much about her honour as she did about cash then she wouldn't have got raped in the first place.\n\nAfter reading the books, we were required to discuss them in seminars. In both cases the tutor (separate but indistinguishable old men) tried to lead a debate about the literary merit of the text, but we were TOO FURIOUS. _Pamela_ was a book about RAPE, both books perpetuated rape myths and victim blaming, THEY SHOULD NOT BE ON OUR SYLLABUS. My fellow students and I had a wonderfully passionate row about what would be left in the canon if we chucked all the misogynistic rubbish in the bin. The teachers countered with good arguments about cultural materialism and historical context, but they could not swerve the EMOTION that these stories produced in us, and we quarrelled over their heads about modern issues. These two literary cases of rape apology were hideous to us, not because contemporary beliefs had changed so much but because they hadn't changed enough. We were familiar with modern judges berating victims for their choice of outfit or being out alone. Blaming them for not screaming or fighting hard enough. Telling them they were 'looking for trouble' if they hitchhiked or went to a house party. Or drank alcohol or had nice hair. Or had ever had sex before, especially if it was WITH THE DEFENDANT. These 'historical' texts made us angry because they didn't feel like a reflection of some other time, but of our own.\n\n_Pamela_ was incredibly popular. From publication in 1740 it became a bestseller throughout Europe, provoking a 'frenzy' of discussion and inspiring a flurry of other works. Paintings, waxworks, murals and operas were created to depict the story and its heroine. Journalists wrote articles warning against the 'lasciviousness' of the text and how it would lead the youth astray. Merchandise was produced and sold, and then came the parody novels. Henry Fielding wrote _An Apology for the Life of Mrs Shamela Andrews_ under a pseudonym. As the 'sham' might suggest, his version portrayed a servant girl tricking her master into marriage. Further critiques were proffered by the anonymous _Pamela Censured_ and the particularly bitchy _Anti-Pamela, Feigned Innocence Detected_. Society was split between 'Pamelists' and 'Antipamelists' as the worth of the book was debated. Much of the outcry was due to the class implications of the text, with a squire marrying so far beneath him. And the rest was due to the book's pornographic content and \u2013 sorry, WHAT NOW?\n\nOh yes, this story depicting the abuse of power and the assault and exploitation of a pubescent girl was sexually arousing to many women. But this was in the olden times, remember, when everyone was all repressed and stoic about sex, it probably had an unsheathed ankle in it somewhere so they all went crazy. Nowadays we'd never have a... HANG ON, who's that writhing over there trying to get my attention?\n\nIt's _FIFTY SHADES OF GREY_!\n\nTwo hundred and seventy-one years after Pamela married a rich bloke who treated her terribly, Anastasia Steele did the same. And there was no ambiguity this time around: the book was written with the express purpose of arousing women, although I once overheard a woman at Dublin airport meekly complaining, 'How come no one mentions the story? It's a real cliffhanger.'\n\nHow come indeed; the story is that Ms Steele is a twenty-one-year-old virgin. (Yes, it's a book about a virgin who weds the bloke she loses it to, because even erotic literature cannot escape dated ideology.*) The bloke's called Christian Grey, and he's all messed up because he lost _his_ virginity to an older lady who bondaged him all the time. Now he would like to do the same to Anastasia, please, if she would just sign this special contract that is very long and legal-sounding. It sets out that she is to be the 'submissive' in a sado-masochistic relationship with him as the 'dominant'. The contract takes ownership of her body and sexuality; she must not masturbate or get pregnant and she must agree to all the sex stuff he wants 'without hesitation or argument'.\n\nThe crazy logic of this document exhibits the separation of fantasy and reality. You cannot give somebody _permission_ to _force_ you to do things, any more than you can _allow_ yourself to be _overpowered_. There is an inherent contradiction in the contract, though it would be wonderful to see someone try to legally enforce it:\n\n**CHRISTIAN GREY** ( _whining_ )  \nBut she hesitated when I proffered the bum dragon,\u2020 your Lordship, I want \u00a325 in damages.\n\nBut sexiness doesn't need to make sense. E. L. James originally self-published the book in 2011; people could pay to download a copy or print on demand. By 2012 it had become so popular that Vintage bought the rights to publish, and it subsequently became the fastest-selling paperback ever in the UK and shifted over a hundred million copies worldwide. What's most exhilarating is that it created its own audience. Women sought out the book because it was something they _wanted_ ; its success was not the result of a huge marketing campaign telling us all how hideously fat and old we are, but down to women recommending something they enjoyed to each other. Something that they had liked and thought their friends might too... something that had brought them pleasure. Not 'woman eating yogurt in an advert doing come face' pleasure, but real actual pleasure in their bodies and desires, which seems so incredibly vital and... then you remember what it's about and feel confused again.\n\nWe've found a contradiction. On the one hand:\n\nPornography has always been an industry dominated by male consumption, and the vast majority of pornography is created to stimulate men. Women's bodies are present and are utilised in a variety of ways, but the male orgasms are real and the women's are faked. I am not saying that male porn actors enjoy their job any more or less than their female peers, I am pointing out that ninety-nine per cent of the sex shown is far more indicative of male sexuality than female. And E. L. James, a WOMAN, creates some porn for women, and suddenly there is a step towards balance. A commercial and public acknowledgement that women get horny and masturbate and have a sex life with themselves as well as with their partner(s). The book's popularity showed true democracy at work, and it generated vital discussion about female sexual satisfaction: on daytime television, in comedy routines, on the radio and on the bus.\n\nBut on the other hand:\n\nThe book describes a woman allowing a man to control her life and body, relinquishing the autonomy women have fought for centuries to gain. It could have been written by the Taliban.\n\nAnd an abundance of women were really into it, so why? _Because what we fantasise about has nothing to do with what we want in real life._ Maybe fantasy is a reaction to circumstances? For instance, if you are a busy working woman with a hectic home life, the idea of being tied up while someone else organises the whips and bum dragons and then cleans up afterwards might seem very attractive. Perhaps women who DO feel in control of their own lives and bodies are exactly the people who can enjoy a fairy tale about the opposite?\n\nThe only danger resides with those who do not understand the nature of fantasy, who confuse the fictional and literal \u2013 those who think that if a woman enjoys the _idea_ of something, surely she would _really_ enjoy the reality. 'If women fantasise about rape all the time, why do they complain when it happens?' says someone somewhere every second. Rather than shutting that down as an idiotic question from an awful person, let's attempt to answer it.\n\nFantasy as a concept, or even as a word, can refer to different things. Sometimes it might be something you would like to literally happen. Maybe you would be up for a threesome, perhaps you're desperate to play in the World Cup? Some women who read _Fifty Shades_ went out and bought the accompanying S & M merchandise, so the fiction did bleed into their reality. But fantasy can also exist in an imaginary space. Not a wish to be fulfilled. Not goal-setting with some hope of future achievement. What I think about during sex, and I presume this is true for every woman in a long-term relationship, is wide-ranging, disgusting and almost the literal opposite of what attracts me in real life. I imagine gross fat old men. People with bad hygiene and clumsy hands. And what they're doing feels so good that I can't stop them even though I hate them.\n\nI have a Rolodex in my head of every person I have ever met\u2021 and I scroll through while my boyfriend is going down on me. Hundreds of men and women that I can use to get me off, but who I would never allow to lay a finger on me in actuality. These fantastical imaginings are not an exaggerated version of the truth; they're a separate dimension with no gateway to this one. They don't shape or influence any of my decisions. They do not in any sense feel 'real'.\n\nSo let's understand fantasy on a spectrum, from 'I wish this would happen to me' at one end and 'Only in my imagination' at the other.\n\nNow it's well known that whenever there's a study of women's sexual fantasies, \"'rape'\" (and I can't put enough quote marks around it) usually comes near the top. There are varying statistics from a variety of studies, claiming that between seventeen and sixty-two per cent of women fantasise about forced sex. This 'evidence' has supported the myth that 'no means yes' and that women can 'really enjoy' sex they say they don't want. It baffles even really intelligent men, because it seems to be a paradox. A brilliant stand-up once had a routine about how 'rape has been proved to be the number one female fantasy, so how come women always run away when I try?!' Another comic, a woman, told him he had to stop doing it and they had a row outside a gig, with the audience streaming past. Both of them were so upset that the other couldn't understand their point of view. He thought his joke was funny because he believed it was so clear that what people mean by a 'rape fantasy' is far removed from the reality of a man attacking them. She felt that the distinction was not clear and that his comedy was excusing predatory behaviour and violence.\n\nComedians argue amongst themselves about rape jokes a lot. People are always very defensive of their own material and consider themselves to be 'promoting conversation' or 'stimulating debate' by venturing into 'don't even go there' areas. But comedy is a form of cowardice. Its very definition is a refusal to deal with things seriously; the comic is flippant, laughing is cathartic. Some argue that comedy can be used to promote good social conscience or political ideas but I've never been convinced of that. Maybe that means it can't do much harm either? I don't want comedians to be censored, and I have never told anyone what they should or shouldn't say on stage. But I've also noticed that when a comic's joke has upset someone, they only ever get really defensive about what they meant or what they were trying to do. They never apologise. I'm in Melbourne as I write this and early in the festival, a male comedian began his routine with this:\n\n'So you know how gay people can make jokes about being gay, and black people can make jokes about being black? Well, I can make jokes about rape.'\n\nAnd at the gig, a woman made a silent protest, she slid under a table and lay there. The comic was frustrated with her and eventually told her to 'fuck off and die'. And then in all the furore that's been following it, with newspapers asking if comedians should agree not to do rape jokes, if they should be banned, and comedians writing tweets and opinion pieces in defence of the joke or the comic \u2013 'He wasn't condoning rape, he was saying he looked like a rapist' or 'Chris Rock said he thought that joke was one of the cleverest he's ever heard' \u2013 even within all this discussion there is no space to absorb and acknowledge how joking about rape affects its victims. There is no empathy.\n\nEvery defence of 'offensive' material should begin with a brief description of how it affects those upset:\n\n'I the comedian understand that sometimes when a person who has experienced rape or sexual assault hears that word used in a joke her body physiologically reacts in fear. Her heartbeat will speed up, she may feel nauseous, lose her hearing, feel suddenly faint or claustrophobic. Her\u00a7 body may be flooded with adrenaline and she might want to escape the room as quickly as possible although she is trapped, aware that if she moves the comedian will make fun of her, or that she will be drawing attention to herself as a victim. The laughter of those around her can feel malicious and personal. However I still think my joke is worth doing because ______________.'\n\nThe existence and misunderstanding of \"'rape'\" fantasy has warped common understanding of the crime and has allowed many people, juries and judges included, to mistrust victims. Using the same word for the fantasy and the assault has, consciously or unconsciously, led people to believe there is possibility of pleasure in the latter. That it can be craved or enjoyed by some women. The distinction is simple:\n\nA classic _fantasy_ scenario, whether in Mills and Boon-type literature\u00b6 or the stories women themselves have told researchers, involves a very good-looking man being so overcome with passion and attraction for a female protagonist that despite her protestations he expertly arouses and stimulates her to climax. This is _seduction_. Whether acted out or imagined, the sex is anticipated and enjoyed. It's not the handsomeness of the aggressor nor the woman's orgasm that signifies no crime has taken place, but the desire and thus consent. The fantasy of being 'forced' hides it, but it is there. This sex is something wanted and agreed to. Yes, she may have said 'no' out loud, she may have resisted because she is married\/does not know the guy\/is a virgin, but within this fantasy scenario the very fact of denying something she physically desires enhances her arousal. It could be called a 'rough sex fantasy', 'stranger sex fantasy', 'unfriendly banging fantasy' or anything else you can think of, but it needs to be understood completely separately from rape. This fantasy occurs in a safe place, whether alone during masturbation or acted out as role play with a partner; the woman is imitating submission whilst being completely in control.\n\nSex is possible when you are unsafe or scared, but arousal isn't.\n\nSo why does this fantasy persist? Why would something horrifying in actuality be sexy in pretend? There is a variety of theories, all equally interesting and unverifiable. 'Sexual blame avoidance' suggests that because women are socialised to suppress their desires, hide their sexuality, NOT WANT SEX, the idea of being sexed up against their will alleviates all of the guilt they might feel at enjoying it so much. This is undermined slightly by the 'Openness to sexual experience' theory, which has found that more sexually adventurous women are likely to experience more fantasies in general, including those involving forced sex. Other psychologists have speculated that the fantasy is a result of being conditioned by male rape culture, or a reaction to trauma, or simply masochistic tendencies.\n\nAnd then there is the very problematic 'Biological predisposition to surrender' theory, which argues that male animals often subdue females and mate with them in situations which can look to us as if the female is resisting and the sex is 'unwanted'. Thus such forced intercourse has played a part in every species's evolution... rape is a 'natural' part of sexual selection and so modern women's fantasies about it are an echo of a successful mating strategy. This is an exceptionally dangerous idea because it justifies the crime of assault in human beings; the act of heterosexual sex and the act of heterosexual _rape_ are the same: penetration by a penis. In the same way that giving someone a present is the same action as theft: a movement of property between two people.\n\nBut giving someone your television is very different from having your television stolen; regardless of whether you were home or whether there was violence during the robbery, the distinction is intention, or consent. Yet someone who has their wallet stolen is not doubted because they may have given money away before or didn't hide their property properly or were walking around in a dark street late at night looking like they might be up for sharing cash. They are not disbelieved when they say their wallet was taken against their will. And we don't have politicians and intellectuals explaining that animals take each other's stuff all the time, that it's part of healthy competition and survival, thus excusing a thief's behaviour while undermining a victim's reaction. No one claims that there is secret enjoyment in having your wallet stolen because you are usually a generous person.\n\nSex is how people are made but sometimes rape is too. And this is too confusing for pro-lifers. Like Todd Akin. In 2012 this Republican Senate candidate and anti-abortion activist|| was asked if victims of rape who get pregnant should be allowed to have a termination. He responded:\n\n**TODD AKIN**  \nFrom what I understand from doctors, that's really rare. If it's legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.\n\nPlaying loudly to drown out stupidity trumpet:\n\nI'll let you get cracking on your Todd Akin voodoo doll while I unpack that sentence... great use of 'legitimate' before the word 'rape' to stress how much ' _illegitimate_ rape' there is in the world. Just fake old 'we made it up, it was actually fantastic, that's why we're so pregnant' rape that you hear about all the time. It's such a sweeping way of undermining and doubting women. It's a dispassionate tsunami that destroys our credibility and allows him to ignore our experiences so that he can continue educating us about how our bodies work. Which is to 'shut that whole thing down'. Refuse to be fertilised. CLANG CLANG CLANG ring our ovaries, cranking everything into action as our womb spins upside down and our Fallopian tubes tie around the cervix while we curtsey and our labia give us a lovely round of applause.\n\nIt is mostly pro-life Christians who use arguments such as the above. They have to be dismissive because a rape victim's rights are contradictory to an anti-abortion stance. It's a very human trait; all of us, even excellent fellows like you and me, collect the evidence which supports our pre-existing theories and opinions and dismiss those which challenge us. Todd Akin is not completely wrong: stress or anxiety _can_ cause a fertilised egg to pass through a woman without bedding into the womb to divide and become a baby. This also occurs in women who have not been attacked, by the way, and more importantly, CAN YOU READ THIS BIT SLOWLY, TODD AND FRIENDS, BECAUSE IT IS IMPORTANT IF YOU WANT TO DISCUSS THIS KIND OF THING THAT YOU HAVE ALL OF THE INFORMATION, it only occurs in some women who have been raped. Not all. Just some.\n\nStatistics collected from Rape Crisis centres over the last few decades show that thirteen per cent of women reporting a rape became pregnant from it. These results might be skewed, of course, if women who've found themselves pregnant are more likely to seek help and support. Other studies place the likelihood of pregnancy occurring from rape at between one and five per cent. There is vast discrepancy and unreliability in the statistics and I don't feel confident that any number is definitively correct, as so many women do not report what has happened to them. However, there does seem to be some evidence that women are slightly _more_ likely to become pregnant from rape than from consensual intercourse.\n\nEmotionally, this is too horrible to contemplate. Morally it shouldn't be true. Morally it would be preferable if our bodies _could_ stop such an upsetting and confusing thing happening, if we could eject or reject, if we had some control over our biology.\n\nUnemotionally, our bodies are amazing. We are the descendants of only the finest breeders of our species. In _Sperm Wars_ Robin Baker claims that rough sex (consensual or forced) can stimulate ovulation, which suggests that we evolved to reap the biological benefit of unwanted mating. However, I can't find a proper scientific study to back this up, it could be BS. There is so little certainty in this area. Much more research would be necessary, but I'm sure it's very difficult to find victims of sexual assault who want you checking what their eggs are up to or counting the sperm inside them, so maybe we will never know. This might be an area of science that remains mysterious. And perhaps, actually, irrelevant.\n\nI think people who point out that rape is part of nature are UNHELPFUL. They are sometimes very persuasive and interesting people, it's not that they condone the crime, it's that they know some really fascinating things about ducks' vaginas and how dolphins have gang bangs and penguins have been seen to practise necrophilia. But they are technically incorrect. Let me show you my working:\n\nI used to do gymnastics in the garden to impress my cat. His name was Roly and I'd show him cartwheels and he would do a really long blink at me if he thought I'd done a good one. During one of my exhibitions he ran off and started vigorously vibrating on a black cat in next door's garden.\n\n_SARA, 6, wears pink-and-black leotard, shouts towards the house._\n\n**SARA**  \nWHAT ARE THEY DOING?\n\n_DEREK, 28, not yet absent father, enters the garden._\n\n**DEREK** ( _slowly_ )  \nRoly is a _boy_ cat and he is hugging the _girl_ cat\u2014\n\n_GAIL, 24, shouts from an upstairs window._\n\n**GAIL**  \nDon't lie, Derek, he's raping her.\n\n_Window slams. SARA's confusing childhood continues._\n\nMy mum claims not to remember this incident, so maybe my subconscious made it up, but even so it's very consistent with the kind of thing she would say. If we understand animals via a human framework, then of course Mr Cat's fast and furious approach to love-making with no foreplay or sensitivity looks self-pleasing, perhaps even causing Mrs Cat pain and suffering. We cannot help but anthropomorphise, we project our emotional perceptions onto animals. As discussed earlier, sex in humans evolved to be highly enjoyable to support our societal structure (or rather, only those highly sexed early human-types socialised successfully enough to pass on their genes). Each animal's approach to mating is fine-tuned for the most effective replication of DNA. If it involves bonding and pleasure, as it does in our species, that's mere lubrication for the machine. We kiss and exchange saliva to check genetic compatibility, giraffes wee in each other's mouth and hippos flick poo around with their tails because that's how we each best make healthy babies. And the same is true for animals that pierce, maim, bruise or kill each other while mating. It's not bad sex, it's effective life-making.\n\nLast night I had a row with my friend about ducks. The problem with writing this book is that when I switch my pencil off and go out, my mind is really full of what I've been thinking and researching and I either lecture someone too polite to wriggle away or I get argumentative. So last night my friend is telling me and some others that she has written a show about sex, I haven't seen it but I will, she is telling us about it and it sounds gross and exciting and boundary-pushing and then she says, 'I have this whole section about _duck rape_.' And so all the other comedians are saying 'WHAT?' or going 'Don't they have weird vaginas?' and everyone is just having a nice evening and enjoying themselves and I am furious with her and yell, 'You're INCREDIBLY irresponsible.'\n\nBut she's not. And I'm sober now, so let me explain my emotions with more clarity.\n\nThis duck thing, mallards actually, was mentioned a lot alongside the Todd Akin comments, because the female mallard has a way of protecting her eggs from the sperm of unwanted mating. Some mallards pair-bond, form little male\u2013female double acts who drift around lakes and ponds, nest together and share bread. The males who do not manage to find a partner form a brutish little gang who often try to separate bonded pairs and, working as a group, mate with the female. You can see videos on this online, and if you do, you'll realise how exceptionally difficult it is not to project, to emote. What they are doing does seem morally wrong. Our empathetic brains cannot help but imagine how we would feel were we one of that feathery couple, having their day at the lake ruined.\n\nA female mallard (like all birds) possesses what is called a 'labyrinthine' vagina that has false openings and tunnels, and she can move its position to alter the route that semen will take, and thus, in many cases, prevent unwanted sperm from fertilising her eggs. This is usually interpreted as a 'defence' against forced mating: 'How swell, the lady duck has protected herself from rearing the ducklings of those awful gang members!' But her twisty genitals are much better understood as a _challenge_. She has chosen her mate based on genetic and parental qualities which are superior to those of the non-bonded drakes that have been unable to attract or keep a lady duck. So her twisty vagina will always direct her partner's sperm towards her eggs, and any other males' away from them. Her children will be healthier\/stronger\/better dancers if they share her partner's genes. She doesn't practise multi-partnering like humans do. She has made her choice.\n\nWith one exception.\n\nHaving been misdirected and sent down a blind alley, if one of these marauders' sperm manages to achieve the almost impossible and fertilise her this is GREAT NEWS. Because not all of her offspring will pair-bond. Some of her sons will be awful bachelors. The one trait that trumps all of her husband's is super-strength swimmy sperm that her sons will inherit. You see, the labyrinthine vagina is a TEST to find the male mallards whose offspring will be able to pass it. Clever sex, well done.\n\nThis defence\/test confusion occurs a lot. I've been reading up on animal sex and sentences are often worded with intentions implicit: 'The male giraffe follows the female until she eventually gives up and lets him mount her,' or 'The female hare fights off the male until he subdues her,' and this framing is incorrect. Our culture has trained us all to interpret males as active and females as passive, but in almost every species I have read about it is the female that initiates sex. They do this with pheromones and scents and behaviours and they get males excited and then yes, sometimes she'll have him follow her around for hours or kick and bite him, but that's to ensure that he is fit for purpose. Female animals do not get 'worn down' or 'subdued', it is the males that have to exhibit traits that their offspring will need if they are to survive. What we interpret as unwillingness or aggression, from another perspective, is flirting.\n\nAlthough of course it isn't actually, because flirting is a human concept that requires conscious thought, awareness of self and of other beings outside the self. And so does consent. We're the only creatures on the planet that have the capability to conceive of bodily autonomy, birth control, age... do you see? Animals behave automatically, they can't conceive that it was your hat they did a poop on or that it's impolite to lick your bum afterwards. They don't interpret the world with an understanding of others' emotions, like we do.\n\nIt should be obvious that if ducks cannot consent, they cannot rape. It is a crime performed purely by human beings. To lend it to the animal world subtly defends it as something instinctual or procreative. It undermines what is criminal about it. And you should be grateful I've not been shouting all this at you while spilling wine on your shoes like I did to my poor friend Katerina.\n\nKNOCK KNOCK\n\nHang on, there's someone at my door, I'll just go and see who it is... Oh look, it's a person who still believes the issue of consent is a confusing one. He says, 'Sometimes you just can't tell if someone wants to have sex with you or not.' Please come in, sit down, this might help you.\n\nWe must learn from the BDSMers. Yes, the form of sexual fun that was showcased (and misrepresented) by the _Fifty Shades of Grey_ franchise has a comprehensive and clear framework of consent that can assist even 'vanillas'** in our sexual communication. Bondage, Domination and Sado-Masochism involves all kinds of kinky tools and power play and does so with an understanding of 'rolling consent'. Taking part in one activity does not mean you will agree to another. Having enjoyed a certain pressure one day does not signify that you will tolerate it the next. Yesterday you loved the bum dragon, but today you want it left in the drawer. Most of us are familiar with the idea of the 'safe word', which is a prearranged code that signals DISCONTINUE IMMEDIATELY, and its very existence proves that saying 'no' and 'stop' can be part of the fun, can facilitate pleasure. And that equally, at any point during sex, you might stop enjoying yourself and want to break or rest or have something to eat or discuss buttons. This is also true of the most banal intercourse, yet in our culture there is this pervading idea that once you get a guy started he has to finish. I have had so much sex that I didn't enjoy. That I would have liked to pause, to explain my feelings. To slow down. Or reconnect. Or get dressed and go and cry in the bathroom. I have had kisses I loved lead into sex I hated. I'm ashamed of how much sex I have not enjoyed, and I have never known how to communicate this to my partners, because I have never understood it properly myself.\n\nRolling consent, my friend. The perverts invented it, and now we can all have happier, healthier sex lives, no matter how moderate the acts undertaken.\n\nDING DONG\n\nGosh it's busy in here today, you stay where you are, I'll go... Oh hi there, Peter, what's that? You're still confused?\n\n**PETER**  \nIf a lady moans 'no' while we are getting off with each other, how do I ascertain if it's a sexy no, rather than a scared serious no?\n\n**SARA**  \nWhy the hell wouldn't you just ask her?\n\n**PETER**  \nIt's embarrassing... I might ruin the moment.\n\n**SARA**  \nJust ask. Say 'Are we playing?' or 'Do you want me to persuade you?' Even if it is uncomfortable for a second, it will be super-sexy afterwards. Or it won't, because she meant no. Any moment that can be 'ruined' that easily was not a moment at all.\n\n**PETER**  \nThanks Sara, bye!\n\n**SARA**  \nYou're welcome, I'll see you at volleyball practice.\n\n_Sara waves goodbye and puts on wellington boots._\n\n**SARA**  \nI'll see the rest of you over the page... it's going to get even messier.\n\n* Sing it with me, 'Paternity certainty'.\n\n\u2020 I am working in the library today and don't want to ask the nice lady if there are any books about sex toys.\n\n\u2021 Yeah, if I've met you, then you're in there. And I am not even weird with you when I see you afterwards.\n\n\u00a7 This says 'her' but men get raped too and male victims suffer similar societal insensitivity.\n\n\u00b6 A study found that 54 per cent of narratives in such books involve a central character being 'raped'.\n\n|| Please, old man, tell me what you think I should do with my body.\n\n** This means sexually bland people (not white people, as I once thought).\n\n# The Dangers of Assumption\n\nI had a best friend at drama club, and when she was about fourteen she found an old diary of her mum's. She got very upset, and snuck it out of the house for me to read. It was terribly written but I admired the handwriting and \u2013 oh, I'd missed the point. Several of the entries were written during her mother's pregnancy. My friend was INSIDE HER and not born yet, this was so WEIRD, imagine a world where you don't really exist but people can write diaries about you being inside them and \u2013 oh, I'd missed the point again. Her mum was very sad about being pregnant. Shit. And she said that the baby was 'the result of a rape'. Oh really shit.\n\nMy friend had always felt like her mum didn't love her. They always rowed, but we were fourteen, so that was normal. We'd previously theorised that all mums were really jealous of their teenage daughters because of our youth and talent and vivacity and that's why they behaved like such unreasonable bitches. Except now we were holding some other explanation in our hands. It was very dramatic. We sat in the park and read bits out to each other. Like we were emotional detectives, putting her mother's behaviour together retrospectively. Then I suddenly realised:\n\n'That means your dad is not your real dad\u2014'\n\nOh my god, she wasn't even related to her own father. This was even more serious than we'd realised. We decided to start smoking, because of stress, but didn't have any cigarettes. We looked for butts on the floor for a while and thought about setting fire to the diary as a symbolic gesture. My friend got quieter and quieter as I attempted to rub sticks together and spark a flint. Then she wanted to go home and then she went.\n\nWhen we next saw each other, she passed me a note. 'He is my dad. It was him.'\n\nI don't know what my friend's life would have been like had she not learned this information. It could have been exactly the same, unfocused and self-destructive. But it makes more sense for her to blame her horrible beginnings. Her mum told her what had happened: she'd been asleep, said no, he'd forced her. She had no proof that it was _that_ time she conceived, she just really believed it was. But she loved her daughter, and it wasn't her fault.\n\nAfter about two weeks it rarely came up again. My friend still sees her dad. I never asked if she talked to him about it. I was teeming with questions I knew it was inappropriate to ask.\n\nHOW can a man force a woman? Did he get a weapon? Did he hit her? Did she call the police? Did she bleed? Who cleaned it up? How did it feel? I always imagined like razor blades or a rat biting. Did it happen again? Did he say sorry? Was it like a werewolf on a full moon, and then he went normal again afterwards? Is that why she divorced him? Why was he still allowed round for dinner and Christmas and things? Did he even go to prison?\n\nI asked my mum a loose, general question about what happened when wives said 'no' to their husbands. She proceeded to tell me a lot of stuff I never wanted to know about times she'd let my father have sex when she didn't want it, great, and then told me that rape within marriage had only been possible for the last four years. I misunderstood what she meant.\n\n**SARA**  \nMen were nicer in the old days?\n\n**MUM**  \nIt was legal.\n\n**SARA**  \nHow was that?\n\n**MUM**  \nHusbands were allowed to do whatever they wanted to their wives. They owned them.\n\nThen she pulled a facial expression which combined 'See what an awful world we live in?' 'See what bastards men are?' and 'Interesting, isn't it?' (I have inherited that facial expression and pull it when reading 'Everyday Sexism' tweets out to my boyfriend.)\n\nIf you thought the 'contract' in _Fifty Shades of Grey_ was offensively restrictive, you're not going to get on with his more binding and less respectful older brother, 'marriage'. Getting married is culturally universal. It's where the powerful urges of pair bonding led us. Falling in love, as we have seen, changes our brain chemistry and affects our bodies. Strong emotions and high sex drives ensured the reproductive success of our very early ancestors and continued to aid sexual selection during the millions of years when we were developing a conscious mind. So we became an animal that could communicate in a complex way, in order to better satisfy our animal instincts and intuitions. As explored in the 'Love' chapters, we know that lots of human relationship behaviours stem from protecting our genetic lineage or resources for our offspring. And the story of our evolution ends, like most stories, with a wedding. Marriage: the male attempt to own and restrict female sexuality, written down.\n\nI've only been to two weddings. That's _weird_ , isn't it? What with my loud opinions about it being outdated and patriarchal, you'd think I'd get invited more. The first wedding I went to was my best friend Katie's. I love her. I love Ben, her husband. There were about thirty of us in a registry office in Marylebone and they'd asked me and Vanessa to say something, but we decided to sing instead. We wrote a song about their first date from the perspective of the taxi driver who had taken them home that night. He had stopped the car and taken a photo of them, because he said he knew they'd be together forever. How romantic is that? And so Vanessa sang about this taxi guy and the picture he took, and I tried to join in but I was crying too much. Katie's mum had to bring me tissues after snot fell onto my guitar. Everyone was laughing at me and I was pleased, because I am a comedian. I'd kept it together as they said their vows, but when I stood up at the front and saw Katie sitting holding Ben's hand, newly married, their hopeful faces liquefied me. They were shiny with happiness and I was due on my period and I couldn't deal with how beautiful and good it was.\n\nI'm telling you this so you don't think I'm a heartless, unfeeling bitch as I dismember this 'marriage' thing so many of you venerate. Most modern people choose marrying as an expression of love towards someone they consider their equal \u2013 lovely stuff. But historically, apart for a couple of rare matriarchal tribes, the basic of format of wedding ceremonies goes like this: male relative takes woman who belongs to him and 'gives her away' to a man who is buying her in exchange for a dowry. Of course the whole thing is livened up with organ music and pretty dresses so that's probably why you didn't notice all the 'women as property' stuff. Traditionally, in western religions, the new wife will take her husband's surname as she is now part of his family. She is under his charge, he has sworn to provide for her (hence why divorcing people often get some of their spouse's money) and she has vowed her own body in exchange. It is now his. The transaction is very similar to buying a donkey, but with more dancing afterwards.\n\nDon't start getting defensive, thinking 'That's not what my wedding was like.' Obviously people write their own vows now, and keep their surnames or give themselves away. I'm talking loosely about the inherited framework. I'm afraid of upsetting you because I know how marriage-geared many people's ideals of happiness are. STOP CRYING, YOU ARE STILL ALLOWED TO LOVE WEDDINGS IF YOU WANT TO.\n\nThe second wedding I went to was with John. We had only been together for a couple of months and I really didn't want to go, but I did because I'm nice and I couldn't get out of it. John and I had already had a conversation about how I didn't want to ever get married and he agreed with me. (I always like to impress boys at the beginning with how relaxed and non-committal I am. The intense jealousy and whiplash PMT is a nice surprise for six months in.) This ceremony was Christian where Katie's had been humanist, and so I could see the historical origins a lot more clearly. Like bridesmaids: _maids_ , as in virgins. A wedding was a useful time to show off all the unmarried (thus un-sexed-up) women of the family in case some guy in the congregation fancied one of them and another wedding could be arranged. Even more surprising, to me, was that after the ceremony the groom did a speech and the father of the bride did a speech and the best man did a speech, and the bride herself just sat there listening to men speak about her and on her behalf.\n\nI kept thinking about this afterwards. I can completely understand that women might not want to speak at their weddings nowadays, that it's choice rather than expectation. Katie did a tight ten at her reception and even improvised a great joke about how I'd tried to upstage her by crying too much. HA HA HA, she was joking, we are best friends. But what struck me was that until very recently, for the majority of all the women who have ever lived and married, that day was not a happy one. Or at least not for them. Most women did not sit next to a man they had chosen and fallen in love with while he made their closest friends and family roll about with jokes about how drunk she was when they met. Instead she sat beside a husband chosen FOR her, by her parents or elders, who that night was going to take her virginity whether she protested or not. Might be best not to allow her a speech then, bit of a downer:\n\n**BRIDE**  \nThank you all for coming, it's great to see so many of you here to celebrate a world in which girls cannot survive without male protection and income. Please charge your glasses and toast my new husband, who'll attempt to make me bleed during sex later as proof of my maidenhood. Cheers!\n\nI tried to do stand-up about this, and about how maybe that's where the idea that women weren't funny came from. But it was tonally very upsetting and that's a bit of a no-no in the comedy game. And also at John's friend's wedding.\n\nFrom the age of fourteen up until I was thirty-two I was vehemently anti-marriage, because of where it came from and what it represented. And then good old homosexual people came along and changed my mind. In 2014, England, Scotland and Wales all made same-sex marriage legal. And you know what is so great about that? They reinvented the ceremony. Same-sex marriage is untarnished by history and archaic institution. Sure, people can still pick elements of tradition and spectacle to include, but they are building their commitments on fresh ground rather than the blood-speckled lino of heterosexuals. A same-sex relationship is not burdened with the expectations of stereotypes or outdated gender roles. There are no preconceived ideas about who will earn the most money or who will bear the children, who will clean the kitchen and who will fix the car. They decide for themselves. And so I think it's only fair that gay marriage be opened up to straight people. You and your beloved could simply decide whether you wish to become husband and husband or wife and wife, and make a lifelong commitment. HOORAY! A union of true equals. THANKS, GAY RIGHTS ACTIVISTS, you are teaching all people who love each other how to do it better.\n\nBut that's the future. Back to the past: in England, until 1991, wedding vows were considered unlimited, never-ending, can't-take-it-back consent. And a woman's body was something her husband used to procreate and she could not refuse him. He had 'conjugal rights'. This had been written in law since 1736, when a guy called Sir Matthew Hale claimed: 'The husband cannot be guilty of a rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife, for by their mutual matrimonial consent and contract the wife hath given herself up in this kind unto her husband which she cannot retract.'\n\nWhen I picture Matthew Hale saying this, he has beady eyes and an awful moustache and does evil laughs at the end of his sentences. I try to be compassionate and think 'Maybe he wasn't a _bad_ man, perhaps he rode his horse carefully when passing children and always gave great Christmas presents?' He was a product of his culture and its expectations, as we all are. But then I remember his words were used against women abused by their husbands for over 250 years and the moustache stays on.\n\nIn 1976 the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act created a statutory definition of rape as forced sex _outside of marriage_. Outside. The wording itself protected husbands from being accused. In 1984 the suggestion that wives should also be protected was rejected by the Criminal Law Revision Committee. They said that rape was not just 'sexual intercourse without consent', the circumstances must be 'peculiarly grave', and that in the case of wives who will have had consenting sex with their husband previously, they never could be. If he was violent during the assault that was an offence with which he could be charged, but 'the gravamen of the husband's conduct is the injury he has caused not the sexual intercourse he has forced'.\n\nWritten down. In the law. You can't steal something that's already yours.\n\nOver the next seven years, the law was contested by brave wives accusing their husbands and fighting all the way up to the high courts for their right to say 'no'. There were exemptions made for wives who no longer lived with their husbands ( _R_ v. _Clarke_ ) and for forced sex that was non-vaginal ( _R_ v. _Kowalski_ ) and finally, in 1991, the House of Lords finally ruled against Hale in a marital rape case ( _R_ v. _R_ ). No more evil laughing for him.\n\nWhat's so brilliant about the British legal system is that because statutes can be altered or overturned by lawyers fighting individual cases the law can, in theory, evolve to reflect the fluid morality of society, to adapt with culture and new ideas. But isn't it galling that it took so long to protect married women? This very basic human right was created within my lifetime and is still not extended to all the world's women. Below is a list of countries where rape within marriage is currently not a criminal offence. Feel free to check up on this and tick them off as planet Earth gradually becomes a more bearable place to be female.\n\n**Country** | **Can wives say 'no'  \nto sex yet? ** | **Country** | **Can wives say 'no'  \nto sex yet? **  \n---|---|---|---\n\nAfghanistan |  | Malawi |   \n---|---|---|---  \nAlgeria |  | Mali |   \nBahrain |  | Mongolia |   \nBangladesh |  | Morocco |   \nBotswana |  | Myanmar |   \nBrunei Darussalam |  | Nigeria |   \nCentral African  \nRepublic |  | Oman |   \nChina |  | Pakistan |   \nDem. Republic  \nof Congo |  | Saudi Arabia |   \nEgypt |  | Senegal |   \nEthiopia |  | Singapore |   \nHaiti |  | South Sudan |   \nIndia |  | Sudan |   \nIran |  | Syria |   \nIvory Coast |  | Tajikistan |   \nKuwait |  | Tonga |   \nLaos |  | Uganda |   \nLebanon |  | Yemen |   \nLibya |  | Zambia |\n\nThe _recentness_ of these changes reminds me that we are at the beginning of a process, rather than the end. I believe bodily autonomy is an obvious and basic human right but our country and courts are governed by people older than me, who grew up in a culture where men did effectively own women, and this has ramifications. Shifts in attitudes percolate through the populace slowly, at glacial speed, and the result is that many of us hold different beliefs all at the same time. Of course we all think we're objectively correct too. There was a man outside Lewisham shopping centre the other day, he had pamphlets and a loud hailer and I was avoiding eye contact like everyone else but I was listening, and as I passed he said, 'If we don't follow the Bible and what was written down, then everyone is just making morality up for themselves.'\n\nAnd I thought, 'Yes, duh,* that is _exactly_ what morality is. We all invent it for ourselves depending on our experiences.' The problems begin when we believe our personal moral code can be applied to all other people. We judge and we subjugate and we become wrong because we can only ever see our own little slice of the picture. And the dangerous result, in this context, is that you and the person you're having sex with may have very different conceptions of what rape is.\n\nIn Great Britain, the law no longer sanctions men controlling women's bodies but there is residual misunderstanding about 'intimate rape'. The first fallacy is that it is much more bearable than stranger rape. That if you've had sex with someone before, then being raped by them isn't as bad. This is empathy failure. Or perhaps the difficulty of envisaging a situation that you haven't experienced. I think if anybody tried to imagine, really literally imagine what it is like to have someone you trusted, someone that you love, or have loved, someone who knows your vulnerabilities, who is supposed to care about you \u2013 when it is that person who brutalises you, who ignores your protests, who knows that he is hurting you and doesn't care, then there is a whole other emotional level to the physical trauma. Do you think it is better to be punched in the face by someone you like? Do you stand there as they thump you, thinking, 'Well at least it wasn't my enemy'? It's a different kind of ordeal to an attack from a stranger, not a lesser one.\n\nThe difficulty with gradients and comparisons is that victims on either side of the spectrum have their experiences misunderstood and undermined. With marital rape, and the unwillingness to prosecute it, there's a similar failure of comprehension. Marriage does not mean the rape is less painful, cruel or abusive. It is not a more tender experience. It often means that you're trapped with your rapist afterwards. You may be economically dependent on him, with no chance of escape. No door to close to keep yourself safe from future attacks.\n\nWhat keeps surprising me is how _relaxed_ some people seem about men using women's bodies. Like there's something 'natural' or understandable about it. I'll give you an example. In 2010, a warrant was issued by Swedish police for the arrest of Julian Assange. The case gained a lot of publicity because of Assange's pre-existing notoriety as the co-founder of the WikiLeaks website. He was accused of rape by one woman and of molestation by another. In both cases the alleged assault took place AFTER consensual sex. In the first account, a woman who willingly had sex with Assange one night, at her apartment, awoke the next morning to find that he was having penetrative intercourse with her against her will.\n\nThere is no way that this isn't an incredibly complicated moral issue, right? Some couples find it very sexy for one to begin foreplay while the other is asleep. I am pretty sure that almost everyone has had sex that began with one or other of you asleep, OR BOTH? Would that be possible? Somno-sex? I tried to find out online but I'm in a Costa coffee and their wi-fi filter just told me off for being filthy. I can _imagine_ two scenarios: I can imagine a one-night stand where in the morning, I am awoken by the guy getting sexy with me again and I'm fine and I like it. And I can imagine the exact same thing occurring and it being deeply wrong. This would have nothing to do with what he looked like or how great his moves were, it would depend merely on whether I wanted it. It's so dangerous.\n\nThere is no possible way someone can consent while they're asleep. Even if you wrote a note and left it on your chest \u2013 'shag me awake please' \u2013 you might have changed your mind by the morning. You can't give consent in advance, you can't predict how you will feel in the future.\n\nI spoke to John about this, because I can't stop thinking about it, and he was like, 'If you were asleep and I started sex with you it would be okay,' but would it? If I woke up and wanted him to stop and he didn't, if I tried to push him off, if I said I wasn't interested and he still carried on, then it would be \u2013 I don't have the right words.\n\nI've only experienced something similar to this once. I'm embarrassed to tell you, I only ever told one person and they didn't react well, and I never spoke about it again. I'd been on a few dates with a guy, he wasn't my 'boyfriend' yet, but we had slept together about three times and all was going very well. He was super-clever and liked walking around London and I was very impressed with him. At his house, we did not have a condom and I was almost due on my period and said we could sleep together if he pulled out. I KNOW THIS IS TERRIBLE AND WRONG AND I DESERVE MY MILLIONS OF STDs AND WARTS. Very irresponsible and I hate myself. Anyway, towards the end of the completely consensual and enjoyable sex, I realised he was about to come and said something sexy and adamant like 'MAKE SURE YOU PULL OUT OF ME', which he ignored, and I panicked. I realised he was going to do it anyway, and I tried to get out from underneath him and he pressed me down and smothered me while he ejaculated.\n\nFrom realisation to panic was a very short amount of time, probably four seconds. And then being physically restrained by him while he finished was probably fifteen. Less than twenty seconds in total. And it was deeply emotional. I was so upset and furious. I left his house, it was very late and I was the opposite side of London from home and I had no money for a taxi and I was scared and all I knew was that I never wanted to see him again. It was only twenty seconds of unwanted sex. It wasn't a stranger jumping out from a bush, he didn't beat me around the head. What right did I have to become hysterical? To shout at a guy, to feel betrayed and used by him? Two weeks later he wrote me an email saying sorry and could he take me on holiday to make it up to me? And I knew that he didn't know what he'd done wrong.\n\nI am remembering this now because the fear my body felt at the time was so extreme and devastating. I was full of hatred and I was powerless, when moments before I had been sexual and willing. I was disgusted by what had happened to me and I felt separated from my body. Meat-like. So I can easily envisage how consensual sex in the evening can be followed by rape in the morning. Unwanted sex does not become tolerable with the memory of a previous session. Drowning isn't easier because you're usually a strong swimmer. That flailing loss of control, desperate for air, is a good analogy for this, because the panic is similar. Or at least that's how I'd describe it.\n\nBut many people of both genders find it impossible to empathise with intimate rape. Our personal experiences limit what we can predict feeling in a given situation. We patch together projections of imagined emotions based on what we have seen and felt in our lives already. We all know that knives are scary, so if I tell you I was mugged by someone holding a machete, you can understand my terror. But if I tell you I was mugged by someone with no weapon but I still gave him all my money and was scared for my life... then maybe you fail to sympathise. I was stupid or weak, I did something wrong. You might walk away muttering, 'Wasn't really a mugging at all, I dunno why she's so upset about it.'\n\nWhich was how George Galloway reacted to the claims against Julian Assange. In a podcast the politician went on record to say: 'Even taken at its worst, if the allegations made by these two women were true, one hundred per cent true, and even if a camera in the room captured them, they don't constitute rape. At least not rape as anyone with any sense can possibly recognise it. And somebody has to say this.'\n\nIt is clear that Galloway really believes this. He is not trying to be incendiary or hurtful or offensive, he feels he is bringing common sense and objectivity to the matter. 'Somebody has to say this,' he claims. Well, now _somebody_ has to listen carefully to the definition of rape as a criminal offence.\n\nIn Sweden, where the allegations arose, a rapist is defined as a person who 'forces another person to have sexual intercourse or to undertake or endure another sexual act that, in view of the seriousness of the violation, is comparable to sexual intercourse'. In 2005 the Swedish penal code was extended and clarified so that 'this also applies if a person engages with another person in sexual intercourse or in a sexual act by improperly exploiting that person, due to unconsciousness, sleep, serious fear, intoxication or other drug influence, illness, physical injury or mental disturbance, or otherwise in view of the circumstances, is in a particularly vulnerable situation'. George Galloway may not recognise the allegations against Julian Assange as rape but the Swedish legal system most certainly does.\n\n'Sleep', it says. In between 'unconsciousness' and 'serious fear', recognised as a state in which someone cannot properly give their consent. Oh but that's in liberal old _Sweden_ ,\u2020 maybe the confusion has arisen because our British legal system has a different definition and putting your erect penis in sleeping folk is okay here... let me check... okay, so looking at statutory law, since 1956 rape is 'unlawful sexual intercourse with a woman who at the time of the intercourse does not consent to it', when either the rapist 'knows that she does not consent to the intercourse or he is reckless as to whether she consents to it'.\n\nIS RECKLESS AS TO WHETHER SHE CONSENTS TO IT. Having sex with somebody who is asleep, and who can in no way communicate assent, is reckless, isn't it?\n\nAm I crazy?\n\nIf you'd had sex with someone who was asleep, and I asked, 'How do you know whether they wanted to have sex with you?' what could you possibly answer that would persuade me you cared whether they consented or not?\n\nIn his podcast, Galloway said that waking up with someone inside you is 'something which can happen, you know'. CAN IT, GEORGE? How many times has that happened to you exactly?\n\nOur enemy here is the banality of unwanted sex. If it's common for one of the partners in a relationship to go along with sex they aren't into, if it's considered harmless for a woman to allow a man to have sex with her when she is not aroused, then the women who do complain, as in a case like Assange's, are seen as moving the goal posts. The boys get exasperated and whiney: 'You can't tell us off now, this is the way it's always been,' or 'Don't pick on me, everyone else is doing it!' The criminality is perceived as unfair or unreasonable because the act is something that some men consider their right. As is seen with Galloway; he believes that his own personal definition of rape is superior to the law. Of Assange's behaviour he said: 'It might be really sordid and bad sexual etiquette, but whatever else it is, it is not rape or you bankrupt the term \"rape\" of all meaning.'\n\n'It is not rape,' he tells us. Despite the fact that, according to the legal definition I have quoted above, it clearly and really is. Galloway hears of an alleged assault and rather than realising that his preconceived notions of consent are wrong, he chooses to denigrate the women who accuse men in these circumstances. And in the most powerful way possible: they 'bankrupt the term \"rape\" of all meaning'. He proposes that these women are undermining the experience of 'real' rape victims.\n\nThis may seem like a personal attack on George Galloway and his opinions, but I'm using him as an example of how ALL OF US have a subjective definition of what we consider rape. And we ALL occasionally judge or dismiss cases that we hear of in the media or general gossip. We all victim-blame based on our own subjective moral values.\n\nIf you'd like to see this in action, bring up Ched Evans next time you are with a group of friends and be surprised and astonished at their reactions. You can read this bit out first if you want, so that everyone is dealing with the same information:\n\nIn May 2011, footballers Clayton McDonald and Ched Evans went out in Rhyl in north Wales. McDonald met a nineteen-year-old woman in a takeaway and she went in a cab with him to a hotel room, booked in Evans's name. McDonald sent a text to Evans saying 'got a bird', and he and the woman began having sex. When Evans returned to the hotel room, he also began having sex with the woman. Two friends outside the window attempted to film this on their phones. At some point McDonald left. Evans continued to have sex with the woman, but eventually left too. Neither man ejaculated. The woman woke up alone a few hours later. She did not have her phone or handbag. She contacted reception to call her mother, who came and picked her up. Later that day she returned to the hotel asking to view CCTV recordings, and staff told her the room she had slept in had been booked by footballers. That night she contacted police to claim that her drink had been spiked, as she had no memory of events. The police traced the room booking and arrested McDonald and Evans on a rape charge. (McDonald was found not guilty during the court case.)\n\nNow discuss!\n\nHonestly, you must. I had this case buzzing awfully around my head for months and every time I spoke about it to someone, they illuminated a new perspective. An angle I hadn't thought of, a fresh understanding of human behaviour. I heard alternative combinations of anger and compassion, and I found I could never predict what a person might say. Most importantly, I realised, none of us agree on what consent means. Some of my friends strongly empathised with the footballers because it _was_ a situation they could imagine themselves getting into when they were very drunk or much younger. Two of my friends were very harsh towards the victim for a particular reason; one who'd been photographed naked after passing out on a one-night stand and the other who had been tricked into having sex with a man she thought was someone else after falling asleep. Both claimed the Evans\/McDonald case 'wasn't rape' because theirs hadn't been. Their coping strategy was self-blame. Their thought process was 'I left myself vulnerable' rather than 'Someone took advantage of me.' Conversely, I have friends who think all sex offenders should be chemically castrated, and that includes the little shits filming outside the window and in fact maybe we should put all sportsmen in prison as soon as they turn professional since none of them seem very respectful of women. So there was a real range of impassioned responses.\n\nThere is a website, www.chedevans.com, which attempts to clear Evans's name while discrediting the victim. It refers to various aspects of the case. There is CCTV footage of the nineteen-year-old arriving at the hotel with McDonald; she is carrying a pizza box, which she forgets and then turns back to get. This was shown to the jury as evidence that she 'knew what she was doing' \u2013 that she was not unconscious and being dragged. Both McDonald and Evans claimed that the woman was asked if Evans could 'join in' but each said it was the other who asked. And because the victim has no memory of events, she could only testify as to what she can remember, which is her evening up to being in the takeaway, and then waking up in the morning. Further evidence was given by the hotel receptionist who listened outside the door while the sex took place and heard a man asking 'playfully' for oral sex.\n\nIt's all so gross and horrid, but how would you approach this case if you were a lawyer? How would you pronounce if you were on the jury?\n\nThis case illuminates how a man can rape without knowing it. Or rather, without considering his behaviour to be rape. There is a victim, whose life is deeply and irrevocably affected, and there is a man, Ched Evans, who, despite being found guilty by a jury of his peers, still shows no repentance. He absolutely and resolutely believes that he did nothing wrong. And so do his supporters, his family and his fianc\u00e9e. They have all the same information as you and consider him an innocent man. On the website there is a tab labelled 'Feedback from a very brave lady', which contains a letter from a woman who was raped and failed to get a conviction in court. She says, ' _This girl is the reason why me and plenty other girls who are VICTIMS don't get justice_.' In an echo of Galloway defending Assange, the website claims that this and other letters show ' _a clear message that Ched's conviction and the complainant's actions demean and diminish the act of rape_ '.\n\nIt is not a Welsh nineteen-year-old's fault that our legal system is not set up to try rape and sexual assault effectively. It's not her fault that other women are raped. It's not her fault that shame makes so many women hate themselves and each other instead of their transgressors. She is not 'lucky' that her rape was not violent and she is not 'lucky' that her case got a conviction where so many fail.\n\nWhy is it so difficult to understand that forced sex is a spectrum, with a wide-ranging variety of perpetrations? If you had your house burgled, would you feel affronted that someone else wanted to prosecute their pickpocket? Even if they'd been really drunk when it happened? We don't have these attitudes towards other crimes; we all agree that property is property and theft is theft. I would argue that lurking underneath sex crimes is the enduring, subconscious belief that women's bodies exist for male procreation and pleasure. That they are never really ours, despite what we're told. And we _are_ told nowadays \u2013 it's a huge part of feminism. We tell each other. My mother told me, as did books and magazines and teen television. Like a mantra: My body is my own. MY genitals, MY reproductive rights and MY pleasure, all mine.\n\nBut did anyone tell the boys? Were they repeating ' _their_ bodies, _their_ genitals, _their_ reproductive rights and _their_ pleasure' throughout _their_ adolescence? As discussed earlier, throughout modern history male sexuality has been celebrated and accepted while female desire has been denied and suppressed. Consequently male sexuality is perceived as instinctual, natural, something outside of their control. Intimate rape can be dismissed as an automatic response or passion: 'He was too aroused to stop' or 'He was drunk and couldn't control himself.' We admit this slice of animal behaviour as unfortunate yet to be expected. But the conscious brain is always aware, no matter how aroused or drunk someone is. Defecation is as strong an urge as ejaculation, yet society has taught humans of all genders to be fiercely private and respectful about this and not plop it all about like horses. Sane men do not lose control and begin masturbating in front of everybody at the party; they remain aware of right and wrong, of embarrassment and propriety, even when intoxicated. Respect for women's bodies, whether they be asleep, or naked or drugged, should be learned like toilet training.\n\nIt has to be taught. It's too dangerous to presume consent is obvious and that anyone who gets it wrong is a bad person. This needs deep thought and conversations. And alcohol is a very complicating factor. There is a point of drunkenness where people are considered unable to give consent to various things, including sexual contact. There are multitudes of warnings aimed at young women, shouting about the dangers of being wasted and vulnerable, while there is virtually nothing aimed at educating young men. And so you get cases like Ched Evans's, where the defendant doesn't even know that he has done wrong.\n\nKNOCK KNOCK\n\nSorry about this, I'll have to get that, I'm having a sofa delivered and\u2014\n\n_SARA jumps up and opens the door._\n\n**SARA**  \nOh. Hi Jeremy, I thought you were my sofa!\n\n**JEREMY**  \nNo, it's me, Jeremy. Your next-door neighbour. I heard you through the wall saying that if someone is drunk, I mean, if a woman I'm with is really drunk, then maybe I shouldn't have sex with her\u2014\n\n**SARA**  \nIs this the first time that's occurred to you?\n\n**JEREMY**  \nI'm not a bad guy, but what's the difference between drunk and too drunk?\n\n**SARA**  \nListen up, Jez, I was going to outline it to everyone anyway. Lucky I got that law A-level, hey?\n\n**JEREMY**  \nI thought you failed law\u2014\n\n_SARA ignores stupid JEREMY and says the following with her hand on her hip._\n\n**SARA**  \nHere is how it works. To be convicted of a crime under British law, two things have to be proven beyond reasonable doubt: _actus reus_ and _mens rea_. _Actus reus_ is the action of the crime, the physical aspect. So in a rape trial, proof that the sex (or penetration with an object or some other forced sex act) occurred is required. In _R_ v. _Evans_ , Evans admitted to the sex. This is common in rape cases as the defence is not usually that the intercourse or sex act didn't take place, rather that it was consensual.\n\n_JEREMY takes notes and is nodding._\n\n**SARA**  \n_Mens rea_ is the mental element, the intention to commit a crime. It's the difference between accidentally hitting Tim while putting on your coat (the act is there but no intention) and Tim being bloody annoying today so while putting your coat on you gave him a smack in the mouth. Tim's face hurts exactly the same whether you meant it or not, but if you did it on purpose then it's a crime.\n\nAnd now we see the whole twisted, tangled-up impossibility of trying rape. Victims are called liars by defence teams, told they wanted it, accused of being hypersexual, being fantasists, wanting to be beaten, turned on by knives, horny about gangs, etc., because this creates doubt in their testimony, and any doubt = no conviction. There are often only two witnesses (the victim and the rapist) and it is very very difficult to _prove_ that either account is true. Our legal system is built to protect the innocent from wrongful conviction, and so instead the guilty go free.\n\nBut as we have seen, the statutory definition of rape includes more than _mens rea_. You don't have to have _intended_ to rape someone; you can be convicted if you have been 'reckless as to whether she consents'. And it's here that all our assumptions and expectations diverge.\n\nHere is an example from my life. I thought, drunk at a party, that if I got into a bed and fell asleep that I would be left alone, that I was safe and amongst friends. My friend assumed that my being passed out fully dressed in his bed was a sign of sexual interest and that he could remove my trousers and underwear and start going down on me. This was my friend, I don't think he is a nasty person, but I also don't understand how he walked into that room and \u2013 that's it, I can't comprehend what went through his mind, how he came to think that was appropriate behaviour, WHAT ON EARTH MADE HIM DO THAT? He was drunk. I was drunk. But we are the same age and have grown up in the same city, influenced by the same culture, yet we do not seem to agree on the rules.\n\nAnd so with Ched Evans. He walked into a room where his friend was having sex and assumed he would be welcome too. Clayton McDonald expected him and had sent him that text. Men get aroused by watching each other have sex; this is animal behaviour. McDonald's consent towards Evans is clear, but what about the female partner? For all of the claims on the website defending Evans of the victim writing tweets about 'winning big' or being after the footballer's money, there is nothing at all to signify that the woman ever desired or planned to have sex with Evans. He was reckless as to whether she consented or not, and that is why he was convicted.\n\nNow, British law does not allow intoxication as a defence. If you were drunk when you punched poor old Tim, then that's your responsibility. You chose to get so inebriated that people around you were endangered. You're in charge of your own actions. If Tim was pissed when you hit him, it is still YOU that was at fault. Do you see?\n\n**JEREMY**  \nYes.\n\n**SARA**  \nSorry, I forgot you were here. What I am trying to say is that the onus should be on teaching young men how not to rape people when drunk, as it is they and only they who are legally responsible.\n\n**JEREMY**  \nYes, I got that. Anyway, better go, I think I can hear my cat calling me\u2014\n\n**SARA**  \nPlease stay, I think I have an idea...\n\n_JEREMY sits down politely and listens like a good boy._\n\n**SARA**  \nBeing drunk is the new married. It's viewed as a form of agreement or pre-consent and victims of sexual assault are seen as complicit in their experience. 'Oh, did you drink wine near penises? Well what did you expect?' It was Ched Evans who should've known there was such a thing as being too drunk to consent. His website should be blaming his school for insufficient sex education. He should be railing at a lad culture that shouts 'Any hole's a goal' at teenage boys and encourages them to see women as conquests rather than people. And he should be helping other young men avoid prison by educating them about how not to unwittingly rape someone. So this was my idea: do you remember ages ago when Tony Blair tried to bring in sexual consent forms?\n\n**JEREMY**  \nIT WAS AN ILLEGAL WAR!\n\n**SARA**  \nI'm not getting into that. In the early 2000s there was political discussion about consent forms being a way to combat rape, and although they never really took off there are lots of websites that do help people create them (if you are interested). But I thought, what about if we all had a virtual one in our heads. So that if we are with a partner who is highly intoxicated, we ask ourselves, 'If I was to get out a six-page legal agreement and ask them to read and sign it, would they be able to? Would they be able to focus on the wording, hold a pen, flick through the pages?' If the answer is no, then you my friend have found yourself a non-sexual partner to sleep next to respectfully. GOODNIGHT and I hope they don't puke on you. And here is an interesting fact to remember, Jeremy: when the level of alcohol in a person's blood goes over 0.08 per cent, they become unable to form long-term memories. This is why some people can seem to be functioning and yet not remember anything the next day. And you can spot this if a drunk person repeats themselves or forgets what they've already told you \u2013 this probably means they are in a blackout state. You can give them some water and not have sex with them. I also think that sex education with young people should involve hearing from those who have been assaulted. I think if boys and men empathised with certain experiences \u2013 being filmed without your permission, being flashed at, as well as violation and rape \u2013 then they'd be better equipped to combat the predatory culture that currently shapes them. Wouldn't they be less likely to slip a drug into a girl's drink if they had heard, as a fourteen-year-old, from someone whose life was ruined by a drug rape?\n\n_SARA walks around, flailing her arms and pretending she is a lawyer._\n\n**SARA**  \nBoys have to be taught to forget 'consent' and wait for _enthusiasm_. Sex is not something males do to females; it is something people do together. One partner's arousal and desire should be mirrored by the other, and in heterosexual sex, like in all animals, receptivity should be signalled by the female \u2013 and never taken for granted. Now _get out,_ Jeremy!\n\n_JEREMY leaves thinking sex education needs to be revolutionised in the UK. SARA knows she is being quite lecturey at the moment but she has all these opinions on this and it feels so important. She does some hula-hooping to calm herself down, then winks at you and beckons for you to follow to the next bit._\n\n* My inner monologue is late nineties.\n\n\u2020 Sweden was one of the first countries to legislate against marital rape, in 1965.\n\n# How Old Is Old Enough?\n\nWhen I was fourteen, my mum made me join a drama club as punishment. I'd had a party in our house without permission, she was staying out with her boyfriend, David. It wasn't even _my_ idea \u2013 Hayley (puke not laxative) told me that if I had a party then Steadman would come and he would kiss me and I was pretty keen for this to happen because I hadn't kissed a boy yet and I needed to, to prove I wasn't disgusting. So I'd agreed and Hayley invited all the popular people from school (she knew them cos she shoplifted on demand) and they all turned up at my house with bottles and cans and this was a terrible, terrible idea because they hated me and completely trashed my house. They were sick everywhere \u2013 on the sofa, in the bath, someone was sick in the rabbit hutch and the rabbit _ate_ it. A boy called Stuart decided to make a bonfire and started smashing up our chairs for firewood, and next door heard this through the walls and called the police. And when the police turned up Jo Summers went out and shouted that she was going to sue them because her dad was a barrister, and I don't know if that was a lie but it definitely wasn't the truth because her mum didn't even know who her dad was. And I was just walking around feeling nauseous \u2013 not from alcohol, nobody gave me any, I was sick with regret and shame and because Hayley had got off with Steadman right in front of me.\n\nI stayed up all night trying to tidy everything up but people had put cigarettes out on the carpet and poured cider on the sofa and there was too much for me to do. When Mum and David got home the next-door neighbours ran outside and told them what I'd done and they came into the house and Mum turned pale as she looked around and I begged her to hit me, because pain would be a relief from how guilty I felt. But she didn't. She was furious and disappointed in me and David was waggling a fork while he shouted. And the neighbours were pleased that I was getting told off, but then they said that they ran a drama group on Wednesdays and Sundays and that they would let me be in it and that it would 'keep me off the streets'. So it was decided \u2013 I did plays and danced around, I met nice people outside school, I gained confidence and I realised that I wanted to be famous, and now I AM FAMOUS so I haven't even been punished. In your face, Mum, it's too late to hit me now!\n\nOne of the things that I liked most about doing drama and being in plays outside school was that I knew people who were older. Boys who had cars and houses without parents in them. When I was fifteen and sixteen I had mates who were in their thirties and I thought it was because I was so incredibly mature and wise for my age. But when _I_ got older, when I got to the age they were then and I imagined hanging out with a teenager, I felt completely different about it. Suddenly it was creepy. Sixteen-year-olds are babies, tiny, little \u2013 even eighteen-year-olds are so small and new \u2013 whoever even looked that young? But I can remember how grown-up I felt then, and earlier, since about nine. Because we age one way, in one direction, every age we are is the most grown-up we've ever been. So you don't know, do you? When I was ten I thought I was fully formed and completely me and nothing would ever change. And I've continued to believe that at _every_ age and then later on reflect and laugh at how young and wrong and naive I was before. I feel protective over a past me who was adamant she didn't need or want protecting at the time. What I am trying to say is this: I got off with boys who were actually men, who were in their thirties, when I was in my teens and back then I thought it was a sign of great accomplishment, of sexual connoisseurship, and now I think its super-gross. Not illegal, I was not damaged by these experiences, but YUK.\n\nAge and sex is an issue it's difficult to be definite about. How you feel about it will depend on how old you are, whether you have children and how old _they_ are. How your first sexual experiences affected you, whether you felt in control. Imagine if we were all on a staircase and each step was a month and I shouted, 'Everyone stand where you think the age of consent should be' \u2013 we'd find it difficult to settle, wouldn't we? If sixteen is okay, what about fifteen and eleven months, and then fifteen and ten months? Fifteen and a half? But you can see you're getting closer to twelve down there in the distance and that is _definitely_ too low so we start stepping upwards again. 'Some sixteen-year-olds are very immature,' someone says. 'There is so much sexual pressure on young people nowadays,' says their friend. 'Maybe there would be less teenage pregnancy if we raised the age of consent to something crazy \u2013 twenty?' And on we go up the stairs, thinking, 'Of course some people will still have sex earlier but maybe there would be less expectation to do it,' and then we arrive and we're very high up and we smile at each other and snort at how ridiculous we're being \u2013 it's just sex after all, just nudity and wiggly rubbing \u2013 and down we go again to argue about young people's potential to make adult decisions versus the danger of leaving young people vulnerable to the manipulation of older people and so on all day until our thighs hurt too much to continue.\n\nPersonally I think sixteen is a perfect compromise for consent law. It's not perfect and individuals differ greatly, some people are 'ready' a lot earlier, some not until years later, but most of us by sixteen are capable of making the kind of mistakes that will constitute the majority of our sex lives: fancying idiots, obsessing about the disinterested, drunken doing-it that embarrasses you forever, and so on. Of course we're conditioned by the rules and expectations of our society so I probably think sixteen is a sensible age of consent _because_ I live in a country that tells me so. Laws that forbid sex and marrying while forcing us to attend school create space for us to be children before the graduated slide into adulthood and its expectations. But in other countries there are different expectations; childhood ends earlier. Children may work and get married before they hit their teens, just like in the olden days in the U of K.\n\nHere is my pretend TED talk about the first consent laws. Imagine I am wearing what you recognise as my sexiest beret and on the big screen behind me emoticons are flashing up to signify how I feel about some of the information.\n\n_SARA walks on stage. She seems nervous and is holding a pointy stick._\n\n**SARA**  \nHi guys, thanks for coming, thanks to Sweden for arranging this. Let's talk about the age of consent. The first recorded law concerning age and sex was created in the UK in 1275. The legal age for marriage was twelve \u2013\n\n_SARA points her stick at a pukey emoticon with fear in his eyes._\n\n**SARA**  \n\u2013 and this new ruling meant that 'ravishing' a maiden under this age 'with or without her consent' was now illegal. The words to notice here are 'ravishing', with its connotations of passion and 'he couldn't help himself' ness that have continued to confuse prosecutions of rape to the present day...\n\n_Thumbs-down emoticon._\n\n**SARA**  \n... and the significance of 'maiden'. This first ever anti-rape law only protected virgins. The original judgements on what we would call 'rape' and they called 'ravishing' were a type of property law. A girl's virginity was for her husband; its 'theft' was perceived as a crime against her father and future husband rather than herself. It was the taking of virginity that was a criminal act, not the assault itself.\n\n_SARA looks at the screen. There is a delay of a few seconds, then a poop-with-eyes emoticon appears. Light titters from the crowd._\n\n**SARA**  \nInterestingly, because male virginity has never had any bearing on male marriageability there is no mention of 'ravishing' young boys. Scarily, male children in the UK were not protected by age of consent laws until the 1970s, when feminist pressure groups\/heroes had the wording of statutes changed to protect 'people' and not just girls.\n\n_Germaine Greer giving a thumbs-up emoticon._\n\n**SARA**  \nFrom 1275 up until the nineteenth century, creating doubt that a rape victim was a virgin would be sufficient to avoid a prosecution \u2013 a defence technique that echoes on in the raking-through of modern victims' sexual history as a way of discrediting their testimony.\n\n_Sombre clapping. SARA tries to cheer everyone up a little bit by doing a cartwheel but the mood is still pretty serious._\n\nI have to stop the TED talk now because I can't think of any more emoticons. I don't get them on my phone \u2013 they come up as little empty boxes.\n\nThe story of how the age of consent was raised to sixteen is pretty incredible. In 1885 there was an investigative journalist called William Stead and he went undercover to interview procuresses and the girls they bought and sold. Stead realised how easy it was to trick a young girl (or persuade a poor and desperate one) into an act of prostitution. From the male customer's point of view a guaranteed virgin was less risky as a sex partner because she would be disease-free. Some even believed sex with virgins cured sexual diseases and sought them out for that reason. Plus we have to assume that the men found the girls' youth and inexperience a turn-on. So the virgins were worth money and there was this whole lucrative and evil business going on \u2013 and the women who ran it, who trafficked these girls, had no sympathy for their victims whatsoever, they referred to them as 'little fools' or sillies'. In his account of his investigations, Stead asks one procuress, 'Do the maids ever repent and object to be seduced when the time comes?'\n\n**MISS X**  \nOh yes, sometimes we have no end of trouble.\n\n**STEAD**  \nYou always manage it though?\n\n**MISS X**  \nCertainly. If a girl makes too much trouble, she loses her maidenhead for nothing instead of losing it for money.\n\nShe then goes on to describe the screaming and fighting of girls who have changed their minds. Girls that she has had to hold down. WHAT A NICE LADY. Stead pretends that he would like to 'seduce' some maidens and then meets all these girls who are completely naive. They don't know the names for body parts or that sex can make a baby or what the old man will do to them. All they've been told is the amount of money they will get and to expect pain.\n\nThe most significant element of Stead's discoveries is his demonstration that once a girl has been tricked into this first act, 'once her ruin has been accomplished', she is likely to prostitute herself again because she has no other choice. She can never be respectable, may never marry. Her 'seduction' could have created severe emotional and mental health problems. Or she might be pregnant! What he pierces so beautifully is the Victorian perception that prostitutes were bad, immoral people. He reports situations that could have happened to anyone. An Irish girl is at the left luggage office at Victoria station when a smart woman approaches, addresses her by name and asks who she is supposed to be meeting. My uncle, the girl says. He sent me to collect you, the woman informs her, then pops her in a carriage and whisks her off to a west London brothel, where six men force themselves on her throughout the afternoon. Stead outlines instances of girls being tricked into owing money for accommodation or dresses they had thought were gifts, and then pressured to sell sex to pay off the debts. Or drinks being spiked and girls waking up with the deed done. The shame surrounding sex meant that girls were punished after their assault by the attitude of the society around them.\n\nStead, who'd tried to get the police involved and was frustrated by their uncaring attitude, felt he needed stronger proof. So he bought a thirteen-year-old girl called Eliza Armstrong for \u00a35 from her mother. He had her transported to a brothel and drugged with chloroform. Then he entered the bedroom and waited. When Eliza awoke, she screamed for ages and nobody came to rescue her. Stead let her do this a while and then left, allowing everyone in earshot to assume that he'd 'seduced' her. Eliza was then transported to the continent and protected by the Salvation Army. Stead wrote up what he'd done, showing how simple and easy it was to kidnap and potentially rape a child, and this proved to Parliament that young women were not being legally protected. The Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 was passed and the age of consent for girls was now sixteen.\n\nHOORAY!\n\nThen William Stead got sent to prison because he had kidnapped that girl. Hang on, didn't you say he paid her mum? Yes, but he didn't pay her dad and that's who owned her, so he went to prison for a bit. Then a few years later he died on the _Titanic_. He was a cool guy, I think. I tried to look up what happened to Eliza Armstrong, but it's difficult to find much. She seems to have had a few husbands and kids. But I want the inside story, how affected she was, whether Stead was nice to her... I want to see her on the front of _That's Life!_ magazine: 'BOUGHT, SOLD and NOW THEY'VE CHANGED THE LAW' with a picture of her looking sad but you know she got \u00a3250 for her story and that's a lot in Victorian money.\n\nSO sex with someone younger than sixteen becomes a crime and nobody ever does it again, except it happens all the time. And as we've already explored, this issue is complicated. What distinguishes a sex crime? What differentiates a sex partner and a victim? For instance, this headline is pretty incendiary:\n\n'Judge Blames Girl, 16, for Sex with Teacher, 44.'\n\nIn January 2015 newspapers reported on the trial of a religious education teacher who'd had sex with a sixteen-year-old pupil in a PE cupboard. He received an eighteen-month suspended sentence. The story was titillating and emotive, hence its front-page dominance; the teacher had been _pursued_ by the girl in question, the judge called her 'a stalker' and said that 'if anything it was you that groomed him'. The supposed 'victim' had been active. It was consensual sex that she had wanted and initiated. She had been explicit, texting and seductive; how are poor RE teachers expected to cope?\n\nIf you were the judge would you have sent him to prison?*\n\na) Yes.\n\nb) No.\n\nc) Don't know, can I have a think about it?\n\nd) Princess Diana face.\n\nAll of the above in that order.\n\nThe attraction of youth is sensible biology. The clich\u00e9s of men leaving their wives for younger women, or middle-aged ladies seducing young waiters on holiday, make great sense for reproductive purposes. Some evolutionary psychologists argue that our ancestors would have found younger females attractive not just for their higher fertility but also because they were easier to dominate, to ensure paternity certainty. When you reverse the genders, mature females who have access to their own resources and do not need the strength or support of a co-parent can opt instead for the liveliness of young sperm. Our sexual urges are often inspired by who our body thinks is most likely to get us pregnant\/be impregnated by us. But that is not to excuse any behaviours \u2013 urges and drives are separate from actions, loins are not magnetically drawn towards others against our will.\n\nMy friend Sarah\u2020 teaches GCSE English so spends her working days with fourteen-to-sixteen-year-olds. I asked her how she felt when she heard news stories about a teacher having sex with a pupil and she explained she is aware all the time that she cannot be too friendly or sociable with pupils. She doesn't give out her phone number; she rejects friend requests on Facebook.\n\n**SARA**  \nBut are the kids _flirty_?\n\n**SARAH**  \nYeah, sometimes aggressively so. I've heard Year 9 girls asking teachers out on dates, or getting them to promise they'll go out with them when they're eighteen.\n\n**SARA**  \nAnd they agree?\n\n**SARAH**  \nThey might joke about it but it's the only way to get them to shut up. Girls get crushes on teachers all the time\u2014\n\n**SARA**  \nAnd how are teachers prepared for this? What's the training?\n\n**SARAH**  \nIf a kid approaches you in that way, you have to report it to the union\u2014\n\n**SARA**  \nBut you must have big conversations about it? Seminars and conferences about the ethics, and to prepare teachers to expect it?\n\n**SARAH**  \nNot really. You are just told to report it to the union.\n\nThe idea of grown men being attracted to teenage girls is understandably distasteful so it gets ignored. But merely wishing it didn't happen leaves young women vulnerable. The people who break the rules (and law) are seen as bad and lascivious rather than weak and average. Surely anyone working with young people has to be given a proper framework to deal with sexual feelings should they arise? There is a difference between desires and actions \u2013 I had a lovely long daydream about Terence Peterson today and that's A-OK. But if I physically forced a man to come on a country walk with me and threatened him until he pointed out raccoons and kingfishers and then proposed to me? That would be wrong.\n\nWhile I was talking to Sarah I remembered loads of horrible things I did to male teachers at school. I had a crush on a PE teacher and in the fifth year I told loads of people that I'd got off with him in the basketball cupboard. DEFINITELY nobody believed me. I was always doing things like this. I used to pretend I'd had sexual romances on holidays I hadn't been on and gave myself love bites on the only places I could reach, my upper and lower arms. But now it strikes me that I could have got that gorgeous teacher in a lot of trouble. It has echoes of that real-life case with its PE-cupboard virginity-taking and what unsettles me is how fledgling my feelings were. They were Bambi taking his first steps. If you'd asked me at fifteen, 'Do you really want to have sex with Mr Humphries during afternoon break?' I would have replied adamantly that YES I DID, sign me up and take me there. It was something I desperately desired without knowing what 'it' was. I was completely inexperienced and unable to envisage the reality, hungry for a concept.\n\nAged about twelve or thirteen, I'd begun to be scared of men. I'd always hated my mum's boyfriends, but as I became pubescent it all intensified and I couldn't be alone with one. Even with my dad \u2013 we had to see him once a month and I was always petrified he was going to ask for sex with me and I hated him. Men vibrated oddly all of a sudden. Everyone looked at me all the time. My uncle called me Jezebel and said I would get older men into trouble. Grown men started shouting at me from cars and vans. I was flashed at several times walking home in school uniform. On a crowded tube train a man rubbed his erection on my bottom. I felt threatened and I had no way of communicating how or why. This was all ironically coupled with a period of intense self-loathing and shame. I kept a hand in front of my mouth when talking because my teeth were so disgusting; I planned to have a nose job as soon as I was eighteen. I knew I was fat and I knew I smelled and I knew my body was full of disgusting things like pus and shit and blood. I knew that if I fancied a boy at school and put a letter in their bag they thought it was insulting and were mean. I shaved my love-bitten arms and my disappointing face while fantasising that the PE teacher would make everything better by finding me beautiful.\n\nI have lots of girl friends now (bragging) and they all went through a similar horrible phase with their fathers. The awareness of sexuality in each other is massive but unspoken. I think my dad is still weird with me. He lives in Australia now (to get away from how sexy I am?) and last year I was at the Melbourne comedy festival and he came to stay with me and I offered that he could sleep in the HUGE double bed with me and he reacted so uptightly, saying, 'That's a bit Greek tragedy,\u2021 isn't it?' and then he slept ON THE FLOOR. And every time I introduced him to someone the next day he would tell them this as an anecdote: 'She wanted me in her bed and I was like, \"That's a bit Greek tragedy!\" Ha ha ha.' I didn't think it was weird. I have slept in a bed with my mum, no problem at all, why should my dad be different? I asked him and he said, 'Of course it's different.' But WHY? Because my mother doesn't have a penis?\u00a7 We are human beings, not puzzle pieces that accidentally slot into each other. I don't really understand it, but incest taboo is a whole other subject for a whole other book. And you'll have to write it cos I'm busy with this one.\n\nMy adolescent fear of men did not extend to the ones in Take That. For years I emanated hot love for them constantly, like electric heat escaping from an open window, but hotter, HOTTER THAN THAT. The hours in bed before sleep were so frustrating. I would listen on a Walkman as Mark and Gary sang about how much they loved me while I became more and more alert and twitchy. I hadn't learned to masturbate yet, so there was no relief. It was physically painful. I've had actual relationships with people who I loved less. My feelings were real. My plans were solid \u2013 I completely believed I would marry one of Take That because of how my parents had met. I thought it was my destiny.\n\nOur house had a cupboard full of scrapbooks filled with Dad's face. There were Polaroids of my mum sitting outside Nanny Babs's house surrounded by olden-time girls in flares. To know that Mum had just picked him and then found him obsessed us. I decided that's how I would get a boyfriend. Cheryl and I would watch _Top of the Pops_ very expectantly, waiting for that 'certainty feeling' to happen, then we'd know: 'There he is, let's track him down!' But we didn't have any epiphanies so we simply selected our future husbands: Cheryl chose Robbie Williams and I chose Mark Owen, because she likes jokes and I'm scared of masculine men.\n\nHigh-status individuals like Mark and Robbie are attractive because the animal, non-logical aspect to our psychology believes them to be great for breeding \u2013 they have power and access to resources, that's the kind of shit that keeps babies safe and fed! When guys have talent or good looks there is the _additional_ bonus of great genes that would be inherited by offspring. Subsequent children would be more likely to become high-status too and then have surviving children themselves. It's a double win. Fancying someone is always a smokescreen for biological probability work; it might feel super-sexy, but it's mostly bodies doing maths. Of course we're not usually consciously aware of it, so we find reasons to explain away attraction, creating logical explanations: 'Oh, it's because that person is a great dancer,' or 'I love the way he plays guitar,' but subconsciously our bodies are trying to get us mating with those who would make and support the finest children.\n\nTeenage girls getting obsessive about famous people is so common it's a clich\u00e9. I could claim it's 'universal' but nothing ever completely is. Some teens may have a rare condition that causes them to believe they are a potato and thus only fancy famous potatoes? I'm sure people who grow up in nomadic jungle cultures without a TV don't lust after pop stars \u2013 they might ache for a handsome cloud they saw or a tree with a face carved in it?\u00b6 No matter the target, the passions of pubescent young women are understood as a phase in sexual development where feelings are explored for the first time via projection and so within a safe context. I was licking and pressing myself against posters on the wall that could not touch or press me back. It was a one-sided adventure.\n\nThese crushes are powerful, idealistic objectifications. Sometimes their object might be a teacher rather than a TV presenter or a musician. Mr Humphries was as distant and unknowable to me as Take That were.\n\nMy dad quit being in his band soon after meeting my mum. He doesn't often talk about that part of his life, but he once told me about having girls chasing him, and the dissonance created when strangers say they 'love' you. It must have been weird for him to see me and Cheryl living that in the other direction. My dissonance was reversed; how could Mark not know me when I loved him so much? How could he not feel it? I know that the feelings experienced are as real as anything, it's the target that's fictionalised. I used to have in-depth fantasies of what would happen if I ever met Mark Owen. There were various lead-ins: he might come in to award prizes at school,|| or spot me in the crowd at a concert. Or, most likely, Take That would be driving in a limo through Romford and it would break down on Marshalls Drive, WHERE I LIVED. I would just be walking home in my school uniform and would move straight past the sleek black car, assuming some local celebrity like Frank Bruno to be inside. But then Howard gets out and asks me for directions to Manchester. I am surprised but able to hide it, pretending I don't recognise him. It works because I am a great actor who does drama outside of school. The band are a long way from home; their limo driver needs to find a garage, which will take ages, but Howard really needs the toilet. I invite him and the rest of the band into my house.\n\n'Don't worry, Mum won't be back for ages,' I say coolly and then show them around our two-bedroom terrace. They can't believe how mature I am, and how down-to-earth I make them feel.\n\n'Beans on toast, guys?'\n\nThe band are starving and haven't had any normal people's food for years, but I make it for them and it is delicious. Luckily Kristyna isn't here or she would come in and spit choc ice at them like when Steve Penfold came round. Everything is going smoothly and the guys all really fancy me and are having a respectful discussion about who is going to have sex with me. I don't tell them I'm a virgin or anything, I just look out of the window and act older and then suggest, like it's just occurred to me:\n\n'We could all get in the bath?'\n\nThis would work better if we had a Jacuzzi but we don't. We do have a head sprayer shower attachment that we can use to swirl the water around a bit though. We could stick that on, and then I would let the 'lads' do whatever they wanted to me.\n\nMy fantasies were a way of testing what I could imagine letting them do. On my side it was always supplication and subjection. I would envisage acts of hurt and humiliation and reassure myself, YES, I would let Mark Owen do that, that's how much I cared for him. I didn't have any intention of receiving pleasure from him, other than his brief attention. Even if he wanted to do a poo on me. Or put things inside me or kick me, that would be fine because he would know that I existed, and so, for a few brief moments, I would.\n\nI consider my teenage daydreams to be evidence of several things:\n\n1. I had a bundle of very sexual emotions. Lust. Desire. Need for connection.\n\n2. I did not understand those emotions yet. No concept of consensual sex or my own pleasure and how I might find it.\n\n3. I am lucky I never met Take That.\n\nNot because they would've taken advantage of me but because I would've embarrassed myself horribly by force-feeding them breakfast foods. I did try and meet them. I always wore my best red velvet top to concerts in an attempt to catch their eye. And then, in 1995, ROBBIE LEFT THE BAND. I considered suicide for a bit, then realised, hang on, he's split off from the pack, he's weaker \u2013 more _vulnerable_ , I'll marry _him_ instead! I found out he was coming to LONDON to present _The Big Breakfast_ for a week. So I decided to follow in my mother's footsteps immediately after stealing from her purse. Cheryl and I got up at 4.30 a.m. to catch the train to Stratford, where the show was filmed from 7 to 9 a.m. The other girls screamed when Robbie came out to chat and do photos, but I just stared at him, willing him to notice me like an intense, completely creepy fourteen-year-old creep. After a couple of days my mum hid her purse and banned us from going any more in case we got murdered. So I ran away to live by the canal near where _The Big Breakfast_ was filmed. I lived there for about five, maybe six hours before it got cold and busy with potential murderers and I came home.\n\nSuch inebriating fandom is a childish rehearsal of adult feelings and can be experienced by girls as young as nine or ten. Yet admitting that children can have sexual emotions or motivations can be unsettling. Perhaps the fear is that acknowledging fledgling sexuality might excuse those who believe sex with children is morally okay. But while I would be first in the queue to protest the _sexualisation_ of kids (padded bras for eight-year-olds and saucy slogans on six-year-olds' knickers), it seems to me that by choosing to ignore children's sexual development, we have not worked out what it is: play. And practice. You know how lion cubs fight and tumble with each other all the time? That's part of the training for being an adult lion. They are building muscles and learning techniques of attack and defence. It's cute to watch because they are small and ineffectual but displaying adult actions. They give bites that don't hurt and scratches that don't penetrate. And when they take on a grown lion they are tolerated or ignored. Adult lions don't fight the cub as an equal and then claim, 'She was jumping on me like she wanted a proper ding-dong. What's a guy to do?'\n\nAnd so we reassess the solitary educator, like the RE teacher in the news story. It's not a crowd full of screaming fans he is faced with, but a persistent student with his phone number, annoying and fervent. And he needs to empathise with young women like her, who seem powerful and full of agency, but who are in a formative life stage and vulnerable to damage. That's why the law must protect young people from those who have power over them. Not because their virginity is precious or because they are too young for desire, but because true consent can only be given between equals. That's why the moves a student makes on a teacher have no bearing on his or her level of responsibility. But I think you knew that already and were waiting for me to catch up.\n\nSo far, so Anglocentric. In the UK any adult attracted to children under sixteen is called a paedophile and feared\/hated\/vilified\/used to sell newspapers. But that is not true of all countries. Here is a map with some countries' minimum age for sexual consent labelled \u2013 it gives a good idea of the range across the globe:\n\nEven with only twenty or so examples you can see the huge disparity. There are also countries that have no formal age of consent law, places like Saudi Arabia and Yemen. In these countries sex is not permitted outside of wedlock, but there is no age limit on when a girl can be married.\n\nHmmmmmm.\n\nOf course I'm biased, because I have been conditioned by my culture and society to believe that childhood is a human right. I cannot separate myself from OPINIONATED opinions that children shouldn't work, should be able to go to school and should not be married to men three times their age. And it's this _cultural_ difference that prevents an effective conversation about this. Someone might argue, 'If you live in a country where loads of your friends and relatives got married when they are thirteen or fourteen, that will seem normal to you.' But the normalisation of child marriage doesn't stop it causing emotional and physical injury and (sorry to be melodramatic) DEATH.\n\nGod it's horrible \u2013 it would be easier to respect cultural differences as none of our business and not talk about child brides. I am so tempted to skip it, write about something flippant instead. I've got loads of stories left, I haven't told you about the time I accidentally took speed or about this guy Ben who could only have sex to the _Cheers_ theme tune \u2013 why would I talk about something I have no experience of? Should I be barging in, giving my unasked-for judgements on a situation I don't understand? Then I remember I don't care, I have the microphone, _I_ worry about this and if I'm completely wrong then you are allowed to disagree with me in _your_ book.**\n\nI read about a young woman from Yemen called Najood Ali. When she was nine she was married to a man in his thirties. On their wedding night he beat and raped her, and this treatment continued for months until Najood took a taxi to the courthouse and demanded a divorce.\n\nYemeni law allows the marriage of children, but forbids sexual intercourse until they have reached the wonderfully vague age of 'suitable'. Najood's lawyer managed to successfully argue that she hadn't, and while the judge suggested she go back and live with her family for three years until she was of appropriate age (this is a common solution granted to young girls who are badly mistreated by their husbands), Najood said no and was granted a divorce. She was ten. It was the first case of its kind, and it has strengthened the movement against child marriages in her country.\n\nAround fifteen per cent of Yemeni girls will be married before they are fifteen years old. There is a respectful understanding between families that mature men who get married to pre-pubescent girls will not have intercourse with them until they are menstruating; however, there is little policing of this and, until Najood's case, no blame for those men who disobey. In 2013 an eight-year-old died from uterine rupture and internal bleeding after her forty-year-old husband had sex with her on her wedding night. I think we can agree arguments about cultural conditioning weaken when children are killed by penetration. The physical damage is an unquestionable sign that their bodies are not prepared for sexual intercourse. The statistics speak for themselves. Girls aged fifteen to nineteen are twice as likely to die in childbirth as those in their twenties; girls under the age of fifteen are five times more likely to die. Giving birth as a teenager, particularly below the age of fifteen, carries an increased risk of obstetric fistula because the pelvis is smaller.\n\nNajood Ali's story of mistreatment is horrific but not unique. Beatings and forced sex are used to subdue and oppress young brides, who are understandably upset at their new lives. Their experience is no less traumatic for being common. What happened to Najood also illustrates the economic reasons behind child marriage. Her family were poor. By marrying her they gained a bride price and lost the expense of feeding and clothing a female child who was never going to be a financial asset. In every country in the world the worst problems faced by girls and women are connected to poverty. Studies and statistics demonstrate that the more education a female child receives, the later (on average) she will marry. Education opens up her earning potential as an adult and it is only through this process that women will have a more equal role in their societies. 'So that's that solved,' say the UN, 'thanks Sara, we didn't realise it was so _easy_.'\n\nI know they're being sarcastic.\n\nHistory shows us that morality and attitudes to sexuality evolve slowly through a process of discussion and sharing ideas. We won't all agree, but that shouldn't stop us talking about how we feel and listening to each other. We have to lead this. And we will confabulate and we will assume and we'll be subjective but we mustn't let a fear of making mistakes keep us quiet. Writing this book I've realised a really obvious thing, that GROWING UP DOESN'T STOP. The changes, the unrecognisable past selves \u2013 it doesn't even slow down. I've learned so little. The extra years of adulthood only really gift me some resilience of experience. When I was young I didn't realise how young I was, and now I am old and I can't believe how childish my life is or how foolish my decisions are \u2013 like when a guy tells you he needs the _Cheers_ soundtrack to get an erection and you still sleep with him like an idiot.\n\nI think about what my life would be like as a mouse; it would be so much simpler and perhaps easier. But mice can't play the trumpet.\n\nMice can't write books and be grateful to their readers. And a mouse can't be filled with hope for the future.\n\n* Oh great, another quiz!\n\n\u2020 Her parents could spell.\n\n\u2021 You know, cos Oedipus did it with his mother. My dad is pretty clever.\n\n\u00a7 Bragging.\n\n\u00b6 There she goes, insulting the very people whose habitat was destroyed for the printing of this book. (E-habitat if you're on a Kindle.)\n\n|| 'Simon' from _EastEnders_ had done this because his dad was our head of year. Maybe one of the other heads was related to Mark? The gates were open between celebrity-land and Gaynes School.\n\n** Congratulations on your book deal, it's about incest if I remember rightly?\n\n# Afterword & Charitable Organisations\n\nI have changed how I feel about people. Consciously, I made a decision. Now I think about people how I think about dogs. What I mean is, I like all dogs. Love them, automatically. Never met one I didn't like. Can't imagine one I hated. Sure, oh yes, a dog might bite me or growl like he hates me, but I would instantly forgive it. Perhaps it is hungry or had a difficult childhood? Maybe I'm standing in its nest? And so this is how I've decided to feel about people \u2013 every behaviour has a cause, be it chemical or environmental or evolutionary or genetic or whatever. I have decided to be interested in these causes as well as the effects, I have decided to forgive people like the dogs\u2014\n\nI AM NOT AN APOLOGIST.\n\nI am not saying all of the horrid human behaviours are okay because we are animals and can't help ourselves. But maybe all of us understanding more about why bad things happen can help us stop them? I read somewhere that humans are a 'self-domesticating' species. What we did consciously with wolves to provide all those lovely cuddly dogs, we have unknowingly been doing within our own species \u2013 we reward teamwork and love and generosity in our relationships and with our sex. We are gradually evolving out of our brutality. Which is nice to think about.\n\nBut remember those glow worms shagging away on the street lamps? Just as they could not have evolved the ability to differentiate between electric lights and lady glow worms, so we did not evolve for a world like this. We did not know we were going to be expected to empathise with people in other countries who we will never meet, that we would need to care about people who don't even exist yet and whose planet we are destroying. So we suffer from empathy failure. We retain selfish attributes \u2013 a tribal sense of ownership, a greed for resources and looking after our own. But we also have pleasure centres in our brain that reward us when we share. We get dopamine hits when we help others and when we give and receive knowledge. A human being is a balanced creature: we ensure our own survival at all costs, but survival has always involved each other. Empathy is a muscle that can be improved if you work at it.\n\nSo let's help each other. Sorry to be a capitalist scumbag but money underwrites everything; without it there is no freedom. Here's a T-shirt slogan for ya: 'Those without cash are trapped'.\n\nHere are some brilliant charities to support across the world, and why:\n\n*\n\nThis list is not exhaustive but includes a variety of charities who work in the UK or abroad tackling some of the issues that I have touched upon in the book. The websites are full of information if you are interested in reading further, and many have campaigns that you can get involved with or share online. They all have pages where you can donate or, if you can't, guilt-trip someone else into giving \u2013 perhaps while they are eating a cake or enjoying an episode of _EastEnders_.\n\nwww.actionaid.org.uk\/ These guys work on behalf of the most vulnerable women and children in the world, those who are affected by extreme poverty or natural disaster.\n\nwww.girlsnotbrides.org\/about-child-marriage\/ Lots of information on the age of consent, child marriage and the various countries where young girls are not currently being protected by the law.\n\n<http:\/\/rapecrisis.org.uk\/> A UK charity offering counselling and advice as well as running campaigns that raise awareness and put pressure on government. They have up-to-date statistics and links to similar organisations.\n\nwww.microloanfoundation.org.uk\/ These great guys give small loans for women to start their own businesses in sub-Saharan Africa. All research shows that supporting women to become independent and self-sufficient is the quickest way to rebuild damaged societies.\n\nwww.fistulafoundation.org\/ This charity works to help women in developing countries by repairing fistulas. They also provide education and training and are just amazing.\n\nwww.refuge.org.uk\/ Refuge works to protect and support women escaping domestic violence. This sector of charitable work is much needed in the UK and is drastically underfunded by our current government. See also www.endviolenceagainstwomen.org.uk\/ who run campaigns and raise awareness.\n\nThe following charities provide sanitary products to women in developing countries or places that have been affected by war or disaster:\n\nwww.path.org\/projects\/sanitary-pads.php\n\nwww.daysforgirls.org\/\n\nwww.afripads.com\/\n\n<http:\/\/lovinghumanity.org.uk\/> This organisation is working to give women the means to make sanitary products so that they can sell them \u2013 so clever.\n\nCharities working to end FGM include:\n\n<http:\/\/28toomany.org\/>\n\n<http:\/\/forwarduk.org.uk\/>\n\nwww.thecruelcut.org\/ \u2013 there are tons of videos and educational resources on this one.\n\nThat's enough to be getting on with.\n\n# Selected Reading\n\nI found some amazing books while researching for this book and if you're at all interested in learning more you should check some of these out:\n\n_Sex at Dawn_ by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jeth\u00e1\n\n_Evolution and Human Sexual Behavior_ by Peter B. Gray and Justin R. Garcia (a text book really, so full of info)\n\n_The Origin of the World: Science and Fiction of the Vagina_ by Jelto Drenth\n\n_Curvology: The Origins and Power of Female Body Shape_ by David Bainbridge (sports bra anyone?)\n\n_Fat is a Feminist Issue_ by Susie Orbach\n\n_Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex_ by Mary Roach (funny and facts too)\n\n_Sperm Wars_ by Robin Baker (dubious science and much debated but lots to think about)\n\n_The Equality Illusion_ by Kat Banyard\n\n_The Descent of Woman_ by Elaine Morgan (aquatic ape theory!)\n\n_Rape and the Culture of the Courtroom_ by Andrew E. Taslitz\n\n_The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon_ by William Stead (the age of consent\/died on titanic guy)\n\n_Transforming a Rape Culture_ by Buchwald, Fletcher and Roth\n\n_Why We Love and Lust_ by Dr Theresa L. Crenshaw (all about all the hormones!)\n\n_Zero Degrees of Empathy_ by Simon Baron-Cohen (talks briefly about anorexia and self-empathy)\n\n_Rape on Trial_ by Zsuzsanna Adler (a bit out of date but great overview of rape laws)\n\n_Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll_ by Zoe Cormier\n\n_Come as You Are_ by Emily Nagoski (women and sex and pleasure and I can't recommend this enough)\n\n_The Circumcision of Women_ by Olayinka Koso-Thomas\n\n_Perv: The Sexual Deviant in All of Us_ by Jesse Bering\n\n_The Case of the Female Orgasm_ by Elizabeth A. Lloyd\n\n_Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank_ by Randi Hutter Epstein M.D\n\n_Sex and Punishment: Four Thousand Years of Judging Desire_ by Eric Berkowitz (great for witches and vestal virgins)\n\n_The Mating Mind_ by Geoffrey Miller\n\n_I am Nujood: Age 10 and Divorced_ by Nujood Ali (she wrote this with the lawyer who got her divorce)\n\n_Survival of the Prettiest_ by Nancy Etcoff\n\n_The Science of Love and Betrayal_ by Robin Dunbar\n\n_Sex on Earth_ by Jules Howard (where I found out about the glow worms!)\n\n_Heretics_ by Will Storr (how I found out about confabulation and the experiments that proved it a GREAT book)\n\n_The Technology of Orgasm_ by Rachel Maines (history of vibrators)\n\n_The Story of the Human Body_ by Daniel Lieberman (excellent for fat info)\n\n_The Red Queen_ by Matt Ridley (an amazing evolution overview)\n\n_The Female Brain_ by Louann Brizendine M.D.\n\n_Delusions of Gender_ by Cordelia Fine (sex bias in science testing)\n\n_Anatomy of Love_ by Helen Fisher (and find her TED talk too!)\n\nOn my website www.sarapascoe.com I have created a page with more _Animal_ related stuff, links to relevant articles and new studies as well as some interesting online resources and what have you.\n\n# Shouty Appendix\n\n### We need to change how rape is tried in courts.\n\nYou will be aware of the very low conviction rates for this crime. Only 5.7 per cent of reported rapes end in a guilty verdict. We're all familiar with this, we mutter and complain and shrug our shoulders \u2013 or we are furious with the unfairness of it, but we don't know what to do.\n\nThe system has to change. We have to demand it.\n\nRape cannot be tried like other crimes, it is not like theft or driving without a licence. Juries and judges already understand the clear-cut rules of property ownership or traffic law, it does not confuse them. Conviction rates for rape are stupidly low because (as with all criminal charges) guilt has to be proved beyond reasonable doubt, and with rape, doubt is too easily created. There are very often no witnesses; it is her word against his. To create doubt the victim is denigrated, she is attacked, she is insulted. This does not happen with the victims of other crimes, and it should not be permitted when trying rape.\n\nThere is a widely held assumption that some women lie about being raped for attention or to exact revenge. Such cases are often reported in the media. They capture the public imagination. All the legal statistics show that the rates for false claims of rape are exactly the same as false accusations of any other crime \u2013 about two per cent. Yet people saying they were robbed or hit by a joyrider are not routinely accused of lying in court They're not _all_ called liars because a very small percentage of people sometimes lie.\n\n### There should be separate courts for crimes involving sex.\n\nThe current system is a failure. It punishes all victims and very few offenders. It is unjust. With specialised rape courts, perhaps more people would report the crime and would be willing to seek justice.\n\nIn these new courts, judges and juries and magistrates must be given specialist training in the behaviour of victims so they understand how fear and shock affect the body and the memory. They must be taught the ranges of response to personal violence. They must be addressed by experts so they become able to assess trauma. The people working in the new system must all understand that fear often makes people unable to fight and scream. That shock often means a victim does not report a rape, or even tell anybody for a period of time.\n\nThere must be adaptations to the burden of proof that are specific to crimes involving sex.\n\nDuring rape trials, defence lawyers should not be able to directly cross-examine victims. There should be mediators who are able to put the questions across, making them less emotive and painful. The lawyerly tactics are an unnecessary part of rape prosecution and should be removed. Words are used as weapons to discredit \u2013 to pressurise women into dropping their charges. No part of a woman's sexual history is relevant to a rape case. Lawyers should be given heavy fines for any type of sexual shaming or insinuation. If they repeatedly offend they should be struck off, sent to prison, thrown in the sea. People who report their car being stolen are not questioned about how often they'd let someone borrow it. A boxercise class would not be brought up to discredit you if you were claiming you'd been punched.\n\nOur culture's misunderstanding of female sexuality is being used against rape victims.\n\n### Children's sexual education needs vast improvement.\n\nEvery year in secondary school children should be taught together about consent. The lessons could involve analogies, philosophy and ideas. They should involve questions about empathy \u2013 how do we know what other people feel? How do we know when we have hurt somebody? Older children would then have lessons that extended these ideas towards sexual behaviour, discussing complex ideas of right and wrong and how to respect boundaries while giving and receiving pleasure. They should be taught about the difference between active wanting \u2013 desire and arousal \u2013 and passivity, allowing somebody to do things with your body. Children of fifteen should then be allowed to debate the ethics of pornography and prostitution: what is consent when it is paid for? Can consent be bought? If someone is financially desperate and someone else pays them to do something they don't want to, was there consent or was there coercion? Or force?\n\nSocietal attitudes to sex could be changed within a generation. And it would be interesting too.\n\n# Acknowledgements\n\nHere is where I get to thank everyone without even winning an Oscar!\n\nThank you to my agent and friend (and future wife?) Dawn Sedgwick, my career mum, who changed my life and shouted at everyone until they gave me a book deal. A thousand thank yous to Faber for believing I could write a book and giving me so much time; eternal gratitude to Sarah Savitt for getting my ball rolling. And Julian, dear Julian, my editor, who twinkles nicely as he sits in a chair while I tell him spooky facts about the female reproductive system. Thank you for being so super-chilled and relaxed while I frippered about and missed a million deadlines. Thank you to the brainboxes Robin Dunbar and Anne Miller for fact-checking and reading at the draft stage and for your ideas and cautious corrections. Thank you to Eleanor Rees for copy-editing and knowing much more about everything than I do. This book was a group effort, yet I have selfishly insisted I was the only one on the cover. Thank you to everybody who made this book physically possible.\n\nSoppier thanks go to my sisters, Cheryl and Kristyna, for making me laugh and making me proud. And for those brilliant nieces you made for me to play with, for Rosa and Hollie. I learned new things above love when I became an aunty, and it's for them I want the world to be a bit nicer. Thanks and love to my dad and my Kirsten. Thank you for always understanding creativity and anxiety and for being supportive without constraints. I love you both so much and it meant the world when you checked in to see how I was doing or let me gabber on talking through ideas.\n\nThank you to my best friends, Cariad and Vanessa. Thank you for a friendship so intense it would shame most romances; thank you for all the conversations and opinions, for your emotional bravery and cleverness and for inspiring and stimulating me for over a decade. Hayley, thank you for letting me tell some of our secrets and for being my first proper friend and for never ever being shocked at the world or its inhabitants. You are continually interesting and I am lucky geography and a parental punishment gave you to me.\n\nThe best thing about stand-up (apart from all the pounds and claps) was that I got to meet the most incredible people \u2013 Josie Long, Bridget Christie, Jess Fostekew, Roisin Conaty, Katherine Ryan, Aisling Bea, Tiffany Stevenson, Sarah Millican, Shappi Khorsandi, Lou Sanders, Tania Edwards, Celia Pacquola, Sarah Kendall and Felicity Ward. Thank you for positive words when I was thirsty for them, for the best chats, for _understanding_ and for making me laugh my wobbly arse off whenever you perform. It's all love from me.\n\nJohn-boy, my idiot in crime. Thank you for writing me letters when I lost my confidence and for making me get back to writing when I was having too much fun. Thank you for a million adventures and a love so huge I had to write about it.\n\nThank you to my mum, Gail, the hero of the piece. The woman who loves me even while I subjectively edit my childhood and who respected my need to write such personal things about her life. After all those teenage years of yelling 'I wish I wasn't even born', can I now say thank you for making me and for sharing your life with me so openly? Thank you.\n\n# About the Author\n\nAs a stand up, Sara Pascoe has starred on _Live at the Apollo; QI; Never Mind The Buzzcocks; Room 101_ (all BBC), along with _8\/10 Cats_ and being a regular contributor on two series of _Stand Up for The Week_ (both C4). _Sara Pascoe vs History_ earned her a prestigious Fosters Comedy Award nomination for Best Show at the 2014 Edinburgh Festival. Sara won the 2014 Chortle Award for Best Breakthrough Act. As an actress, Sara has enjoyed series regular roles in _W1A_ and _Twenty Twelve_ (both BBC). Sara has written for the _Guardian_ , the _Independent_ and _Standard Issue Magazine._\n\n# Copyright\n\nFirst published in 2016   \nby Faber & Faber Ltd   \nBloomsbury House   \n74\u201377 Great Russell Street   \nLondon WC1B 3DA   \nThis ebook edition first published in 2016\n\nAll rights reserved   \n\u00a9 Sarah Pascoe, 2016\n\nDesign by Faber   \nPhotography \u00a9 Dave Brown \/ Ape Inc.\n\nThe right of Sarah Pascoe to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988\n\nThis ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly\n\nISBN 978\u20130\u2013571\u201332523\u20138\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\nTHE DIGEST OF ROMAN LAW\n\nADVISORY EDITOR: BETTY RADICE\n\nFLAVIUS PETRUS SABBATIUS IUSTINIANUS was Roman Emperor of the East, A.D. 527\u201365, having first ruled jointly with his elderly uncle the Emperor Justin from 518 to 527. He had a strong sense of his imperial rank and mission. In the East he held Persia in check by a war fought in Syria and Mesopotamia, 527\u201332, and by further campaigns from 540 onwards. In the Balkans he dealt successfully with a succession of threats from barbarian invaders. At home, his rule was shaken in 532 by the famous 'Nike' riots, which he finally quelled in blood. It was in the West, however, that Justinian's ambitions were made clear with his determination to reassert forcibly the majesty and control of the Empire. In campaigns fought in Africa and Italy through the great general Belisarius, he was able to largely recover the Western Empire by the year 540. Justinian's excessive financial administration resulted in the heavy indebtedness of the state. Nevertheless, as befitted his grand conception of this office, he built on a lavish scale; the Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople being his greatest monument. Vexed by the Monophysite heresy, he determined to impose peace on the Church and found a formula for unity at the Council of Chalcedon. His supreme achievement, however, was the great codification of Roman law (the _Digest, Institutes_ and _Novellae_ ). His long reign ended in darkness, with storms gathering and the Empire ravaged by plague.\n\nCOLIN KOLBERT was educated in the Classics at Queen Elizabeth's, Barnet, and in the Law at St Catharine's College, Cambridge (where he completed his Ph.D.), and Lincoln's Inn (where he was called to the Bar). He has held university lectureships at Oxford, where he was Fellow and Tutor in Jurisprudence at St Peter's College, and at Cambridge, where he was Fellow, Tutor and Director of Studies at Magdalene College. His recent publications include works on English, Scots and Irish land law and African customary land tenures. He also writes on music. He is now a Circuit Judge and an Emeritus Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge.\nJUSTINIAN\n\nTHE DIGEST OF ROMAN LAW\n\nTHEFT, RAPINE, DAMAGE AND INSULT\n\nTRANSLATED BY C. F. KOLBERT\n\nPENGUIN BOOKS\nPENGUIN BOOKS\n\nPublished by the Penguin Group\n\nPenguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England\n\nPenguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA\n\nPenguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia\n\nPenguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M4V 3B2\n\nPenguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi \u2013 110 017, India\n\nPenguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand\n\nPenguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa\n\nPenguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London, WC2R 0RL, England\n\nwww.penguin.com\n\nThis translation first published 1979\n\nCopyright \u00a9 C. F. Kolbert, 1979\n\nAll rights reserved\n\nExcept in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser\n\nISBN: 9781101491270\n\n# CONTENTS\n\n_General Introduction_\n\n_The Legal Background_\n\n_The Roman Law of Delicts_\n\nConcerning the Lex Aquilia\n\nConcerning Theft\n\nConcerning Robbery with Violence and Riotous Assembly\n\nConcerning Insulting Behaviour and Scandalous Libels\n\n_Notes_\n\n_Further Reading_\n\n# GENERAL INTRODUCTION\n\nTHE civil law of Rome in its developed form as it has come down to us is undoubtedly one of the greatest achievements of the human mind and spirit. After so many centuries of so-called civilization, progress and culture it is well for twentieth-century man, taking for granted, as he does, that among the plethora of things which the state will provide for him is a system of law which he supposes will ensure justice, and regulate society, to reflect that he owes directly to the Romans the very existence of a theory of such a thing as law. Had that theoretical base not been brought into existence, present-day lifestyles would be unlikely to exist either. The Romans were the first to regard law as a science by means of which they could look at the world, with all its people and property and their intermingling relationships, through juridical concepts every bit as orderly as the concepts used by, say, mathematicians and physicists for their particular observations. European lawyers in particular (the English Channel was largely responsible for a different development in the British Isles \u2013 the common law rather than the civil law of Rome) have kept alive many of the basic notions of the ancient Roman law as a basis for their present juridical systems. It was not so much the technical apparatus of the Roman law which proved of such value to them, but its clarity, simplicity and orderliness which have allowed this long and continuous development to take place.\n\nThe story is of course a long one \u2013 the Emperor Justinian, who brought the ancient law to its finest flowering, died in A.D. 565 \u2013 and it is also a complex one, as indeed any history must be of the development of laws which claim to bring system and order to more or less the whole range of human activity, but the enduring nature of the underlying influence of classical Roman law has been graphically \u2013 and reasonably \u2013 described as being like a duck as it swims, bobs and dives in the water: it hides itself at times, but is never quite lost, always coming up again alive. This idea has been expressed by numerous writers. One of the most fulsome expressions of the continuing (though not necessarily continuous) and pervading (though not all-pervading) influence of Roman law upon subsequent civilization is that of d'Entr\u00e8ves:\n\nIt is no exaggeration to say that, next to the Bible, no book has left a deeper mark upon the history of mankind than the Corpus Iuris Civilis. Much has been written about the impact of Rome upon Western civilization. Much has been disputed about 'the ghost of the Roman Empire' that still lurks far beyond the shores of the Mediterranean. The heritage of Roman law is not a ghost but a living reality. It is present in the court as well as in the market-place. It lives on not only in the institutions but even in the language of all civilized nations.\n\nTo the pessimist or the sceptic, who too readily accepts the view that ideologies are nothing but a superstructure of facts, the history of that heritage is a reminder of the predominance of the spiritual over the material factor. 'The history of Roman Law during the Middle Ages testifies to the latent vigour and organizing power of ideas in the midst of shifting surroundings' [Vinogradoff; cf. the 'duck' idea, above]. The revival of Roman Law was a powerful leaven in the transformation of the social and political structure of Europe. Those who speak of a _damnosa hereditas_ have their eye only on one side of the picture. They overlook what is our greatest debt to the Roman inheritance: the notion that law is the common patrimony of men, a bond that can overcome their differences and enhance their unity.\n\nBefore any evaluation of the place of Roman law in the life of the Roman people and its effects on modern law can be attempted or any verdict passed on the achievement of Justinian, a brief outline will have to be given of the development of the Roman law and the sources from which it was drawn. No system of law can be understood without some knowledge of the history of the society for whose use it was evolved and whose relationships it was intended to regulate. The various standard histories of Rome give detailed accounts of the political and social evolution of the Roman state, of its internal politics and its civil and external wars; many of them also attempt to give some cultural background by reference to Latin literature and Roman building, but it is remarkable that scarcely any of them make more than passing reference to that vital ingredient upon which the much-vaunted Roman administration depended, the Roman law. This is no place to embark upon any sort of general history of Rome, but since even that diminishing number of people who nowadays study ancient history are unlikely to have made acquaintance with Roman legal history, what follows is an attempt to sketch, albeit briefly, the main features of the development of that law so that it may be set into its context against the more familiar history of events in general. Above all it is vital to bear in mind, because of the foreshortening or telescoping effect of looking back upon events far in the past, that the Corpus Iuris Civilis of Justinian, which was completed in A.D. 534, came at the end of a development of laws which had spread over thirteen centuries. English land law is thought to have a long history: indeed it is on this account that it has acquired much of its complexity. Some of its basic notions literally came with the Conqueror; Edward I made far-reaching reforms in statutes which directly affect every conveyance made today, and the extent of legal memory, whereof the mind of man runneth not to the contrary, was set at 1189. How long ago we think the Conquest was! After all, we recently celebrated its ninth centenary; and Edward I's statutes will soon be seven hundred years old. Were Justinian embarking upon his _Digest_ now he would be thinking back to the mists of time two hundred years before Alfred was burning the cakes in the ancient kingdom of Wessex.\n\n## THE SOURCES OF THE LAW\n\nSome understanding of the sources from which the Roman law developed is necessary for an appreciation not only of its growth and its operation, but even of its statement as set out in the _Digest_. The part played by the magistrates and the jurists was critical in the evolution of the law to meet changing circumstances as Rome grew from a small, primarily agricultural city state into the greatest military and trading power of the ancient world and one of the greatest empires in man's history. The perusal of even a short passage of the _Digest_ , which is composed almost entirely of revised statements of authority by the jurists, quickly shows also how important was the law of procedure which regulates the forms of action to be employed in particular circumstances in allowing the law to operate with sufficient flexibility, and there are also included quotations from the Edicts, those statements of policy which the magistrates issued upon entry into office as a sort of manifesto indicating their plans for the application of the laws in various situations. The sources, then, of Roman law are traditionally divided into three main streams: statutes, the Edicts of magistrates, and the extensions of principle through the 'interpretation' of the jurists.\n\n(i) _The law-making assemblies_\n\n' _Statute_ ' means an enactment of a rule of law by the constitutionally appropriate legislative body. In the Roman Republic there were three such bodies: the _comitia centuriata_ and the _comitia tributa_ , which enacted a form of statute known as _lex_ (and often known by the name of its proposer, for example Lex Aquilia, the various Leges Juliae), and the _concilium plebis_. Strictly speaking an enactment of this latter body was _plebiscitum_ , and only binding on the plebs and not the whole people unless approved by the Senate. However, this requirement seems to have been abolished by the Lex Hortensia of about 287 B.C. This law was itself a plebiscite (the 'lower house' it seems could impose its will upon the upper, just as our House of Commons seems able to steamroller the House of Lords into accepting measures to restrict its own powers) and _plebiscita_ were often referred to as _leges_ , especially once they came to bind the whole people.\n\nIt is the statute or act of parliament which occurs first to the layman when he thinks of the law. However, in Roman law, just as in our own common law (at least until the recent great increase in state activity in more and more spheres of life, which can only be done by Act, Regulation and Statutory Instrument of Parliament), statutes played a relatively minor part. The English courts and the Roman jurists were a much greater influence, and with their resource and subtlety provided a wealth of detail and flexibility beyond the means of even the most skilled legal draftsman. There was, however, one law of particular and original sanctity to the Romans, which was _lex_ and was the foundation stone of the great legal edifice which developed over succeeding centuries \u2013 the Law of the Twelve Tables.\n\nThe Twelve Tables are the earliest firm statement of any part of Roman law that has come down to us. There are traditions of legislation by the more or less legendary kings, the last of whom, Tarquin the Proud, was expelled from Rome in 510 B.C., but these so-called Laws of the Kings were probably no more than declarations of ancient custom and religious practice. Little is known of them apart from purported citations by non-legal authors and it is quite certain that they played no part in developing the later law. The Twelve Tables are of a wholly different order of importance. Their production was the outcome of one of the phases of the struggles between the 'upper crust' Patricians and the 'common people', the Plebeians. The law had been the preserve of the Patricians and its administration a semi-holy mystery known only to them. The Plebeians, who were the majority of the population, had no knowledge of its content and demanded that it be published. The traditional story is that ten men, the Decemvirs, were sent to Greece in 451 B.C. to study the laws of Solon (at this time, having yet no developed law, the Romans revered the Greeks in this sphere too, though here at least they were later to surpass them), in the light of which they compiled a code which was set up in the market place on ten inscribed bronze tablets. Two more were added a year later and the twelve were approved as a _lex_ by the _comitia centuriata_ in 450 B.C. They consisted mainly of ancient custom, but there seems also to have been some innovation and some incorporation of what the Decemviri had learned of Greek law. The Gauls are said to have destroyed the original bronzes in the Sacking of Rome in 390 B.C. Be that as it may, the law of the Twelve Tables has not come down to us in its original form, though it is possible to deduce a good deal of it through numerous references in later writings, some of which purport to give quotations. It was, in the course of time and changing conditions, superseded by later laws long before the end of the Republic, but the Twelve Tables continued to be held in great reverence, and Cicero recorded that in his younger days schoolboys had to learn them by heart at school. Such rules as we know are simple, and concerned procedure rather than substantive law, no doubt because the law was already regarded as the proper sphere for experts, whereas a simple idea of procedure was what the common man needed to know. The opening passage gives some idea of the nature of the Twelve Tables:\n\nIf a man is summoned to appear in court and does not come, let witnesses be heard and then let the plaintiff seize him. If he resists or absconds, the plaintiff can use force. If he is ill or too old, let the plaintiff provide a beast to bring him: but if he declines this offer, the plaintiff need not provide a carriage... If a man is killed while committing theft in the night, that killing is lawful.\n\nIn the four centuries between the enactment of the Twelve Tables and the end of the Republic we know of only thirty or so statutes affecting public law. The law, however, cannot stand still if the society it serves is changing, and the power of 'interpretation', entrusted at first to the Pontiffs as a quasi-religious mystery, but later to the jurists, coupled with the powers of the magistrates ensured that the law did adapt to the changing requirements of the people.\n\n(ii) _The magistrates_\n\nThe superior magistrates of the Republic all possessed the power to issue Edicts, which were probably at first, as has been mentioned, statements of how they intended to fulfil their duties during their year of office. It is from the Edicts of those magistrates who had powers of jurisdiction that there grew up a body of law known as the _ius honorarium_ which stood side by side with and in effect modified the operation of the formal rules of the _ius civile_ in much the same way as equity developed in England to supplement and temper the much more rigid common law. The most important of the magistrates in this context was the Praetor, for his powers extended over the procedures and remedies of the law, and so even without making any new rules as such he was able indirectly to alter the law by influencing the way in which it was put into practice. His concern was the administration of the private law between citizens, and it was to this end that he had a general supervision over litigation and the granting or withholding of remedies; but in a broader context it was by setting out in his Edict the principles upon which he would act in regulating procedure that he was able to have such a profound effect upon the development of the law.\n\nModern lawyers tend to look upon the law as conferring rights; primitive lawyers usually look upon the law as a collection of remedies to deal with specific wrongs. This was the case in the old common law of England, which consisted in a number of writs each of which was used to start a particular sort of action for redress of a particular sort of legal wrong. It was also the case at Rome, but the Praetors seem to have realized early on that by granting a new right of action where none existed before, or by extending an existing right to cover new circumstances, they were in practical effect extending or amending the law itself. Eventually the ancient forms of action gave way altogether to a new form, which could be expressed for the court not in the old ritual forms, but in the words of a formula, a statement similar to the pleadings in our modern procedure. Significant though this change was, affecting fundamentally the whole operation of the law and its future development, we do not know exactly when, or how, it took place. It received formal blessing in the Lex Aebutia of uncertain date, though it is generally agreed to have been enacted between 149 and 126 B.C. At any rate the new formulary scheme of procedure was in operation in the last quarter of the second century B.C. Throughout the _Digest_ there are references indicative of the Praetor's power through this control over procedure. Discussion of a case frequently ends with a statement that the Praetor will or will not in such circumstances grant an action to the plaintiff.\n\nThere were two Praetors in any given year. They held office together, the Urban Praetor being concerned with the people of Rome, who were the prime subjects of the _ius civile_ ; indeed in its original meaning this term indicated the law which applied to Roman citizens only. The rest of humanity were foreigners ( _peregrini_ ), subject in the eyes of the Romans to the _ius gentium_ , the law of everyone else. Such people and such laws were the magisterial concern of the Peregrine Praetor. From the earliest times, citizens must have had disputes with foreigners, so here was a fertile field for the development of new rules of law and adaptation of existing ones. Indeed this flexibility was one of the strengths of Roman law and its adoption of principles based upon the needs and experience of others was one of its sources of growth. The Peregrine Praetor must therefore have been in a very powerful position to make innovations, for he was not working within an existing framework of tradition and practice like the Urban Praetor, and he must have introduced new provisions and procedures much more freely and rapidly than his colleague. However, we have no direct evidence, for although parts of Edicts have come down to us through quotations in the _Digest_ , those quotations come from the Urban Praetor's Edict. No fragments of the Peregrine Edict survive, probably because it ceased to be of importance after A.D. 212 when the _Constitutio Antonina_ conferred Roman citizenship on all free men living in the Empire.\n\nProvincial governors also had a power to issue Edicts on matters relevant to the governing of their provinces, and Gaius wrote a commentary on this subject, but of all the magistrates who had such powers, only the Aediles have had a significant effect on the development of the law. Their powers extended over the streets and markets and thus it fell to them to supervise trading practices. The slave dealers of Rome would seem to have been the spiritual forebears of bombed-site car dealers of more recent times and a headache to the Aediles, who were concerned to see that honest buyers stood a fair chance at the hands of such people. Through their Edicts they accordingly developed conditions and warranties for quality which were to be implied into contracts of the sale, first of slaves and cattle, and later into all contracts of sale.\n\n(iii) _The Emperor_\n\nWhether or not he realized it at the time, it was in his insistence on a return to Republican constitutional forms that Augustus opened the way for law-making by subsequent Emperors through the _Principum Placita_. The institutional basis upon which this development rested was the power of superior magistrates to issue edicts \u2013 hence, if the Emperor be a magistrate, albeit often a perpetual one and albeit very much _primus inter pares_ , he could claim to exercise a perfectly normal, wholly traditional, magisterial power. Leaving aside speculation about the extent of his foresight, it seems quite clear that when Augustus became sole ruler and restored to the popular assembly the legislative powers formerly vested in the Triumvirate, this was not intended to restore effective power to the people, but was rather designed as a means of giving him a way of making his will effective. The law by which the people conferred imperial power on him, the Lex de Imperio, gave him absolute discretion in a number of administrative matters, and although the Emperor was at first subject to the laws, he was very soon allowed specific dispensations, though it was not until the third century A.D. that he was openly acknowledged as being above the law. From the beginning, however, despite the emphasis accorded to the continuity of Republican institutions, it is clear that the Emperor was in a special position and that because of it he could exercise a certain legislative power; and from the time of Augustus himself the Emperor had the means, through holding magistracies, of assuming wide-ranging powers over the administration of existing laws (the Praetors' concern) and introducing new ones (the concern of Consuls and Tribunes). Add to this the power to dispense from, suspend, interpret and then to extend _leges_ , which began to be accorded to the Emperor almost as soon as Augustus had established his pre-eminence, and it can be seen that here was a formidable power-base from which it became a natural and easy step for the Emperor to assume overall control of law-making, yet always being able to justify himself by reference to the hallowed Republican constitution as and when necessary. Whereas Augustus tended to entrust, say, a Consul with steering through a new law, quite soon, actual legislation by the Emperor was accepted and justified and it was fully recognized by the time of Hadrian that the Emperor could make what were in effect laws; indeed by the third century the Emperor became the sole legislator and Ulpian was able to write: ' _Quod principi placuit, legis habet vigorem_ ' ('What the Emperor pleases has the force of law').\n\nImperial law-making was eventually effected in a number of ways in addition to the edicts mentioned above. Through the _mandate_ he could in effect make law by giving administrative instructions to such officials as provincial governors, which over the years developed into a collection of standing orders. His _decrees_ , or judicial decisions made when hearing cases in court, had a special authority simply because they were the considered opinion of the Emperor and thus tended to be regarded with respect by other judges, who would tend to follow them whenever they were relevant to other cases. The famous _rescripts_ were written replies to specific points put to the Emperor, who seemed to be available to give his attention to all sorts of inquiries and petitions not only from public officials but also from the humblest private individual. Many of them are preserved in the _Codex_ of Justinian, which enables us to see something of their enormous range. Some of them asked for a preliminary ruling on a point of law relevant to a case coming on for hearing, and both judge and litigant could seek guidance in this way; others relate to wholly private and often trivial worries, but all were given on the basis of the 'facts' as stated by the inquirer, so that in the case of pre-litigation inquiries, the Imperial view would not bind the parties if the court found the facts of the case to be other than as claimed. A homely example from the _Codex_ (4.44.1) is quoted by Professor Nicholas:\n\nThe Emperor Alexander, to Aurelius Maro, soldier. If your father sold the house under duress the transaction will not be upheld, since it was not carried out in good faith; for a purchase in bad faith is void. If therefore you bring an action in your own name the provincial governor will intervene, especially since you declare that you are ready to refund to the buyer the price that was paid.\n\nThe names of the consuls for the year were usually added and these too are usually given in the _Codex_. We can thus date this Rescript as being of the year A.D. 222.\n\n(iv) _The Senate_\n\nThe Senate is probably, after the Emperor and the army, the Roman institution most widely known to the layman. A few words must therefore be added on the part it played in making law. Under the Republican constitution, though it was greatly respected as an august body of the most important citizens, it had no direct law-making power and its resolutions, for all their pomp and deliberation, only took the form of advice to magistrates. Generally, of course, its advice would be followed, but it had the force of law only after embodiment in some enactment made subsequently, either by a _lex_ or by an edict of the appropriate magistrate. The Senate's power was thus indirect, and dependent upon the respect accorded to it being sufficient for its views to be enacted into law by others. However, the ancient assemblies which enacted _lex_ fell into disuse in the Imperial period and the power of the Senate, apparently simply because it was still there, expanded to fill the resulting constitutional vacuum. Decisions of the Senate ( _Senatus consulta_ ) first seem to have assumed the force of law in the time of the Emperor Hadrian; and Gaius, writing in the second century A.D., said that, though it had been disputed previously, _Senatus consulta_ had the force of _lex_ in his day. However, by the end of that century the Senate is seen acting simply as a 'rubber stamp', meekly giving its 'authority' to any proposal of the Emperor. He appeared before it, made his proposal in a speech ( _oratio_ ) and it was duly approved. Even if the measure was formally a decision of the Senate it followed so automatically that the subsequent jurists referred\n\nHowever, through the accidents of history it is the Senate to which the visitor to Rome may nowadays feel closest, especially if physical remains give him any appreciation of events with which they were connected. One may now, nearly two thousand years later, stand in the Curia (the building in which the Senate met) and with a little imagination envisage the procedures and perhaps even picture the debates in that impressive chamber. H. V. Morton has special gifts in this respect and one can, through his eyes, almost see the Senators going about their business of state. This is what he says in _A Traveller in Rome_ :\n\nI had been inspecting the Arch of Septimius Severus, and thinking of the old Emperor swaying through Scotland in his litter, when I noticed a few paces away a flight of steps leading to a battered building entered by two tall bronze doors. I mounted the steps and found that I was standing in the Senate House \u2013 the Curia \u2013 of ancient Rome, the most famous building in the annals of law and, politically, the most important place in the Roman world.\n\nIt was revealed in 1937, when the ancient church of S. Adriano was demolished. As the church came down the Senate House emerged, apparently little the worse for its entombment of thirteen centuries. Beneath the floor was found the original pavement of Diocletian's time, on which the Senate used to meet in those fateful ages before the fall of Rome.\n\nI was astonished by the faces of those around me as they gazed impassively about them, apparently unconscious that the ground on which they stood was historically sacred. Here was indeed the venerable great-grandmother of parliaments. I felt the need to share my delight with someone. I spoke to a man standing beside me, but he replied in some language I could not understand. I remembered Gibbon treading the Forum with a lofty step, and thought how he would have stood in wonder at this sight.\n\nThe hall is by no means magnificent and is not large. Three tiers of marble seats face each other along its length and at the end, facing the assembly, the presiding magistrates had their curule chairs. At the far end of the hall there is a mass of brickwork which once held the altar and the famous statue of the golden Victory brought by Augustus from Tarentum.\n\nThere were various peculiarities about the Curia. It was a consecrated building and had the status of a temple. The Senate could not meet before sunrise or after sunset, therefore the all-night sittings of Parliament, so familiar to us, were unknown in ancient Rome. The first act of a Senator when he entered the House was to approach the Altar of Victory and cast a few grains of incense on the brazier which glowed before it. As in our own House of Commons, there was no tribune and speakers addressed the assembly from their seats; when a division was taken, those in favour of the motion moved over to one side and those in opposition to the other.\n\nThe building we now see is as it was during the late Empire, at the time of Diocletian. In its long history it has been enlarged, restored, and twice burnt to the ground, but it is believed to occupy the site of the earliest assembly hall of Rome's third king, in 670 B.C., where the elders used to meet in their rough sheepskin coats. In successive buildings on the same site the affairs of the Republic and the Empire were discussed for centuries; from this place the Roman world was ruled; every great man in Roman history had lifted his voice there and its floor has known the tread of every Roman orator and emperor. There was a time in Republican days when the habits of the Senate were so austere and frugal that heating the House in winter was an unthinkable luxury. I remembered a letter written by Cicero to his brother in 62 B.C., in which he said that an important meeting had to be adjourned because of the cold; and members of the public were highly amused by the sight of the revered elders emerging from the icy hall wrapped in their purple-striped togas.\n\nI suppose my interest must have been so marked that the attendant, who guards a barrier to prevent visitors from walking on the old marble, waited until we were alone and then, with a charming and understanding Italian smile, quickly moved the barrier and waved me on to the floor of the Senate. I examined every detail and was interested most of all by the brickwork at the end of the hall, which had held the Altar of Victory that stood in front of the lovely statue from Tarentum. Every theological student will remember the debate in the fourth century about this statue, but who could imagine that its plinth can still be seen?\n\n(v) _The jurists_\n\nNo body of law can exist usefully as a mere collection of rules: even the Ten Commandments themselves require interpretation in applying their precepts to the facts of any particular case. Holy Scripture indeed says 'Thou shalt not kill' but in applying even that simple rule we need to be sure what 'kill' may mean precisely, in a given situation and, for example, whether any killing can conceivably ever be justifiable and if so in what circumstances. Thus the Roman _leges_ and Edicts, often standing as bald statements, also required 'interpretation' for particular cases. This interpretative function will normally be entrusted to experts who acquire the necessary experience and expertise, and this is usually the function of a lawyer, whose professional skill lies not so much in simply knowing rules as in the ability to analyse the essential facts of his client's case to sort out those which are legally significant, analyse the relevant law and then, through experience and judgement, apply the law as he sees it to the relevant facts as he has deduced them to be. This process was the basis of the lawyer's skill in Rome just as it is today. Leaving aside the earliest days when the law was regarded as a sacred mystery and its administration accordingly entrusted to the Pontiffs -a time which is still shrouded in doubt and about which very little can be said with much certainty \u2013 the interpretation of the law was entrusted to the jurists. It was especially the jurists of the so-called classical age who were the real builders of the great fabric of the Roman law. We have already seen that _lex_ or statute law provided a relatively small part of the Roman law. The jurists were to Roman law what the common law, derived from the multitude of actual cases before the Courts, is to English law, for they recorded their cases of interest and the points over which they disagreed, and it is this record, in some part no doubt theoretical but mainly derived from practice, which has come down to us in the _Digest_.\n\nAlthough they had such a great influence upon the development of the Roman law it must be emphasized that they were not professional legal practitioners in the modern sense. Indeed they have no exact parallel in today's world. As the successors to the Pontiffs they were at first men of the leading Patrician families who had studied the law and simply undertook the interpretation of it for others as their contribution to public life. Professor Nicholas points out that they received no remuneration and that the law was only one facet of their public career. Rather than 'lawyers' as we understand the term they were statesmen who were learned in the law; and even though the class from which they tended to come widened in the latter years of the Republic and thereafter, their essential character and cast of mind remained the same. As men of affairs they were interested in practical questions rather than matters of pure theory, but as they were not under the pressures of the daily practice of the law in the courts they could afford the time to speculate as to how the law might apply in certain conditions. They thus filled the roles which nowadays we regard as separate \u2013 they were in effect both practical and academic lawyers.\n\nIt seems that quite early in the Imperial period Augustus conferred upon certain jurists the right _publice respondendi_ \u2013 the right or privilege of giving written opinions under seal, authorized by the Emperor and binding on the parties to the case in respect of which the opinion was delivered. Much academic ink has been spilt in considering the precise authority of this right and such questions as whether or not the opinion so delivered was binding upon the judge who heard the case, and this remains one of the unsolved problems of ancient law. We simply do not have the evidence necessary to come to a firm view of these points and indeed even such a basic question as what was the legal effect of conferring the _ius respondendi_ is still a mystery. We do not know how many jurists enjoyed this right; indeed we only have direct evidence of the _ius_ being conferred upon two jurists \u2013 Massurius Sabinus, who received it from Tiberius, and the otherwise unknown Innocentius, upon whom it was conferred by Diocletian. Innocentius certainly lived later than the 'great' age of the jurists, but we do not know how long the practice continued. It may well have been no more than a mark of special competence or distinction. If it were, it lost its original significance once all the leading jurists were drawn into the Emperor's service.\n\nCicero recorded that the jurists were consulted about all sorts of business, not always legal, because of the respect afforded to their opinions, and although this had probably ceased to be true in his own day, he gave a good picture of the part they played in the development of the law. They gave advice to those who came to consult them \u2013 and these included not only litigants and citizens with problems, but also the magistrates and the judges. Such consultations might be formal and result in written opinions, but were frequently informal, even a discussion during a walk in the Forum. The jurist also had his part to play when a case actually came to court. Here his business was not to act as advocate \u2013 others such as Cicero himself followed that quite separate calling \u2013 but rather to act as a sort of consultant to those who were directly concerned in the presentation of the case. Their third function, as listed by Cicero, was to give general assistance in all manner of legal transactions, including, where necessary, the drafting and preparation of legal documents.\n\nAll good jurists \u2013 and these men were clearly public-spirited and more concerned with esteem than earning a fee anyway \u2013 gave instruction in the law, regarding the passing-on of their expertise as a part of their function, just as present-day barristers and solicitors bear the responsibility of giving practical instruction to aspiring barristers who read in Chambers and would-be solicitors who serve their apprenticeship as articled clerks. Similarly, the young Roman 'sat in' with his master as he did his daily work and thus acquired his practical 'know-how' from cases as they arose, rather than as an abstract theory. This apprenticeship system with its tradition of directly instructing pupils by personal advice and example gave rise by the time of Hadrian to two 'schools' or sects of jurists which are said by Pomponius to have been founded by Labeo and Capito and may have developed their traditional differences from the personal and political rivalry alleged to have existed between Autistius Labeo, who was described by Buckland as 'the republican, a man of independent mind and prone to innovation', and Ateius Capito, 'the adherent of the empire, inclined to follow tradition and to rest upon authority'. Their 'schools' probably developed gradually and are generally known by the names of later leaders, the school of Labeo being called the Proculians (after Proculus) and the school of Capito being called the Sabinians, after Sabinus. Julian, a Sabinian, is the last jurist known to have been a member of a particular school; Gaius says that he himself was a Sabinian, but they probably had little if any organized existence by his time and certainly died out before the end of the second century. One cannot proceed far into the literature of the Roman law without being made aware of the existence of these 'schools' and many of the differences between them, but despite the best efforts of numerous learned authorities it is not possible to discern any consistency in the divergences between them which could fairly be said to indicate any coherent philosophy or approach on either side. The following typical example gives an idea of how points were made and discussed. Gaius says:\n\nIf you make wine, oil or grain out of my grapes, olives or ears of corn, the question arises whether that wine, oil or grain is mine or yours. Again, if you make a utensil from my gold or silver, or fashion a boat, chest or chair with my planks of wood, or make a garment from my wool, mead from my wine and honey, or a plaster or eye-salve from my drugs, the question arises whether what you have made in this way out of my property is yours or mine. Some people think it is the basic material that counts, that is to say that the manufactured article should be held to belong to the owner of the materials from which it was made, and this is the view preferred by Sabinus and Cassius: but others think it belongs to its maker and this is the opinion of the authorities of the other school. They add, however, that the former owner of the materials has an action in theft against the person who took them as well as an action to recover their value, because although things which have ceased to exist cannot be recovered in kind, they may still be the subject of an action for their value against thieves and certain other possessors. (Gaius, _Institutes_ II.79)\n\nJustinian settles the disputed point thus:\n\nAfter many arguments between the Proculians and Sabinians it seemed best to adopt the middle view of those who thought that if the thing made can be reduced again to its original material, he who was owner of that material owns the thing: but if it cannot be so reduced, he who made it is the owner of it. For example, a cast vase can easily be melted down to a lump of brass, silver or gold; but wine, oil or flour cannot be turned back into grapes, olives or ears of corn, nor can mead be reduced into wine and honey. However, if someone makes a new thing partly from his own materials and partly from someone else's, for example mead with his own wine and someone else's honey, or a plaster or eyesalve partly with his own and partly with another's drugs or a garment from wool partly his and partly someone else's, in all such cases he who made the thing is certainly the owner of it, for he not only did the work, but also provided part of the materials. ( _Institutes_ 2.1.25)\n\nThere were of course provisions to deal with the matter of compensation once the question of ownership had been decided.\n\nVital though the jurists' teaching function was in the legal life of Rome, for us their writing was even more important as it is through this medium that their work has been preserved, even though indirectly. We know that the literature produced by the jurists was enormous, but most of it has disappeared, and has come to us only through the quotations preserved in the _Digest_. There are indeed fragments of originals, some large and some very small, but the only work to have survived in anything approaching entirety is the _Institutes_ of Gaius. This was an elementary textbook for students, as was the _Regulae_ of Ulpian (of which a good deal also survives). The jurists are known to have produced in addition more advanced treatises for instructional purposes; collections of opinions for practitioners; systematic expositions of the civil law and works akin to present-day monographs on particular aspects of the law or even on earlier writers \u2013 Pomponius, Paul and Ulpian all wrote their own commentaries on Sabinus's textbook on the civil law. It is thought that Paul probably produced more 'books' than any other of the jurists \u2013 at least, more works by him can be deduced to have existed through the quotations and references made in the _Digest_. The list is impressive \u2013 eighty major works in 275 'books' (a book running to between thirty and fifty pages of this volume).\n\nThirty-nine writers are quoted in the _Digest_ , but of these Gaius, Julian, Papinian, Paul and Ulpian appear much more frequently than any others, and their works make up by far the greater part of it. The reason why their works exist for us only at second hand is that Justinian, intending his _Digest_ to be of unquestionable authority, forbade any future direct citation of the original works upon which it was based (and also the making of any commentary upon his _Digest_ ) so that they tended to die of neglect. Purely by chance, however, in 1816 Niebuhr, who was working in the Cathedral library at Verona on an early text of St Jerome, found underneath it a juristic writing which proved to be the _Institutes_ of Gaius. This book had long been thought to have been the model for Justinian's own _Institutes_ , but only after Niebuhr's discovery could this be positively confirmed. This text dates from the fifth or sixth century, and the belief that it contained Gaius's text substantially as he left it was confirmed by comparison with some pages of a fourth or fifth century manuscript found in Egypt in 1933, which coincided.\n\nThe existence of this work in some ways brings Gaius much closer to us than those other jurists of whom we know only through quotation. Buckland however refers to him as the most mysterious person who plays a large part in the Roman law, for although we have a complete work by him we know relatively little of him as a man. He was born in the reign of Hadrian and was a teacher of the law, though he may never have had the _ius respondendi_ conferred upon him. It is probable that he was not deemed eminent in his own day, for no other classical jurist seems to have quoted him or relied upon him as an authority, but his reputation grew after his death and he came to be regarded with the peculiar affection implicit in references to him as 'Gaius noster' (our Gaius) \u2013 even though only his praenomen is known and it is not possible to give dates for his birth and death with any confidence. All that can be said with certainty is that he flourished in the first half of the second century A.D., so he was probably born between A.D. 70 and 80. Mommsen thought he was a Greek provincial; others would have it that he came from Troas, that he taught in Beirut, but he remains a shadowy figure, albeit one regarded with greater affection than any other jurist.\n\nJulian (Salvius Julianus) was not only relied upon to a much greater extent for the _Digest_ , but was a much more distinct figure. He held many of the great offices of state under Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, was paid twice the usual fees on account of his great and revered learning, and was the friend and confidant of Emperors. He died in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, who described him in a rescript as ' _amicus noster_ '. He was the last recorded leader of the Sabinian school, but it is generally thought that he had too powerful and wide-ranging an intellect to be tied down to the viewpoints of any particular sect. We hear of no more Proculians after his time and this may well be because of the predominance which the Sabinians established through Julian's weighty authority. His writings were probably the model upon which Justinian's _Digest_ was based \u2013 in which case we may ascribe to him the greatest influence of any of the jurists on the overall development of the civil law in later centuries. Buckland says that the principal characteristics of Julian's work seem to be a very lucid style and a clear recognition of the fact that legal conceptions must move with the times, and he accorded him the extraordinary compliment that he played a part in Roman law akin to that of Lord Mansfield in the development of the common law of England, elucidating principles and sweeping away unreal and pedantic distinctions.\n\nPapinian (Aemilius Papinianus) has a particular connection with England, having accompanied the Emperor Septimius Severus to York as Prefect in 208. He was born between 148 and 153 and was appointed by Severus to be Prefect of the Praetorian Guard, but he was murdered in 212 on the orders of the Emperor Caracalla when he refused to make a public declaration approving of Caracalla's murder of his brother Gaeta. The Romans themselves regarded Papinian as the greatest of the jurists, though modern commentators would mostly rate Julian higher, while some of them would also place Ulpian higher than Papinian. Those nearer to him however may have been better able to assess him, for his reputation probably rested mainly upon his practical work. Unfortunately he wrote no comprehensive treatise and Buckland's view is that his chief works, _Quaestiones_ and _Responsa_ , which cover much ground, show a judicial and critical mind rather than great intellectual fertility.\n\nPaul (Julius Paulus) was a younger contemporary of Papinian, having been Assessor to him during his Prefectship of the Praetorian Guard. He was a man of affairs in Rome who held high political office and became a member of the imperial council and a fluent and copious legal writer. One of his works, _Sententiae_ , has chanced to survive in its original form, but we have a great deal more via quotation in the _Digest_ , of which his extracts make up about one-sixth of the whole. There are indeed as many citations from Paul as there are from Ulpian, but the passages from Ulpian tend to be a good deal longer. Modern opinions have differed surprisingly widely over where he should stand in the juristic 'hierarchy': some describe him as profound and original, while others think he was a mere popularizer of no serious significance as a contributor to the development of the law. Maybe like most people it is simply that not everything he did was outstanding \u2013 at all events, we have to rely on him a great deal through the accidents of what has come down to us, and from that we can see that at times he makes astute observations and clearly relishes a 'nice' distinction.\n\nUlpian (Domitius Ulpianus) was also a man of affairs and a participant in Roman politics. He too served in the Emperor's council, under both Severus, to whom he was related, and Caracalla. He became Prefect of the Praetorian Guard and was murdered by his own men. Quotations from Ulpian's works account for about one-third of the _Digest_ ; Ulpian and Paul together make up half. Buckland's view is that this did not happen because Ulpian was the greatest of the jurists, but more probably simply happened because he was the latest of them. When the _Digest_ was being compiled, Ulpian's works were the most recent by a systematic writer of authority and, as Buckland points out, other things being equal, the more up to date a law book is, the better it is. Ulpian had the advantage of the works of the writers who had gone before: in his own day the great age of development in jurisprudence was ending \u2013 if it had not already ended \u2013 and it fell to him to set forth the result of it all, without the need, perhaps, for great gifts on his own part. This view leads to the conclusion that he was not so much gifted as happening to be in the right place at the right time. However, it is only fair to add (as Buckland very fairly did) that this is only the modern view: in the Middle Ages Ulpian was especially respected and his name was a virtual synonym for Roman law. One book of Ulpian's has survived more or less intact, a fourth-century manuscript of his _Regulae_.\n\nWith the murder of Ulpian in 223 the line of jurists comes to an abrupt end. Marcian (a younger contemporary of Paul and Ulpian) and Modestinus (a pupil of Ulpian and Prefect of the Praetorian Guard _c_. 226\u2013244) are indeed later, and Modestinus was one of the 'Favoured Five' of the Law of Citations, but even if we add in the only two others of a century later who appear in the _Digest_ \u2013 Arcadius and Hermogenianus \u2013 it is safe to say that no jurist after Ulpian played a part of any significance in the development of the Roman law. Several causes have been advanced as explanations for the sudden termination of an endeavour which for so long had attracted many of the best minds in the Roman world. No single one is likely to provide the whole answer \u2013 indeed the demise of the jurists, and with them their science of jurisprudence, must have happened through a coincidence of several factors. As to whether or not these factors coincided by historical accident opinions differ. First, it could not have escaped notice that both Papinian and Ulpian were murdered, and while there are no grounds to suppose the jurists were not reasonably courageous men, simply to be a jurist is not like having a faith to inspire a man, if necessary, even to death. Secondly, the Pax Romana was beginning to break down and with it much of the very fabric of society as it had been known beyond the extent of man's memory. Law of course evolves by adaptation to change, so change itself is far from destructive of legal development; but a change from peaceful conditions to turmoil does seem to be destructive of the development of jurisprudence. Throughout recorded history it would seem that a period of peace, or at least relative calm, is a necessary prerequisite to the flowering of legal talent. In order to produce good law it would seem that good, orderly conditions are vital. There is no point in devoting the labours of the best minds to the law in times when the law counts for little and brute force for much. The best intellects at this time seem to have turned away from the law, which becomes a barren and even futile pursuit in such conditions, and devoted themselves to the newer and more appropriate study \u2013 Christianity: this world was less and less attractive to the thinking man, and the thinking man interested in law found even more disagreeable the growing absolutism of the Emperor. In such circumstances one can imagine the greater attractions of a religious philosophy concerned not only with this world but which had a particular message for the next. This is not to say that study of theology was of itself destructive of jurisprudence, only that at that time it seems to have been a more attractive proposition upon which the leading intellects of the day preferred to expend their efforts.\n\nThe decay of legal science is evidenced by several enactments showing greater emphasis being placed upon the works of earlier jurists to compensate for the poverty or lack of more recent authorities, a process which reached its nadir in the Law of Citations in 426. The Emperor now made law and no one else, yet the mass of existing authorities had to be placed in some sort of order \u2013 here we find what had once been the end of careful legal analysis and considered judgement become simply a process of counting heads. The law said that the writings of Papinian, Paul, Ulpian, Gaius and Modestinus were confirmed as being authoritative and could therefore be cited, except for the notes of Paul and Ulpian on Papianian. Strangely, it was added that Gaius was to have the same authority as the other named jurists. Even more strangely Julian was omitted. Furthermore, other writers cited and approved by the chosen five were also to be deemed as authoritative, provided the citations to be relied upon could be confirmed by comparison of manuscripts (a precaution no doubt necessary because of the antiquity of, for example, Sabinus or Scaevola and the unreliability of copyists). If the authorities cited did not all agree upon the point in question, the majority view was to be followed; if the numbers were equal, the side favoured by Papinian was to prevail, but if he was silent, the judge could make up his own mind. The Law of Citations has been roundly castigated by almost all the modern authorities, mainly on the grounds that legal opinions should be judged by their weight rather than their number and also that there is no logic in the preponderance accorded to Papinian. Theodosius and Valentinian, however, the makers of the law, no doubt had a practical problem to solve and no better means available. They saw the value of a revision of the great and by then unmanageable mass of juristic writings and even proposed that a codification should be made, but this proved impossible because of the lack of men with the necessary talent. A century later Justinian, who found the same problems still remaining, was at least able to profit from the flowering in his day of the law school at Beirut. Long before his time, however, others had seen the value of codifying the juristic materials and made attempts to set out such principles as could be deduced in an orderly and systematic manner. But, though they made their attempts, they all seemed to lack the skilled men needed to make a success of such a project.\n\nThe earliest attempt to make a code was the collation of imperial enactments known as the _Codex Gregorianus_ , which was published about 300. None of it has been preserved, nor has the bulky _Codex Hermogenianus_ of about 365 survived, and we know of them only through quotations in inferior late literature and the so-called barbarian codes. Perhaps the most famous of these 'barbarian' codes was the Lex Romana Visigothorum or _Breviary_ of Alaric II published by him in 506. The men who produced it intended to remove the errors and obscurities which had accumulated in the Roman law over so many centuries, but it seems that they lacked the necessary subtlety and sensitivity as well as the legal education to achieve what they hoped, and dealt only with what they thought they understood. It thus had few merits as a work of legal science, but it has enabled us to get a good idea of the text of the _Code_ of Theodosius, which was a significant work, produced by a commission of lawyers appointed in 429 and published in 438. Theodosius undoubtedly appreciated the sorry state into which the study of Roman law had declined and having tried to establish some sort of order, however crudely, by the Law of Citations he refounded the law school at Constantinople. His _Code_ however has not survived and is known to us only through being cited at length in the _Breviary_ of Alaric. The _Code_ of the Visigoths was followed soon by the Code of Theodoric for the Eastern Goths, and the Lex Romana Burgundionum also dates from about the same time. None of these works has survived other than at second hand, but the knowledge we do have of them leads to the conclusion that they were no better, if no worse, than one would expect as products of an era generally inimical to the study and development of law. They were probably little more than straightforward attempts to establish some sort of clarity at least of elementary principle at a time of ever-increasing chaos and uncertainty.\n\nIt is no small part of the measure of Justinian's greatness that he had the vision to see the value of the law in the order of things that he sought to create and realized the sad state of decline in which the law was languishing, compared with its former glory and elegance. Maybe he consciously connected the time of Rome's peacefulness and pre-eminence with the general respect there then was for the law and its administration, and in seeking to restore that happy state of the past he concluded that the restoration of the law to its former position of esteem and authority must be a part of his programme. The first cracks in the solidity of the Empire had appeared in, say, 251 when the Emperor Decius was killed by the Goths, or 260 when his successor was captured and carted off to die in captivity in Persia, and although the situation was largely restored by Diocletian and Constantine, serious general decline set in about 400 when the last of the legions left Britain for the last time, and it was well under way when Rome itself was sacked by the Goths in 410. By 500 all the western half of the Empire had been lost to the barbarian hordes, Vandals, Goths, Franks, Burgundians, Angles and Saxons. Looking back to the peace of the Empire as established by Augustus and lasting well into the third century, Justinian may well have agreed with Gibbon's verdict :\n\nIf a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous he would without hesitation name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus (A.D. 96\u2013180).\n\nWhen Justinian became Emperor in 527 in succession to his old uncle Justin, he must already have contemplated for some time his self-appointed two-fold task of restoring the lost provinces to the Empire and providing them with the sort of firm, law-based government which they needed and had formerly enjoyed in the days of Rome's glory, so quickly did he take action on both fronts. The first part of the plan was achieved through great victories in bloody wars which were brilliantly conducted by his great general, Belisarius. The second was placed under the direction of a man of equally outstanding abilities, 'the eminent Tribonian', though he has received less popular fame than the great soldier, no doubt because the work of the law reformer is of necessity less likely to catch the public eye and general imagination: to raise a siege of Rome is more glamorous than carefully to amend a juristic text, though in terms of lasting benefit to the state and good government of the people the latter may well prove to be a greater good for a greater number.\n\nThat Justinian felt he had a divine commission for both tasks is evident from his dedications of his legal works, which several times over refer to the gifts given him by God both to vanquish his foes and to establish his laws \u2013 indeed his own explanation of the plan of the Digest itself is given in an Imperial Constitution _Deo Auctore_ (By God's Authority):\n\nWe govern under the authority of God our empire which was delivered to us by His Divine Majesty, we prosecute wars with success, we adorn peace, we hold up the framework of the State and we so lift up our mind in contemplating the aid of the Omnipotent God, that we do not put our faith in our arms nor in our soldiers, nor in our leaders in war nor even in our own skill, but we rest all our hopes in the providence of the Supreme Trinity and in Him alone, whence have proceeded the elements of the whole universe and by whom their disposition throughout the earth's globe was planned.\n\nBefore considering the process by which Justinian's codification of the vast mass of the law was achieved it is well to consider not only the enormity of the task confronting the Commission appointed to undertake it but also the physical size of their resulting work. The whole body of the Corpus Iuris Civilis (which contains not only the _Digest_ , but all of Justinian's codified laws) as published by them after revision of the sources and rearrangement in an orderly code covers over 2,200 closely packed quarto pages in the three volumes of the now standard 'Berlin' edition of Mommsen, Krueger, Schoell and Kroll which was published in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. That was, however, only the end product: another way of looking at the epic scale of the undertaking was that of Justinian himself \u2013 he points out that the Commission preparing the _Digest_ alone read and examined something like 2,000 'books', amounting to 3,000,000 lines. By that method of calculation the Digest can be said to amount to a mere 150,000 lines \u2013 and it is about one and a half times the size of the Bible.\n\n## THE MAKING OF JUSTINIAN'S CODE\n\nAs the Emperor and the issuer of the authoritative commission for the work, Justinian is the man whose name 'appears on the cover' and who has since been given most, if not all, the credit for the great undertaking. However, he was not himself a trained lawyer, and there is no doubt that he relied very heavily upon Tribonian for the organizing and doing of the work. He certainly appears very prominently in all parts of the _Code_ , not least in Justinian's introductory paragraphs where even the Emperor himself acknowledges the part played by the 'eminent Tribonian'. The more interesting speculation is as to whether he might have been the inspirer of the whole enterprise as well as the leading contributor to it. Some weight is given to that speculation by the fact that when Tribonian died, the work came abruptly to a halt and Justinian's legislative activity virtually ceased. Be that as it may, let us now turn to the actual work of construction of Justinian's _Code_.\n\n_The first Code_\n\nTaking his cue from Theodosius II, Justinian first attempted the relatively modest task of updating the code of Imperial Enactments. The _Code_ of Theodosius was ninety years old, and there was a need to consolidate that and other codes, omitting what was out of date or overruled, making corrections as necessary, and restating the whole in up-to-date and, if possible, simple language. The Commission of Ten, headed by Tribonian who was then chief of the imperial chancery, was appointed by Justinian in 528 and, incredibly, the new _Code_ was promulgated in April 529. Its life was short, however, for it was soon superseded.\n\n_The Digest_\n\nThis was Justinian's biggest and best-known work, being a codification of the enormous mass of juristic writings. It was begun in 530 and published in 533 \u2013 another scarcely credible example of fast working by the Commission, which this time consisted of sixteen experts, headed by Tribonian and appointed by him under the Emperor's authority. It was originally expected that the Commission would need ten years to produce the _Digest_ when Tribonian received his commission on 15 December 530. Of his sixteen chosen experts, one was, in modern terms, a civil servant, eleven were legal practitioners, and four were professors of law, two from Constantinople and two from Beirut. Their charge was to examine the existing juristic writings and collect together excerpts arranged into fifty books subdivided according to subject matter; to ensure that the law was clearly stated without repetition or contradiction; to remove all obsolete matter and include only up-to-date law; and to give the attribution of each passage. They were free to give what they regarded as the best view in cases of conflict and were not bound by head-counting, as in the Law of Citations, and the notes of Paul, Ulpian and Marcellus, which had been excluded by that law, were not be to neglected on that account. Abbreviations were not to be used, to ensure accuracy; the work was to be the sole authority for the laws and juristic writings to which it referred and no objection could be made even in cases of differences from the originals, which were superseded by it. Finally, no commentaries were to be made.\n\nThe fifty books of the _Digest_ contain material from the writings of thirty-nine jurists, the earliest of whom was Quintus Mucius Scaevola, who died in 82 B.C. The only others from the Republican era who appear by way of extract are Alfenus and Aelius Gallus, and the great bulk of the finished work is drawn from authors writing between A.D. 100 and 250. There are 2,464 extracts from Ulpian, 2,081 from Paul, 601 from Papinian, 578 from Pomponius, 535 from Gaius; all the rest account for 2,883. Of these five named, Pomponius was the earliest and died in 138, while the latest, Ulpian, was murdered in 223.\n\nEven a brief acquaintance with the _Digest_ shows the reader that the Commission did not remove all contradictions or ensure that no repetitions were included. Indeed, the work of cross-checking seems to have been one of the main casualties of the speed of working. It is beyond doubt that all sixteen experts did not read all 2,000 existing books and that they must have worked in committees. It seems that there were three committees for the preparatory work and that for reasons of practicality the labour must have been further subdivided. The final ordering of the excerpts on each subject was puzzling for centuries. The same topic is often discussed at quite separate points in a title with no obvious reason for the separation, and at times there seems to be no reasoned order at all, but the work of Bluhme published in 1818 explained these problems quite convincingly by advancing a theory of how the work was done. He envisaged three committees approaching the various topics and specializing for obvious reasons. One committee took the works of Ulpian on Sabinus and writings dealing with the same topics: Bluhme called this the Sabinian mass. The second committee dealt with the writings of Ulpian on the Praetorian Edict and the civil law matters incorporated into the Edict by Julian (the Edictal mass), while the third took the writings of Papinian and others dealing with the same subjects (the Papinian mass). Sometimes at the end of a title there are references to other books which do not fit any of the above groups or masses and are referred to as the post-Papinian mass or Appendix. It may simply be that, as the Papinian mass was the smallest of the three, that committee was asked to deal with the remaining writings because they may well have completed their examination first. Bluhme envisaged the committees working separately and then meeting to collate their approved extracts and incorporate them into the previously agreed arrangement of titles. The most important statements were usually placed first, followed by other extracts as they thought fit. The most common arrangement was as above, the Sabinian mass providing the first statement, followed by the Edictal, then the Papinian and finally the Appendix, giving the order often expressed as SEPA. However, every possible order is found.\n\nIt will be noticed that at the time of the compilation of the _Digest_ most of the material from which it was derived was over three hundred years old, and yet the law was to be stated in a form correct for the time of publication. Furthermore, although Justinian proclaimed his Christianity at the outset of all the works published under his authority, the great bulk of the law was drawn from jurists who flourished before Christianity became the official religion of the Empire. The compilers were accordingly given authority to alter the statements of the jurists where necessary, so that the law was stated in the _Digest_ as current for 533. This has become a crucial factor in the study of the development of Roman law, bearing in mind that it was to be the sole authoritative statement of the law, superseding all that had gone before. The previous authorities have virtually all been destroyed or lost and the _Digest_ is thus not only our record of Justinian's law but our sole record of the earlier law as well; we cannot necessarily rely upon a statement of, say, Ulpian in the _Digest_ as being a correct statement of the law in his time. It would already have been old when the compilers considered it, and even if they made no change, it may well have attracted glosses or corruptions in the intervening three hundred years. There are thus both accidental and intentional changes to be borne in mind when seeking to discover even what the law was in the time of the jurist purporting to make a statement attributed to him. It is an even more engaging pastime to try to deduce, as Professor Alan Watson has recently done, what the law was in the later years of the Republic. A great deal of reading between the lines is necessary to engage in discovering these 'interpolations' as they are called, and indeed interpolation-hunting has long been a favourite sport amongst Roman lawyers.\n\nNo more than a brief indication of the nature, scope and creation of one of the great works of human endeavour can be attempted here. Scholars have produced many learned works about the _Digest_ , Justinian's legislation and Roman law and history which enable the interested reader to pursue further any aspects about which he wishes to know more. A short bibliography is therefore included on pp. 190\u201391.\n\nBefore we turn to some passages from the _Digest_ itself, brief mention must also be made of the other parts of Justinian's scheme. It was clear from the earliest stages of the work on the _Digest_ that it would be an enormous body of material. The Roman lawyers of the sixth century were, however, just as mindful of the need to educate their successors as their predecessors had been and, indeed, members of the legal profession are just as concerned today. Justinian therefore asked Tribonian and two of his professional colleagues, Theophilus from Constantinople and Dorotheus from Beirut, to prepare an elementary textbook for students from which they could learn the principles of the law and through which they would be guided to the _Digest_ itself. Taking the _Institutes_ of Gaius as their model, they produced the _Institutes_ of Justinian which was also published in December 533 and given the force of law \u2013 which soon proved inconvenient, for again the cross-referencing was not very efficient and at times rules are stated differently in _Digest_ and _Institutes_. The main rules of law are stated dogmatically, few reasons are given, though those that are may seem insufferably priggish or engagingly na\u00efve according to the reader's mood of the moment; for example:\n\n(a) In discussing whether one partner may sue another by the special partnership action, the question is raised whether the action lies only for malicious harm or for mere carelessness. Justinian says there is no liability on a partner who has been as careful of partnership assets as he is of his own property 'for he who takes as a partner a person of careless habits has only himself to blame' and must set down any loss to his own lack of care in choosing such a partner ( _Institutes_ 3.25.8). (Reasons are given much more frequently as part of the fuller treatment and discussion of topics in the _Digest_. There, too, having only oneself to blame is a favourite remark, witness the mule-driver in _Digest_ 9.2.8, and the man having a haircut who gets his throat cut instead in _Digest_ 9.2.11 (see pp. 75, 76 below).)\n\n(b)'Fowls and geese are not naturally wild, which we may deduce from the fact that there are particular species which we call \"wild fowl\" and \"wild geese\" ' ( _Institutes_ 2.1.16).\n\n(c)'What non-manifest theft is may be gathered from what we have said, for theft which is not manifest is non-manifest theft' ( _Institutes_ 4.1.3).\n\nGenerally, however, Justinian's _Institutes_ have much less colour and character than those of Gaius, a feature which may well be accounted for in their largely derivative nature. The introduction to the _Institutes_ , however, is a splendid passage, and not only sheds light on the object of producing the book, but also gives some insight into the preparation of the _Code_ and the _Digest_.\n\nIN THE NAME OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST\n\nTHE EMPEROR CAESAR FLAVIUS\n\nJUSTINIANUS, CONQUEROR OF THE\n\nALAMANNI, GOTHS, FRANKS, GERMANS,\n\nANTES, ALANI, VANDALS, AND AFRICANS,\n\nPIOUS, HAPPY, AND GLORIOUS,\n\nCONQUEROR AND VANQUISHER, TO\n\nYOUNG MEN DESIROUS OF LEARNING\n\nTHE LAW, GREETING.\n\nImperial majesty should not only be adorned with military might but also graced by laws, so that in times of peace and war alike the state may be governed aright and so that the Emperor of Rome may not only shine forth victorious on the battlefield, but may also by every legal means cast out the wickednesses of the perverters of justice, and thus at one and the same time prove as assiduous in upholding the law as he is triumphant over his vanquished foes.\n\nThis double objective we have achieved with the blessing of God through our utmost watchfulness and foresight. The barbarian races brought under our yoke know well our military achievements; and Africa also and countless other provinces bear witness to our power having been after so long an interval restored to the dominion of Rome and to our Empire by our victories which we have gained through the inspiration of Divine guidance. Moreover, all these peoples are now also governed by laws which we ourselves have promulgated or compiled.\n\nWhen we had elucidated and brought into perfect harmony the revered imperial constitutions which were previously in confusion, we turned our attention to the immense mass of ancient jurisprudence. Now, by the grace of Heaven, we have completed this work of which even we at one time despaired like sailors crossing the open ocean.\n\nAfter that task had been accomplished with God's blessing, we summoned together the most excellent Tribonian, Master and former Treasurer of our sacred Palace, and the illustrious professors of law Theophilus and Dorotheus, who have all on numerous occasions proved to us their ability and legal skill as well as their obedience to our orders; and we specially charged them to compose these our _Institutes_ under our authority and guidance, so that you will no longer have to learn the first principles of the law from old and erroneous sources, but can now understand them in the brilliant light of our imperial wisdom. We have also ensured that your ears and minds shall receive only what obtains in current practice and nothing that is unnecessary or erroneous. Accordingly, whereas hitherto law students could scarcely comprehend the imperial constitutions even after three years' study, you, who have been deemed worthy of such a great honour and blessing as to receive both your first lessons and the completion of your legal studies from the very mouth of the Emperor himself, may now even begin your studies by reading them.\n\nTherefore, when we had compiled the Fifty Books called the _Digest_ or _Pandects_ in which all the ancient law was gathered, with the assistance of the eminent Tribonian aforementioned and of other distinguished and learned men, we directed that these our _Institutes_ should be divided into four books containing the first elements of the whole science of law. In these books the law previously in force is briefly stated as well as that which had fallen into disuse but has now been brought to light by the imperial authority. These our _Institutes_ thus compiled from all the institutes left by the ancient authorities \u2013 especially from the commentaries of our Gaius, particularly his _Institutes_ and his work _On Daily Business_ , but from many other commentaries also \u2013 were brought to us by the three learned men we have referred to above. We have read them and understood them and have accorded them the full force of law.\n\nTherefore receive with eagerness these our laws and study them with cheerful diligence, and prove yourselves persons of such learning that you may entertain the wondrous hope that on completion of your legal studies you may even be able to help govern our Empire in the station allotted to you.\n\nGiven at Constantinople 21 November 533 in the third consulate of the Emperor Justinian, ever August.\n\nThough the _Code, Digest_ and _Institutes_ form the great bulk of Justinian's codification of the law and the _Digest_ and _Institutes_ have had the most lasting value, they do not represent the whole of his work in this field. While the work was being done, the state still had to run and daily life went on, and legislation continued to be passed, some of it of course being intended to settle old disputes, some making new law. A collection of such legislation was made in 530 and published as the _50 Decisions_ ( _Quinquaginta Decisiones_ ). It has not survived, but it made the first code obsolete, so Tribonian was commissioned to produce a second code of Imperial Enactments. This was published on 16 November 534 as the _Codex Repetitae Praelectionis_ and came into force on 29 December of that year. This code has survived. It is about half the size of the _Digest_ and contains about 5,000 enactments, the earliest of which were made by Hadrian. There are twelve books, arranged in titles and dealing with Church Law, Sources, Functions of Officials, Private Law, Criminal Law and Administrative Law. The _Digest_ and this second code were intended to be read together as one body of law, but again, the cross-referencing was not good and one cannot always tell that a matter omitted in one is not dealt with in the other, or that a matter which is dealt with in one place is not dealt with differently elsewhere.\n\nJustinian's codification was then complete; but the law obstinately refused to stand still, and the Emperor and his experts had to turn their attention to dealing with the continuing stream of new enactments. Being 'new', in the sense of being made since the _Code_ , they were referred to as the _Novellae Constitutiones_ , from which they take their modern name of the 'Novels'. They were intended to be officially collected and published from time to time, but they never were. We know of a few through private and unofficial collections, but in any case the flow seems suddenly to have stopped on the death of Tribonian in 546. An epitome of about 120 Novels dated up to 555 was published in Greek in Justinian's own time, but they cannot be said to be a significant addition to the monumental works which were not only the greatest achievement of Justinian's reign, but proved to be one of the most significant influences upon human society ever since.\n\n# THE LEGAL BACKGROUND\n\nA DEGREE of technicality is inevitable in the exposition of laws and very often specialist knowledge is also necessary to understand them. Mastery of the technicalities, explanation to laymen, representation of parties in dispute and the training of the next generation are, and always have been, the stock-in-trade of the professional lawyer. The affairs of men make the lawyer a necessary member of our society today, just as he was a part of Roman society: indeed his skills and services seem to be required in every developed type of society. This being so, the reader who enters into the lawyer's special sphere will often find himself in strange territory \u2013 the more so when the subject of his reading is not the law of his own day, but the law of a different civilization from a different period of history. The General Introduction has given some idea of the background of the Roman lawyers and the production of the _Digest_. These notes are intended to provide an explanation of a number of technical terms, which cannot be rendered into English simply by the processes of translation, but which need to be understood either because they relate to some part of the Roman legal procedure or because they refer to some institution of the law which is a necessary element in a case or situation being discussed by the juristic writer. No more than the briefest outline to enable the lay reader to understand the jurist's point can be given here. The indulgence of the lawyer is sought in respect of the inevitable 'loose ends'. The law became an almost complete web and taking out any single topic cannot but leave unfinished some strands which lead directly from it into other subjects.\n\nThe Roman institutional writers divided their accounts of the law into sections relating to Persons, Things (property and obligations) and Actions (legal procedure). This is the pattern adopted by Gaius in his _Institutes_ and followed in the _Institutes_ of Justinian.\n\n## PERSONS\n\n(i) _Freemen and slaves_\n\nThe 'standard unit' of the Roman law was the freeborn Roman citizen, male, of age and sound mind and head of his family. Everyone else was legally inferior and by comparison subject to some sort of restriction, ranging from minor to total, upon his legal powers, rights or personality. There thus developed a stratified society in which every man had his legally appointed and legally defined place.\n\nGaius says: 'The main distinction in the law of persons is this, that all men are either free, or slaves' ( _Institutes_ 1.9). Justinian explains: 'Slavery is an institution of the law of nations [it was common to the whole known world at the time and not a specifically Roman institution, though the Roman law, of course, was adapted to accommodate it] whereby one man is made the property of another, contrary to natural right' ( _Institutes_ 1.3.2).\n\nA man was either born a slave, or became one. He was born a slave if his mother was a slave; he became a slave by the law of nations, under which captives, who would normally be killed, became slaves if their lives were spared, or by the law of Rome. The Roman law did not produce slaves in bulk like the law of nations, but laid down specific circumstances, in which individuals became slaves, for example thieves caught red-handed, evaders of military service, insolvent debtors, freed slaves who were grossly ungrateful to their patrons and free men who fraudulently sold themselves as slaves. Two other modes were abolished by Justinian \u2013 Hadrian had allowed convicts sentenced to death, the mines or the arena to be spared as slaves, and a freewoman who co-habited with a slave against the wishes of the slave's owner could be enslaved after a magistrate's order to that effect.\n\nSlavery was a status, and so would normally be for life. There was no idea of a period of slavery, as a punishment for instance, but just as one could change status for the worse by changing downwards into slavery, so one could change for the better by moving upwards in society out of the ranks of the slaves. The means was manumission: the manumitted slave became a freedman ( _libertinus_ ). Generally a slave could become a freedman by buying his freedom with his _peculium_ (that is by saving up his pocket money \u2013 in strict theory a slave, having no rights, could own no property, but from quite early times they seem to have been allowed pocket money, and indeed skilled men could earn good wages. Though in the eyes of the law this belonged to the slave's owner, relations between slave and owner were often good enough for the slave to keep what he earned for himself) or earn it by service. Early modes of manumission were formal: a master could bring a slave for enrolment as a freedman at the quinquennial census, free him by _vindicta_ (a legal fiction involving a formal claim of liberty) or by his will. This last was the most popular method, as it ensured grateful mourners at one's funeral. (The Romans liked to think they would have a good send-off to the next world.) This method was the only one which allowed conditions to be attached to a gift of freedom. Until the condition was fulfilled the slave was not freed, but was in an intermediate state known as _statuliber_ , whereby, although still strictly a slave, he was protected from many of the indignities of slavery.\n\nInformal methods of manumission appeared later. These were not strictly in accord with the _ius civile_ but were recognized by the Praetors \u2013 pronouncing the slave free before five witnesses (for example at a party), inviting him to one's dinner table as a freedman, or by letter. Eventually so many slaves were being freed, many of them with bad characters, that Augustus, who was worried about dilution of the racial stock of Rome by intermarriage, introduced statutory restrictions in the Lex Fufia Caninia (2 B.C.) and Lex Aelia Sentia (A.D. 4). Slaves freed informally or outside the scope of this latter statute did not become freedmen but only _in libertate_ or, after A.D. 19, Junian Latins (an intermediate condition from which full freedom could be achieved by a further manumission observing all necessary formalities, or by good works). The statute also created a degraded class of _dedeticii_. Gaius says:\n\nThe Lex Aelia Sentia provides that slaves who have had to be punished by their masters by being put in chains or branded, or have been questioned about misdeeds under torture and found guilty, or have been condemned to fight in the arena with men or beasts, or who have been put into a gladiatorial school or imprisoned, shall, if subsequently manumitted, whether by the same or by another master, become _dedeticii_. ( _Institutes_ 1.13)\n\nSuch men would never improve that status, nor were they allowed within a hundred miles of Rome, on pain of re-enslavement which would be permanent.\n\nJustinian repealed the Lex Junia Norbana and Lex Aelia Sentia and abolished the status of _dedeticii_.\n\n(ii) _Potestas_\n\nGaius says that there is another division in the law of persons 'for some are _sui iuris_ (independent) and others are _alieni iuris_ (dependent upon another)'.\n\nSlaves are in the _potestas_ (power) of their masters. This is an institution of the law of all nations, for masters always have power of life and death over their slaves, and whatever a slave acquires he acquired for his master. But at the present time, neither Roman citizens nor any other persons subject to the rule of the Roman people are allowed to treat their slaves with excessive harshness, for it is laid down in a Constitution of the late Emperor Antoninus of Blessed Memory that anyone who without cause kills his own slave is just as amenable to the law as he who kills another's. Even excessive severity on the part of masters is restrained by another Constitution of the same Emperor, for on being consulted by certain provincial governors about slaves who took refuge in the temples of the gods or at the statues of Emperors, he ordered that masters who show intolerable savagery are to be forced to sell their slaves to other owners. These enactments are just, for we ought not to abuse our lawful rights: this is the same principle by which prodigals are restrained from misuse of their own property.\n\nChildren whom we beget in civil marriage are also in our _potestas_. The right is peculiar to Roman citizens, for scarcely any other men have such power over their sons as we have. The late blessed Emperor Hadrian indicated as much in his Edict concerning those who petitioned him for citizenship for themselves and their children. Nor has it escaped me that the Galatians regarded their children as being in the _potestas_ of their parents. ( _Institutes_ , 48; 50\u201353; 55)\n\n(iii) _Tutors_\n\nThe Roman head of a household thus had _potestas_ not only over his slaves, but also over his children, male and female. The head of the household was the _paterfamilias_ , his son in power being a _filiusfamilias_. The son became _sui iuris_ when his father died, but if that occurred before the son became of age, he had to have a tutor, whose function was to make good his lack of experience in legal matters. To be a tutor was regarded as a most solemn public duty, which the person nominated (usually by will of the deceased _paterfamilias_ ) was obliged to take on and from which he would be excused only in certain well-defined circumstances. The main duties of a tutor to a minor were to administer the ward's property to the best advantage and to supplement his legal incapacity when necessary. Without his tutor's authority a ward could not validly take any legal step which might cause him disadvantage. The arrangement ended when the ward became of age, when there was a settling of accounts under pain of grave penalties for a tutor who had acted with anything less than the strictest propriety.\n\nA second, quaint form of tutorship existed in the early law \u2013 the perpetual tutelage of women, under which all women _sui iuris_ and regardless of age were required to have a tutor. The reason was the protection of their property, over which they had little real control in the early law. Again, the tutor made good his ward's lack of legal capacity, but in this instance the appointment did not end at a given age. Gaius says that the early lawyers regarded women as being of a frivolous and unbusinesslike turn of mind and thus in need of this sort of protection, but the institution was in decay in his day and he said that\n\nhardly any valid argument seems to exist for women of full age being in tutorship. That which is commonly accepted, namely that they are especially liable to be deceived in business owing to their instability of judgement and that therefore in fairness to themselves they should be subject to the authority of a tutor, seems more specious than true. Nowadays women of full age conduct their own affairs and the interposing of their tutor's authority is often merely a matter of form, so much so that the tutor is often compelled by the Praetor to give his authority even against his will. ( _Institutes_ 1.190)\n\nAs early as the Twelve Tables (451 B.C.) the Vestal Virgins were exempted from the need to have tutors, but the real decline of the institution can be traced from the Leges Juliae et Papia Poppaea which freed married women from tutelage when they had had three children (four in the case of freedwomen). This _ius trium liberorum_ came to be conferred on certain individuals who were not strictly qualified, as for example when Augustus conferred it upon Livia, and eventually (A.D. 410) all women were presumed to have this 'right'.\n\nTutors should be distinguished from curators. A curator was appointed to care for the insane and look after their property for them ( _cura furiosi_ ). In such circumstances a curator usually had much more direct control over the person and property in his care. Notorious squanderbugs and loose-livers could also be subjected to curatorship ( _cura prodigi_ ) until restored to sobriety and sound morals.\n\n(iv) _Married women_\n\nThe special status of married women, which arose from the combination of what was in many ways a male-dominated law with the rules of _potestas_ and _manus_ , gave rise to a number of problems, as can be seen for example in Justinian's discussion of the law of defamation (see pp. 158\u201385 below). He also says: 'A civil law marriage is contracted by Roman citizens who are united according to law, males having reached the age of puberty (14) and females being of marriageable age (12) whether they be _sui iuris_ or in power, provided that children in power must have the consent of the _paterfamilias_ ' ( _Institutes_ 1.10.pr.) and the intention to live together as husband and wife. Only this element distinguished informal marriages from concubinage.\n\nA civil law marriage created a relationship known as _manus_ , which arose in early law when the marriage was celebrated in particular ceremonial forms known as _confarreatio_ and _coemptio_ , but these were virtually obsolete by the time of Gaius. No ceremony of any sort was strictly necessary, as marriage was contracted by consent. _Manus_ however, arose by _usus_ or continual cohabitation and could be prevented by _trinoctii absentia_ \u2013 an absence of three nights preventing the husband as it were from virtually usucaping the wife (as to _usucapio_ , see pp. 56\u20139 below).\n\nWhere _manus_ arose the wife ceased to be a member of her own family and came under the _potestas_ of her husband's _paterfamilias_ , or if he were _sui iuris_ she came into his _manus_ (literally into his hands) and he had the power of a _paterfamilias_ over her and she stood as a daughter to him. Her property passed to her husband or his _paterfamilias_ and any children of the marriage were born into the _potestas_ of the head of the household. As might be expected this archaic arrangement was superseded by the _liberum maritagium_ or 'free' marriage \u2013 free in that no _manus_ arose. This was, according to Lee, the virtually universal type of arrangement in the classical age and was a relationship of\n\nremarkable freedom. Marriage per se did not affect a transfer of the wife's property to the husband or give him any right of administration. She retained her contractual freedom, except that she could not make a gift to her husband any more than he could to her. This was one reason why it was of importance to fix the moment at which marriage took place. As the wife controlled her own property, so in law (it was thought) she was expected to provide for her own maintenance. It was not her husband's business to provide for her needs. (R. W. Lee, _The Elements of Roman Law_ , 66)\n\nThis independence of the wife and lack of husband's rights to her property led to the institution of the marriage settlement or dowry ( _dos_ ), but this never became legally necessary to marriage, though it was always good evidence that the parties intended marriage rather than concubinage. A particularly important result of a 'free marriage', however, was that the wife was not transferred from one _potestas_ to another, but remained a member of her own family, subject to her own _paterfamilias_ , or, if she were _sui iuris_ and so under tutorship, she remained so despite the marriage until the perpetual tutelage of women became obsolete.\n\n## PROPERTY ( _Res Mancipi and Usucapio_ )\n\nJust as people were classified by the Roman lawyers, so also, in various ways, was property. The _Institutes_ of both Gaius and Justinian devote a good deal of space to classifications of property, dividing things into, for example, those subject to divine or human right, things corporeal and incorporeal (Gaius); and things common to all mankind, or subject to private, public, corporate or no ownership (Justinian). However, one of the divisions which had extensive legal implications was the classical distinction (abolished by Justinian) into things of which ownership had to be formally transferred ( _res mancipi_ ) and things which could be transferred without special formality ( _res nec mancipi_ ). Gaius tells us that _res mancipi_ were the following: 'Italic land and houses on it; slaves and animals that are commonly broken to draught or burden and rustic praedial servitudes' (certain rights such as rights of way which one acquired together with land by virtue of owning it) ( _Institutes_ 2.14a). Other things are _res nec mancipi_ , though the division, it seems, is not always clear; for example:\n\nThe effect of the previous statement, that animals commonly broken to draught or burden are _res mancipi_ , is disputed by some, because they are not broken in at once on birth. The writers of our school maintain that they are _res mancipi_ as soon as they are born, but Nerva, Proculus and the other authorities of the opposing school hold that they become _res mancipi_ only when they have actually been broken in, or if they cannot be broken in because of extreme wildness, that they become _res mancipi_ when they reach the usual age for breaking in. ( _Institutes_ 2.15)\n\nThe view of Gaius and the Sabinian school eventually prevailed. This was no mere academic haggle, however. The citizen buying or selling property needed to know whether it was a _res mancipi_ or _nec mancipi_ , for, as Gaius says, in law there is an important difference between the two. He explains thus:\n\n_Res nec mancipi_ became the full property of another by mere delivery, provided that they are corporeal and thus admit of being delivered. Thus, if I deliver a garment, or some gold or silver to you, be it on account of a sale or gift or any other good cause, it becomes yours at once, provided of course that I am its owner. _Res mancipi_ , on the other hand, are those things that need to be conveyed by _mancipatio_ : that is why they are called _res mancipi_. But _cessio in iure_ is also valid to transfer their ownership. ( _Institutes_ 2.19, 20, 22)\n\nIt is thought that _res mancipi_ were those things which were of greatest significance to the rustic community of early Rome and that this is why the transfer of their ownership (ownership itself being a concept which the Romans regarded with particular reverence) should be required to be effected with all due ceremony and solemnity. _Mancipatio_ was a ceremony peculiar to citizens and dating from a time before coined money was used, but which remained in a symbolic form long after coinage was introduced. The buyer and seller met together in the presence of five witnesses (symbolic of the five ancient tribes of Rome and representing the whole Roman people) and a sixth (the _libripens_ ), who held a pair of bronze scales. The buyer took hold of the object being transferred to him with one hand and a piece of bronze in the other and said aloud, 'I declare this slave (cow, or whatever) to be mine by the law of the Quirites and purchased by me with this piece of bronze upon these bronze scales.' He then struck the scales with the bronze (symbolic of weighing it out) and handed it to the transferor.\n\n_Cessio in iure_ was a collusive version of a court action claiming ownership, which was compromised by the parties. Both ceremonies required formal words to be uttered and only the correct usage of those words could create the unique bond of ownership that could exist only between a Roman citizen and a _res mancipi_.\n\nQuite clearly, however, they were grossly cumbersome procedures and wholly inappropriate to the bustling commercial society that Rome subsequently became. A new means therefore had to be found to protect those who did not, for whatever reason, but often simply for lack of time, use these formal modes to transfer _res mancipi_. That means was _usucapio_ , a method of acquiring ownership by long possession. If a slave or cow were simply transferred without formality, no ownership would pass to the transferee. In the eyes of the law it remained with the transferor, but the Twelve Tables provided that if the slave or cow were continuously possessed by the transferee for a whole year (or two years in the case of immovables) ownership would be acquired at the end of that period. Long possession ( _usucapio_ ) could thus make good the lack of due formality at the time of transfer.\n\nWhen Justinian abolished the distinction between _res mancipi_ and _res nec mancipi_ , ownership of any item of property could be transferred simply by handing over the thing. The original _raison d'\u00eatre_ of _usucapio_ thus disappeared, but it remained in use to enable the law to treat as practically owner anyone who was in possession of property as owner but without legal title, and to recognize him as fully owner after the lapse of the necessary time.\n\nSimply to lay down a period of time to elapse which would transform the transferee's possession into full legal ownership, while going some way to mitigate the harshness of the legal requirement of formality, still left serious problems unsolved, particularly if the possessor who was in the course of perfecting his title by effluxion of time lost that possession before the necessary period had elapsed.\n\nIf _A_ sold a slave, cow or any other _res mancipi_ to _\u0392_ and on receipt of the purchase money simply handed it over without _mancipatio_ or _cessio in iure, A_ still retained ownership in the eyes of the civil law. At first therefore if he brought a formal action to recover the thing ( _vindicatio_ ), _\u0392_ had no answer to his claim. The Praetor's Edict, however, came to _B_ 's aid in granting him the defence that he had the thing because it had been sold and handed over to him ( _exceptio rei venditae et traditae_ ). Once this was available, _\u0392_ had a good answer to the claim of the vendor or to anyone claiming through him. He still remained vulnerable to claims by third parties if he lost possession \u2013 for example, someone might enter upon a farm which he had bought and was usucaping, and refuse to give up possession. He could not bring the _vindicatio_ , since that involved an assertion that he sued as owner in the eyes of the civil law (which he was not). His vendor ( _A_ ) might be prevailed upon to bring such action (he was, after all, still technically owner) and put _\u0392_ back into possession, but despite the Roman traditions of honourable conduct, he might not see why he should be so bothered, gratuitously; or he might be far away, or untraceable. Eventually, the Praetor came to _B_ 's aid here too, in the _actio Publiciana_. This action was probably introduced by the urban Praetor Publicius who was in office in the latter years of the Republic, not long before the time of Augustus. This new action proceeded upon the basis that _\u0392_ could not yet bring a _vindicatio_ , but that he would be able to do so in the normal course of events when sufficient time had elapsed for him to complete _usucapio_. The judge was accordingly to give his decision in favour of _\u0392_ if satisfied that he had been properly in possession and that he would have become civil law owner if he had held the thing for the necessary period.\n\n## ACTIONS\n\nPrimitive legal 'systems' are usually not systems at all but simply a number of remedies available for certain types of wrongs. Thus, in early English law there was no thought of an all-embracing law which would, as we now assume, provide protection for the citizen's rights of all sorts, but rather a number of writs which were available to set in motion a selection of formalized actions to remedy certain specific ills. If the injustice suffered fell outside the scope of the writs, the would-be litigant had no remedy in the law. Eventually the old forms of action disappeared, being superseded by the approach that the law should provide a remedy for anyone whose rights had been infringed and not be hampered by a procedure which could operate only in a number of defined instances. The old lawyers looked first to the repertoire of set remedies; we now look first to the right.\n\nA similar development is to be seen in the Roman law. In its earliest days, procedure was far more important than the substantive law, and the _legis actiones_ provided a strictly formal process, which had to be rigidly adhered to, to deal with certain sorts of legal wrongs. The Praetors, however, through their control of the granting of remedies, were able in effect to extend the scope of the law by granting remedies where none had existed previously. As Nicholas observes: 'By creating a new form of action or extending an old form to new facts he could in effect create new rights. In form there was merely a new remedy, in substance there was new law.' The old _legis actiones_ however, were restricted to five ritual forms, so it was only after the reform of procedure by the introduction of the more flexible formulary system that the Praetor began to have a really significant influence upon the extension and development of the law to meet new requirements. Exactly how and when this system replaced the archaic _legis actiones_ is uncertain. The Lex Aebutia is the statute which some say introduced it \u2013 though it more probably simply sanctioned existing practices; but despite its great importance its exact date is unknown. The general view, however, is that it must have been passed towards the end of the second century B.C. What is clear is that the new forms of procedure were in use by then.\n\nThis new procedure is known to us as the Formulary System. It remained in use throughout the Classical period of Roman law, despite the great changes which occurred, because its simplicity and flexibility enabled it to meet the demands placed upon it. The essence of the system was that each action had an appropriate form, which was set in motion by a formula, or statement of the cause of action. Each formula was made up from a number of sections which were made up according to a number of general patterns but were flexible enough to enable the gist of a case to be set out clearly and concisely. 'Thus if there had been a contract of sale ( _emptio venditio_ ) and the seller refused to deliver what he had sold, the buyer had an action on the purchase ( _actio empti_ ), and conversely if the buyer refused to pay the price, the seller had an action on the sale ( _actio venditi_ ); and each action had an appropriate formula in which the issue was defined.' Thus defined, it was presented to the court and the judge ( _iudex_ ).\n\nTurning now to the particular subjects discussed by Justinian in those parts of the _Digest_ included in this volume, a plaintiff who had been injured directly by the negligence of the defendant would sue him by means of the _actio legis Aquiliae_. This action was at first, however, only available in a relatively small number of cases falling directly within the strictly construed words of the Lex Aquilia itself. For example, the use of the word _occidere_ (to kill) in Chapter One of the Lex, which imposes liability for destroying property, was construed as meaning that the Lex applied only where the killing was done directly by the person of the accused, or with a weapon held by him. The early lawyers, however, quite soon interpreted the Lex as applying also where a killing was done by poisoning, but even the extended rule was understood as applying only where the damage was done _corpore corpori_ (that is by the wrongdoer's body to the damaged thing). Similarly _rumpere_ (to smash) in Chapter 3 was at first narrowly interpreted, but later extended to include any sort of material damage, including liability for _damnum emergens_ (loss due to extrinsic circumstances, such as the killing of one horse of a pair, or one acrobat from a troupe) and _lucrum cessans_ (an expected profit which the owner has been making). Perhaps the most significant development of this branch of the law through juristic interpretation arose from their attitude to _iniuria_ (unlawfulness). Originally this requirement of the Lex Aquilia probably meant that the defendant should be liable for death or damage directly caused by the body to the body in circumstances where he was not acting _iure_ , that is in pursuance of some right. The _Digest_ lists cases where a defence is afforded by self-defence, public office or private right. It is likely, however, as Professor Lawson suggests, that quite soon the defendant could plead that although he had killed or injured the plaintiff's property, he had done so under circumstances in which he could not have acted otherwise, and so was not to blame. By introducing this element of fault and moving away from earlier notions of strict liability (liability without proof of the defendant's fault by the plaintiff), the jurists created a law of potentially great flexibility and adaptability to an apparently infinite range of circumstance, which has enabled the law of the Lex Aquilia to be applied to this day in negligence cases in jurisdictions with a Roman law foundation.\n\nBeyond these adjustments by interpretation the extension of the law was in the hands of the Praetors, who might give or withhold rights of action in analogous circumstances especially through the _actio utilis_ and _actio in factum_. Buckland explains thus:\n\nThe law applied only where the damage was by the body to the body, _corpore corpori_. The Praetor gave an action, _utilis_ or _in factum_ in cases not within this conception, where it was not by but to the body, as by throwing grain into a river. It might not be harmed, but in effect it was destroyed. So too where it was to, but not by, the body, as by putting poison where a slave was likely to take it, but not actually administering it. So too where it was neither, as by opening a stable door so that animals escaped and were lost. It is easy to see that these lines might be difficult to draw. There is no great difference between mixing the seed in the bag, which gives the direct action, and sowing false seed, which does not. The line between actually administering poison and facilitating the taking might be rather fine.\n\nIn some cases the _actio utilis_ was given; in others an _actio in factum_. Gaius makes it _utilis_ wherever it was not _corpore_ (i.e. damage by the body): the _Institutes_ [of Justinian] say that if it was not _corpore_ or _corpori_ (i.e. to the body) the action was _in factum_ , which would make it _utilis_ if it was _corpore_ but not _corpori_. But the texts in the _Digest_ do not conform to any rule. Even the direct action is given in cases which seem to be more appropriate to one of the others, and as between these, no logical scheme is attainable, perhaps because the question was one of procedure and practically obsolete under Justinian.\n\n# THE ROMAN LAW OF DELICTS\n\nTHE selected passages from the _Digest_ which follow make up the Roman law of delicts. The term 'delict' is used in many legal systems, notably nowadays for example in Scotland, to indicate what in England we call torts. A tort is extremely difficult to define in a way satisfactory to the jurist, but easy enough to illustrate in general terms. Even so, it is usually explained more by reference to what it is not than to what it is. It is said to be a civil (that is non-criminal) legal wrong which arises other than from contract. In contract cases, rights to compensation arise from the breach of the agreement which is the essence of contract, but in tort cases one is faced with situations where the parties are brought into a legal relationship irrespective of agreement. This branch of the law concerns itself with negligence (as for example when _X_ runs down _Y_ because he is not taking as much care as he should \u2013 the care that a reasonable man would take) and nuisance, libel and slander, assault, battery and trespass. These wrongs are also the province of the Scottish (and the Roman) law of delicts, based on the second of the three famous precepts of Ulpian: ' _Juris praecepta sunt haec: honeste vivere, alterum non laedere, suum cuique tribuere_.' Explaining the application of this maxim Erskine says in his _Institute of the Law of Scotland_ , 'every one who has the exercise of reason, and so can distinguish between right and wrong, is naturally obliged to make up the damage befalling his neighbour from a wrong committed by himself. Wherefore every fraudulent contrivance, or unwarrantable act, by which another suffers damage, or runs the hazard of it, subjects the delinquent to reparation.'\n\nMore recently the late Dean Wright explained the development of the maxim in the English law of torts as follows:\n\nArising out of the various and ever-increasing clashes of the activities of persons living in a common society, carrying on business in competition with fellow members of that society, owning property which may in any of a thousand ways affect the person or property of others \u2013 in short doing all the things that constitute modem living \u2013 there must of necessity be losses, or injuries of many kinds sustained as a result of the activities of others. The purpose of the law of torts is to adjust these losses and to afford compensation for injuries sustained by one person as the result of the conduct of another... The study of the law of torts is, therefore, a study of the extent to which the law will shift the losses sustained in modem society from the person affected to the shoulder of him who caused the loss or, more realistically in many fields, to the insurance companies who are increasingly covering the many risks involved in the conduct of business and individual activities.\n\nAs to the scope of the law of delicts or torts, apart from the reference to insurance, Wright's view might just as well have been written by a Roman jurist about the Roman law of delicts. There was however, a major difference of purpose and of approach between the Roman and the modern law of delicts, for whereas the object of modern delictal actions is to compensate the sufferer and, so far as money can, to put him back into the position in which he would have been had the defendant not committed the delict, the object of the Roman law was to penalize the wrongdoer. The earliest actions were probably an attempt to regularize what might otherwise have become a vendetta and to substitute a legal proceeding for personal vengeance, and this attitude of legalized self-help can be clearly seen in a number of examples in the early law of the Twelve Tables. At its simplest it provides for a killing, for example of an armed thief, to be guiltless. Similarly, before money penalties became the rule, a manifest (red-handed) thief still had to be brought before the court to be formally assigned to the plaintiff for the wreaking of his vengeance. He had thus to restrain himself until that stage had been gone through. In personal injury cases, where the guilt of the defendant was not necessarily so obvious and had to be established in court, he would therefore be assigned to the plaintiff for retaliation, but not just as the plaintiff saw fit, only for retaliation in kind \u2013 an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and so on. In other cases, money penalties without the option of vengeance soon became the rule, and in later law, physical vengeance, which was no less barbarous for being awarded by a court order, virtually disappeared, being replaced by pecuniary awards. It is tempting to think thereafter in modern compensatory terms, but it must be remembered that Roman delictal actions began by being legalized vengeance and that they retained their penal character: the sum assessed tends to be double or four times the value of the thing lost or damaged. Furthermore, if two or more persons committed a delict together, each was fully liable for the whole penalty. The law was not concerned that the plaintiff recovered his loss many times over \u2013 after all, no blame attached to him \u2013 but was much more concerned to see that each wrongdoer was fully penalized.\n\nTo the Romans, delicts could be of two kinds, public (which we call crimes \u2013 thus the Romans cast this net wider than we do now) and private (our law of torts). These two branches of law were not, of course, mutually exclusive, and the same event might well give rise to liability to more than one action.\n\nThe Romans, so given to dividing all manner of things into categories, divided delicts into four classes for purposes of legal exposition. The three oldest were the delicts of theft ( _furtum_ ), damage ( _damnum iniuria datum_ ) and insult ( _iniuria_ ). They were subsequently much expanded and developed by the Praetors and by the jurists. The fourth, robbery ( _rapina_ ), was a later addition, the creation of which was attributed to the Praetor Lucullus, who introduced the _actio vi bonorum raptorum_ in his Edict of 76 B.C. However, although that Edict was indeed issued in that year, it is now the preferred view that the delict _rapina_ had probably developed gradually over a considerable period, though the history of the action is obscure. Lucullus probably brought it to prominence as a firm measure to meet the needs of his time when law and order were in serious decline.\n\nThe passages following are all examples of civil wrongs, for in the _Digest_ the public delicts or crimes are expounded quite separately \u2013 as indeed they are by our textbook writers today. They have been chosen rather than, say, the law of contracts, not only because they are concerned with situations which in many instances are just like today's, but also because the facts of many of the cases discussed are simple and graphic and thus create immediate mental pictures in a way in which discussions of points of 'lawyer's law' do not, and for the lay reader, cannot. Some cases, however, such as those concerned with runaway slaves, defamed married women or fraudulent tutors, and discussions of the type of legal proceeding available to meet certain circumstances, cannot make sense without some knowledge of the background law, and for this reason that necessary background has already been outlined; but most of the cases discussed arose out of everyday events in the life of the thriving and cosmopolitan communities of the Roman world. Rome not only gave her law to the whole of known civilization: she was also a great centre for trade with all corners of the world and a city where all sorts of foreigners came into contact with the people at home. One can sense this world in Ostia Antica and in Pompeii; and here in the _Digest_ we have a fascinating picture of the ordinary life of the Roman world which, apart from Petronius \u2013 and he gives nothing like the wealth of lively detail \u2013 is so little documented. Here is a glimpse of everyday hurlyburly and commonplace things, accidents in the street, ball games, clothes taken to the cleaners; the picture takes in town and country, for we see the man whose oven causes his neighbour's house to burn down as well as the farmer whose stubble-burning destroys the next man's vineyard; there are dwellers in cool villas and the occupants of densely-packed tenements; deals in shops, honest, unfortunate and crooked; thieves and brawling; defrauded workmen and all manner of ramifications of deals with all sorts of and conditions of men. Tinkers, tailors, soldiers, sailors, rich men, poor men, beggarmen and thieves \u2013 they were with the Romans then, just as they are with us now.\n\n# CONCERNING THE LEX AQUILIA\n\nBOOK 9, TITLE 2\n\n1. (ULPIAN) The Lex Aquilia took away the force of all earlier laws which dealt with unlawful damage \u2013 the Twelve Tables and others alike \u2013 and it is no longer necessary to refer to them. The Lex Aquilia is a plebiscite, the enactment of which by the plebs was procured by the tribune Aquilius.\n\n2. (GAIUS) The first chapter of the Lex Aquilia provides as follows: 'If anyone kills unlawfully a slave or servant-girl belonging to someone else, or a four-footed beast of the class of cattle, let him be condemned to pay the owner the highest value that the property had attained in the preceding year.' And next it is provided that the action should be for double the value if the defendant denied his liability. It thus appears that the statute treats equally our slaves and our four-footed cattle which are kept in herds, such as sheep, goats, horses, mules and asses. But it has been questioned whether pigs should be included amongst cattle, and Labeo rightly holds that they are. A dog, however, does not fall within this class and it is much more apparent that wild beasts such as bears, lions and panthers are not cattle either. But elephants and camels are, as it were, 'mixed', for they serve as draught animals; but they are by nature wild and accordingly should be within the scope of the first chapter.\n\n3. (ULPIAN) If a slave or servant-girl is wrongfully killed, the Lex Aquilia applies; but it is rightly added that the killing must be unlawful, for killing alone is not enough \u2013 it must have been done unlawfully.\n\n4. (GAIUS) Accordingly if I kill your slave who is lying in ambush to rob me, I shall go free, for natural reason permits a person to defend himself against danger. The law of the Twelve Tables permits one to kill a thief caught in the night, provided one gives evidence of the fact by shouting aloud, but someone may only kill a person caught in such circumstances at any other time if he defends himself with a weapon, though only if he provides evidence by shouting.\n\n5. (ULPIAN) If someone kills anyone else who is trying to go for him with a sword, he will not be deemed to have killed unlawfully; and if for fear of death someone kills a thief, there is no doubt that he will not be liable under the Lex Aquilia. But if, although he could have arrested him, he preferred to kill him, the better opinion is that he should be deemed to have acted unlawfully ( _iniuria_ ), and therefore he will also be liable under the Lex Cornelia.\n\nWe must here of course not take _iniuria_ as meaning some sort of insult, as it indicates in the _actio iniuriarum_ , but as indicating something done illegally, that is, contrary to the law \u2013 as for example if one kills wrongfully. Thus, although from time to time the action under the Lex Aquilia and the action for insult concur, there will in such a case be two assessed heads of damages, one for wrongful harm and one for insult. Therefore we interpret _iniuria_ for present purposes as including damage caused in a blameworthy fashion, even by one who did not intend the harm. And accordingly the question is asked whether there is an action under the Lex Aquilia if a lunatic causes damage. Pegasus says there is not, for he asks how there can be any accountable fault in him who is out of his mind; and he is undoubtedly right. Therefore the Aquilian action will fail in such a case, just as it fails if an animal has caused damage or if a tile has fallen; and the same must be said if an infant has caused damage, though Labeo says that if the child were over seven years of age he could be liable under the Lex Aquilia in just the same way as he could be liable for theft. I think this is correct, provided the child were able to distinguish between right and wrong.\n\nIf a teacher kills or wounds a slave during a lesson, is he liable under the Lex Aquilia for having done unlawful damage? Julian writes that a man who had put out a pupil's eye in the course of instruction was held liable under the Lex. There is all the more reason therefore for saying the same if he kills him. Julian also puts this case: a shoemaker, he says, struck with a last at the neck of a boy (a freeborn youngster) who was learning under him, because he had done badly what he had been teaching him, with the result that the boy's eye was knocked out. On such facts, says Julian, the action for insult does not lie because he struck him not with intent to insult, but in order to correct and teach him; he wonders whether there is an action for breach of the contract for his services as a teacher, since a teacher only has the right to administer reasonable chastisement, but I have no doubt that action can be brought against him under the Lex Aquilia,\n\n6. (PAUL) for excessive brutality on the part of a teacher is blameworthy.\n\n7. (ULPIAN) And in this action the father will recover the amount of his loss of prospective profit from his son's services, of which he is deprived through the eye being damaged, and also the expenses incurred for medical attention.\n\nNow we must accept 'killing' to include the cases where the assailant hit his victim with a sword or a stick or other weapon, or did him to death with his hands (if for example he strangled him), or kicked him with his foot or butted him, or any other such ways. But if one who is overloaded unreasonably throws down his burden and kills a slave, the Aquilian action lies; for it was within his own judgement not to load himself thus. For even if someone slips and crushes another man's slave with his load, Pegasus maintains that he is liable under the Lex Aquilia provided he overloaded himself unreasonably or negligently walked through a slippery place. Thus if someone does damage through being pushed by somebody else, Proculus writes that neither is liable under the Lex: the one who pushed is not liable because he did not kill, nor is the one who was pushed because he did not do the damage unlawfully. According to this view an actio _in factum_ will be given against the one who pushed. If a man kills another in the _colluctatio_ 1 or in the _pancratium_ , or in a boxing-match (provided the one kills the other in a public bout) the Lex Aquilia does not apply because the damage is seen to have been done in the cause of glory and valour and not for the sake of inflicting unlawful harm; but this does not apply in the case of a slave, because the custom is that only freeborn people compete in this way. It does, however, apply where a son in power is hurt. Clearly, if someone wounds a contestant who has thrown in the towel the Lex Aquilia will apply, as it will also if he kills a slave who is not in the contest, except if he has been entered for a fight by his master \u2013 then the action fails.\n\nBut if someone gives a light blow to a sickly slave and he dies from it, Labeo rightly says that he is liable under the Lex Aquilia, for different things are lethal for different people.\n\nCelsus says it matters a great deal whether one kills directly or brings about a cause of death, because he who furnishes an indirect cause of death is not liable to an Aquilian action, but to an _actio in factum_ , wherefore he refers to a man who administered poison instead of medicine and says that he thereby brought about a cause of death, in the same way as one who holds out a sword to a madman; and such a man is not liable under the Lex but to an _actio in factum_.\n\nBut if a man throws another off a bridge Celsus says that, regardless of whether he is killed by the impact or merely drowns at once, or whether he perishes from exhaustion because he is overcome by the force of the current, there is liability under the Lex Aquilia, just as if one dashes a child against a rock. Proculus says that if a doctor operates negligently on a slave an action will lie either on the contract for his services or under the Lex Aquilia.\n\n8. And the law is just the same if one misuses a drug, or if, having operated efficiently, the aftercare is neglected: the wrongdoer will not go free, but is deemed to be guilty of negligence. Furthermore if a mule-driver cannot control his mules because he is inexperienced and as a result they run down somebody's slave, he is generally said to be liable on grounds of negligence. It is the same if it is because of weakness that he cannot hold back his mules \u2013 and it does not seem unreasonable that weakness should be deemed negligence, for no one should undertake a task in which he knows, or ought to know, that his weakness may be a danger to others. The legal position is just the same for a person who through inexperience or weakness cannot control a horse he is riding.\n\n9. Labeo makes this distinction if a midwife gives a drug from which the woman dies: if she administers it with her own hands it would appear that she killed; but if she gave it to the woman for her to take it herself an action _in factum_ must be granted. This opinion is correct, for she provided a cause of death rather than killed. If someone administers a drug to anyone by force or persuasion, either in a drink or by injection, or rubs him with a poisonous potion, he is liable under the Lex Aquilia; and Neratius says that if a man starves a slave to death he is liable to an _actio in factum_.\n\nIf when my slave is out riding you scare his horse so that he is thrown into a river and dies as a result, Ofilius writes that an _actio in factum_ must be given, in just the same way as when my slave is lured into an ambush by one man and killed by another. But if a slave is killed by people throwing javelins by way of sport, the Aquilian action lies. On the other hand if when other people were already throwing javelins in a field a slave walked across the same field the Aquilian action fails, because he should not make his way at an inopportune time across a field where javelin throwing is being practised. However, anyone who deliberately aims at him is liable under the Lex Aquilia,\n\n10. (PAUL) for playing dangerous games is blameworthy conduct.\n\n11. (ULPIAN) Further, Mela writes that, when some people were playing with a ball, one of them hit it hard and it knocked the hands of a barber, with the result that the throat of a slave, whom the barber was shaving, was cut by the jerking of the razor. In which of the parties does the fault lie? \u2013 for it is he who is liable under the Lex Aquilia. Proculus says the blame is the barber's, and surely, if he was doing shaving in a place where people customarily played games or where there was much going to and fro, the blame will be imputed to him; but it is no bad point in reply that if someone entrusts himself to a barber who has his chair in a dangerous place he has only himself to blame for his own misfortune.\n\nIf one man holds a slave while another kills him, he who did the holding will be liable to an _actio in factum_ because he furnished a cause of death. But if several people do a slave to death, let us see whether they are all liable as for killing. If it is clear from whose blow he perished, that person is liable for killing; but if it is not clear, Julian says that all the assailants are liable as if they had all killed; and if the action is brought against only one of them, the others are not released from liability, for under the Lex Aquilia what one pays does not lessen what is due from another, as it is a penal law.\n\nCelsus writes that if one attacker inflicts a mortal wound on a slave and another person later finishes him off, he who struck the earlier blow will not be liable for a killing, but for wounding, because he actually perished as the result of another wound. The later assailant will be held liable because he did the killing. It seems thus to Marcellus and it is the more likely.\n\nIf several people throw down a beam and thereby crush a slave, it seemed right to the ancient jurists that they should all be liable under the Lex Aquilia. Again, Proculus gave an opinion that the Aquilian action lies against him who, though he was not in charge of a dog, annoyed it and thus caused it to bite someone; but Julian says the Lex Aquilia only applies to this extent, that it applies to him who had the dog on a lead and caused it to bite someone; otherwise, if he were not holding it, an _actio in factum_ must be brought.\n\nThe action on the Lex Aquilia is available to the ' _erus_ ', that is, the owner.\n\nIf wrongful damage is done to a slave whom I am returning to you because he has some serious defect which rescinds the contract for his sale to me, Julian says an action under the Lex Aquilia has accrued to me, but that I must cede it to you when I begin the restoration of the slave to you.\n\nBut if a slave is in the service of one who is not his owner, but who wrongly though in good faith believes that he is, is the Aquilian action available to him? It seems rather that an _action in factum_ will be given. Julian says that a person to whom clothes have been lent cannot proceed under the Lex Aquilia if they are torn, but that the action is available to the owner. Julian also discusses whether those granted the use and enjoyment of the produce of another's property have the action; but I think that in such circumstances it is rather the _actio utilis_ that should be given.\n\n12. (PAUL) But if the true owner wounds or kills a slave in whom I have a usufruct, I should be given an action against him on the analogy of the Lex Aquilia, according to the value of my usufruct, so that even the part of the year before my usufruct was created should be brought into account in making the valuation.\n\n13. (ULPIAN) For an injury to himself a free man has on his own account an _actio utilis_ after the manner of the Aquilian action. He cannot have the direct action under the Lex because no one is deemed to be the owner of his own limbs. The owner has a direct action on account of a runaway slave.\n\nJulian writes that if a free man acts in the honest belief that he is my slave, he is liable to me under the Lex Aquilia for any damage he does.\n\nIf a slave who is part of an unclaimed inheritance is killed, it is debated who can bring the Aquilian action, since no one is the owner of such a slave. Celsus says that the law meant any loss to be made good to the owner and that the inheritance is therefore deemed to be the owner. Accordingly the heir may sue when he has entered into his inheritance. If a slave left as a legacy is killed after the heir's entry into the inheritance, the legatee is competent to bring the action under the Lex Aquilia if he did not acknowledge his legacy after the slave's death; but if he refused his legacy, Julian says the consequence is that the action is available to the heir.\n\n14. (PAUL) But if the heir himself kills the slave, it is said that an action must be given to the legatee against him.\n\n15. (ULPIAN) From the opinion of Julian it follows that if a slave left as a legacy is killed before the heir enters upon his inheritance, the Aquilian action which has been acquired by the inheritance remains for the heir. But if the slave should be wounded before the entry of the heir, the action still remains in the inheritance, but it should be assigned to the legatee.\n\nIf a slave who has been mortally wounded afterwards has his death accelerated by the collapse of a house or by shipwreck or by some other sort of blow, no action can be brought for killing, but only as if he were wounded; but if he dies from a wound after he has been freed or alienated, Julian says an action can be brought for killing. These situations are so different for this reason: because the truth is that in the latter case he was killed by you when you were wounding him, which only became apparent later by his death; but in the former case whether or not he was killed was not clear because it was affected by the collapse of the house.\n\nBut if you order that a mortally wounded slave shall be freed and be your heir and then he dies, his heir cannot sue on the Lex Aquilia,\n\n16. (MARCIANUS) because in this case matters had reached a point where an action cannot arise.\n\n17. (ULPIAN) If a master kills his own slave he will be liable to a bona fide possessor or one who had accepted him as a pledge, in an _actio in factum_.\n\n18. (PAUL) But if he who has accepted the slave as a pledge kills or wounds him, a right of action can arise under both the Lex Aquilia and the contract of pledge, though the plaintiff will have to be content with one or the other.\n\n19. (ULPIAN) However, if someone kills a slave owned jointly with another, the Lex Aquilia applies to him; and it is the same if he wounded him,\n\n20. (ULPIAN) of course, in proportion to the plaintiff's share of ownership.\n\n21. (ULPIAN) As the measure of damages the Lex refers to 'Whatever was the highest value of the slave during that year'. This clause contains the mode of valuation of the damage that has been done. Now the year is reckoned backwards from the time when the slave was killed; but if he was mortally wounded and later died after a long interval, we shall reckon the year, according to Julian, from the time he was wounded, though Celsus writes to the contrary. But are we valuing only his body, how much it was worth when he was killed, or rather how much it was worth to us that he should not be killed? We use this rule \u2013 that the valuation should be what he was worth to the plaintiff.\n\n22. (PAUL) Thus, if you have killed a slave whom I have promised to hand over under a penalty, my benefit comes into account in the judgement. Furthermore, other heads of damage necessarily connected are taken into account, if (for example) someone kills one of a troupe of actors or musicians, or one of twins, or of a chariot team, or one of a pair of mules; for not only must a valuation be made of the object destroyed but it must also be borne in mind how much the value of the others has been lessened.\n\n23. (ULPIAN) Therefore Neratius writes that if a slave who has been instituted as heir is killed, the value of the inheritance comes into the reckoning.\n\nJulian says that if a slave is killed when it has been ordered that he should go free and become an heir, neither the substitute nor the statutory heir will secure by an action under the Lex Aquilia the value of the inheritance, which was not yet due to the slave himself; and this view is correct. Therefore he says that there should be an assessment only of the slave's market value, because this appears to be the only interest of the substitute. On the other hand I think that not even the slave's market value should be the measure of damages because, if the slave had become heir, he would also have become free. The same Julian writes further that if I should be instituted heir on the condition of freeing the slave Stichus and Stichus is killed after the testator's death, I can sue for the value of the inheritance in the assessment of my damages, for the condition failed because of the killing. But if he is killed in the testator's lifetime the valuation of the inheritance is not made because the highest valuation is calculated retrospectively. Julian also writes that the valuation of the dead slave is made as at that time in the preceding year when he was worth most; and accordingly if the thumb of a most valuable painter had been cut off beforehand and within a year of its loss he is killed, the Aquilian action lies and he must be valued at his price before he lost his skill together with his thumb. On the other hand in the case of killing a slave who had committed great embezzlements in running my affairs and whom I had resolved to examine by torture in order to drag out the names of his accomplices in dishonesty, Labeo writes very rightly that he must be valued according to my interest in detecting the frauds he had committed and not according to the value of the harm he had done. But if a worthy slave becomes a depraved character and is killed within a year his value will be calculated according to what he was worth before he changed his ways. In short we must say that all those useful things that made the slave worth more within the year in which he was killed are to be added to his value.\n\nIf a baby not yet a year old is killed, the better view is that this action will meet the case by referring the valuation to that part of the year for which he had lived.\n\nIt is settled that this action is given to heirs and other successors, but it will not be given against an heir or the other successors because it is penal \u2013 unless perchance the heir has been made richer as a result of the damage done.\n\nIf a slave is killed maliciously it is agreed that his owner can take action also under the Lex Cornelia; and if he shall already have sued under the Lex Aquilia the Cornelian action need not be judged first.\n\nThe Aquilian action lies for simple damages against a defendant who confesses, but for double against one who denies liability. If someone falsely confesses to killing a slave who is still alive and afterwards is ready to show that the slave is still alive, Julian writes that the Aquilian action no longer lies, even though he had confessed to killing; for an action on a confession only relieves the plaintiff from necessarily having to bring proof that the defendant killed the slave \u2013 it is still necessary that the slave must actually have been killed by someone or other.\n\n24. (PAUL) This is more obvious in a case about a wounded slave, for if someone confesses to wounding when the slave was not hurt, what wound are we to value, or to what time shall we reckon back?\n\n25. (ULPIAN) Accordingly if a slave has not been slain but has nevertheless died, the better view is that the defendant is not liable for the dead slave, even though he may have confessed. If a procurator or tutor or curator or some such agent confesses to a wounding by their absent principal an _actio utilis_ on the confession must be given against them. It must be noted that in this action which is given against the confessor the judge is appointed not to decide liability but only to assess the damages; for none of the elements of the judicial function are present in such cases of confession as these.\n\n26. (PAUL) Just suppose that someone who has been summoned confesses to a killing and is prepared to pay the damages, but his opponent claims an excessive amount.\n\n27. (ULPIAN) If a slave carries off and kills someone else's slave, both Julian and Celsus write that actions lie for both theft and wrongful damage. If a slave in common ownership, mine and yours, kills another slave of mine, the Lex Aquilia lies against you if he did it with your consent. Urseius reports that this was the opinion held by Proculus; but he says that if the slave did it without your consent, a noxal action will not lie in case it might be in the power of the slave to decide which he might serve exclusively; and I think this is correct.\n\nAgain if a slave owned by you and me in common is killed by the slave of Titius, Celsus writes that if either of us sues he should recover the assessed value of his share, or noxal surrender will have to be made of the miscreant as a whole, because this solution is not susceptible of division.\n\nThe owner is held liable in respect of a slave who kills, but not a person whom he is serving in good faith; but it has been questioned whether he who has a runaway slave is liable on his account under the Lex Aquilia. Julian says he is liable and this is undoubtedly so, for even Marcellus agrees.\n\nThe second chapter of the Lex Aquilia has fallen into disuse.\n\nIn its third chapter the Lex Aquilia says: 'In the case of all other things apart from slaves or cattle that have been killed, if anyone does damage to another by wrongfully burning, breaking or spoiling his property, let him be condemned to pay to the owner whatever the damage shall prove to be worth in the next thirty days.'\n\nIf therefore someone does not kill, but burns, smashes or spoils a slave or beast, there is no doubt that action may be brought under these words of the Lex. Accordingly if you throw a lighted torch at my slave and singe him, you will be liable to me. Again, if you set fire to my orchard or my country house, I shall have the Aquilian action. If someone wished to burn down my tenement building and the fire spread to my neighbour's block of flats, he will be liable to my neighbour too. He will also be liable just the same to the tenants in respect of their property that is burnt.\n\nIf a tenant-farmer's stoker-slave drops asleep at the furnace and the house is burnt down Neratius says that the tenant must nevertheless make good the damage in accordance with the agreement in the contract of letting, if he was negligent in choosing his workers. But if one man lit the furnace but another watched it carelessly, will the one who lit it be liable? For he who watched it did nothing, while the one who lit it properly was not at fault. What is the answer? I think that an _actio utilis_ lies just as much against the man who fell asleep at the furnace as against him who watched it negligently, nor can anyone say that he who fell asleep was only afflicted by a normal human failing, for it was his duty either to put out the fire or to take such care that it did not escape.\n\nIf you have an oven against a party wall will you be liable for wrongful damage? Proculus says there can be no action because there is no similar liability on the part of a man who has a fireplace, but I think it would be fairer for an _actio in factum_ to be given if perchance the wall were burned down. On the other hand if you have not yet done me any damage but you have such a fire that I fear that you will cause me damage, I think your giving security against threatened damage should suffice.\n\nProculus says that when the slaves of a tenant-farmer have burned down the country house, the tenant is liable either on the contract of tenancy or under the Lex Aquilia, but with the privilege that the tenant is able to hand over the slaves for punishment. And if the case is decided in one of these actions the other cannot be brought in addition. But the position is thus only if the tenant-farmer was free of fault. On the other hand if he had culpable slaves he will be liable for resulting harm by reason of having such slaves. He writes that the same rule must apply also to the lodgers in a hostel.\n\nIf, when my bees had flown off to join yours, you burn them out, Celsus says the action on the Lex Aquilia lies.\n\nThe statute actually says ' _ruperit_ ' (break or rend asunder); but almost all the early jurists understood the word to mean ' _corruperit_ ' (spoil). And so Celsus asks, if you sow tares or wild oats in another man's crops and spoil them, not only can the owner bring the interdict against damage caused secretly or by force, but he can also proceed _in factum_ under the Lex; and if a tenant-farmer proceeds thus he must give an undertaking that there will be no further legal proceedings \u2013 for example lest his landlord should seek to bring a further action. For it is one sort of damage to spoil or alter something so that the Lex Aquilia applies and quite another to add something that it is a nuisance to separate, but without any other change being made.\n\nCelsus says that clearly the Aquilian action can be brought against someone who adulterates wine or pours it away or makes it sour or spoils it in any other way, because even pouring it away or making it sour are comprised within the term 'spoil'. And he does not deny that breaking and burning are included within the term 'spoiling' and says that there is nothing new in that a statute, after enumerating some cases specially, should add a general term which embraces those specific things; and this view is correct. We accept that 'to rend asunder' includes the case of him who wounds a slave either with a rod or whip or fist or strikes him with a weapon or in any other way that cuts him or makes a bruise, but only if wrongful damage is caused thereby. However, if he makes the slave in no way less valuable or less useful, the Aquilian action will not lie and the action for insult will have to be brought so far as this matter is concerned, for the Aquilian action avenges only those cases of breakage which cause loss. Therefore if a slave has not been rendered worse in point of his value, but expense is incurred in making him fit and healthy, it seems to me that in this respect loss has been caused, and accordingly it is possible to proceed under the Lex Aquilia.\n\nIf someone tears or stains clothes, he is liable under the Lex Aquilia as if he had broken something; and again, if someone pours my millet or corn into a river, the Aquilian action provides for this case. Again, if someone mixes up corn with sand or some other such thing so that separation is hard, it is possible to bring action as for a spoiling.\n\nIf a man knocks coins out of my hand, Sabinus thinks that there is an action for wrongful damage if they roll away and thus do not come into someone else's hands, if for example they fall into a river, or the sea, or into a drain. But if they come into someone else's possession an action for aiding and abetting theft may be brought \u2013 and the early jurists held this view. Sabinus says that an _actio in factum_ can also be given.\n\nIf a slave or a mare has a miscarriage because of a blow struck by you, Brutus says that you are liable to an Aquilian action just as in the case of a breaking, and Vivanus writes that there is an Aquilian action, the same as for a breaking, if someone deliberately sinks a merchant ship.\n\nIf someone harvests olives before their due season or cuts down green corn or unripe grapes he is liable under the Lex Aquilia; but if they are ripe for harvest, the Aquilian action does not lie, as no wrongful harm has been done; rather, he has made you a gift of the costs involved in harvesting a crop of this nature. But if he makes off with the crop after collecting it, he is liable for theft, unless, Octavenus adds in the case of the grapes, he threw them down on the ground so that they were a dead loss. He says the same about trees that can be cut: if they are not yet ready, he who cuts them is liable under the Lex; but if he cuts ripe wood, he will be liable for theft and for cutting timber furtively. But if you thin a willow thicket so as not to harm the trunks, you will not be liable under the Lex Aquilia.\n\nFurther, if someone castrates your slave boy and thus increases his value, Vivanus writes that the Lex Aquilia should not apply, but that you should instead bring the action for insult or sue under the edict of the Aediles for four times his value.\n\nIf you hand over a cup for filigree work to be done, the jeweller will be held liable if he breaks it through lack of skill, but if it breaks not through his lack of expertise but because it has weakening cracks he can be exonerated; and accordingly craftsmen usually contract when things of this sort are entrusted to them that the work shall not be done at their risk and this provision excludes their liabilitiy both under the contract for their professional services and under the Lex Aquilia.\n\nWhen a husband has given his wife some pearls and she pierces them so that they can be worn as a necklace, either against the will of her husband or without his knowledge, she is liable under the Lex Aquilia whether she is divorced or still married.\n\nIf someone breaks down or staves in the doors of my house or smashes down the house itself, he is liable under the Lex Aquilia; or if he wrecks my aqueduct, even though the materials which are smashed down are mine, nevertheless because it is not my land over which I bring the water, it is better to say that an _actio utilis_ should be given.\n\nIf a stone falls out of a cart and ruins or smashes something, it is agreed that the carter is liable to the Aquilian action if he loaded the stones badly and it is for this reason that they fell.\n\nIf a man entrusts a hired slave with the driving of his mule and the slave ties it by the halter to his thumb but the mule tears itself away wrenching off his thumb and falls headlong, Mela writes that if the slave was inexperienced but was hired out as an expert, an action can be brought against the slave's owner on the contract of hire for damaging or disabling the mule; but if the mule was upset by someone hitting or scaring it, then the owner (that is the mule's owner as well as the slave's owner) will have an action under the Lex Aquilia against him who frightened it. However, it seems to me that on the same facts that found an action on the contract, an action under the Lex Aquilia also lies.\n\nAgain, if you hire someone to mend a vat full of wine and he punctures it so that all the wine runs out, Labeo maintains that an _actio in factum_ must be brought.\n\n28. (PAUL) People who dig pits to catch bears and deer are liable under the Lex Aquilia if they dig such pits in a public place and something falls in and is damaged, but there is no such liability for pits made elsewhere, where it is usual to make them. But this action is only given for good reason, that is if no warning was given and the plaintiff did not know of the danger, nor could he have foreseen it; and many cases of this sort can be seen in which the plaintiff fails, because he could have avoided the danger;\n\n29. (ULPIAN) as for example if you set traps in a place where you had no right to put them and your neighbour's cattle fall into them. If you cut back my projecting roof which I had no right to have above your house, Proculus writes that I can proceed against you for wrongful damage, for you should have brought an action against me to establish that I had no right to a projecting roof, nor is it just that I should suffer damage from your cutting back my beams. There is a decision otherwise in a rescript of the Emperor Severus, who laid down that a person through whose house a water pipe had been laid (other than in accordance with an easement) could in his own right smash it up; and very properly, for the difference is that the former made the projection on his own land, whereas the latter acted on another's.\n\nIf your boat causes me damage through colliding with my skiff, it is a question which action is open to me. Proculus says that if it was in the power of the sailors to prevent the collision and it happened through their fault, an action under the Lex Aquilia can be brought against them, because it matters little whether you do damage by letting your boat run loose, or by bad steering or even with your own hand, because in all these ways I suffer damage caused by you; but if a rope broke or the vessel ran into mine when no one was in control of it, no action can be brought against the owner. Furthermore, Labeo writes that when a ship was blown by the force of the wind into the anchor ropes of another vessel, and the sailors cut the ropes, no action should be allowed if the vessel could be extricated in no other way than by severing the ropes. And both Labeo and Proculus thought the same about fishermen's nets in which a fishing boat got caught; but clearly if this was caused through the fault of the sailors, action could be brought under the Lex Aquilia. But where action is brought for wrongful damage _to_ the nets no account is to be taken of the fish which were not caught because of the damage, as it is so uncertain whether they would have been caught. The same is true in the cases of the prospective catches of both hunters and bird-catchers.\n\nIf a ship sinks another vessel coming towards it, Alfenus says that an action for wrongful damage lies either against the helmsman or against the captain; but if the ship was subject to such forces that it could not be managed, no action should be given against the owner. However, if the collision was caused by fault on the part of the sailors, I think that affords a basis for the Aquilian action.\n\nIf a man cuts a ship's mooring rope an action _in factum_ can be brought in respect of the ship which is lost in consequence.\n\nOne can sue by the action under this chapter of the Lex Aquilia for damage to all animals which are not classed as cattle, for example, damage to dogs; and the same may be said of boars and lions and all other wild beasts and birds.\n\nMunicipal magistrates may also be liable under the Lex Aquilia if they do any damage unlawfully. So if one of them seizes your cattle by way of security and kills them by starvation because he would not allow you to take them food, you must be allowed an _actio in factum_. Again if he thinks he is taking security under the provisions of a statute but he does not take it in accordance with the law and he returns your things worn and spoiled, it is said that the Lex Aquilia applies. And indeed the same must be said even if he did make the seizure properly under the statute; but on the other hand if a magistrate does some injury by violence against someone who resists lawful process he will not be liable under the Lex Aquilia, for even when a slave taken in execution has hanged himself no action lies.\n\nIt is settled that the words 'whatever was the value in the last thirty days', even though they do not include 'highest', must be accepted in that sense.\n\n30. (PAUL) A man who kills another's slave caught in the act of adultery will not be liable under this Lex.\n\nIf a slave given as a pledge is killed, the action is available to the debtor. But it is asked whether an _actio utilis_ should be given to the creditor because he may have an interest either because the debtor is not solvent or because he has lost his own right of action through lapse of time. But it is unjust that the defendant should be liable to both owner and creditor \u2013 unless one might think that the debtor should suffer no injustice in this case for he is benefited by the amount of his debt and whatever is recovered in excess of the debt can be recovered from the defendant; or perhaps from the start action should be allowed to the debtor for the excess of the damages over the debt.\n\nAnd so in these cases in which an action is given to the creditor because of the poverty of his debtor or because he has lost his right of action, the creditor will have the action under the Lex Aquilia up to the amount of the debt, so that this benefits the debtor, but the Aquilian action is open to the debtor in respect of any amount exceeding the debt.\n\nIf someone consumes another's wine or corn this does not seem to be unlawful damage, and so an _actio utilis_ should be given.\n\nIn the action which arises under this title both intentional and negligent wrongdoing is punished; and so, if a man sets fire to stubble or thorns in order to burn them up and the fire escapes further afield and spreads and burns another's crops or vineyard, we shall ask whether this occurred through his inexperience or negligence. If he did it on a windy day, he is guilty of a mischief (for even he who provides the opportunity is deemed to have done the harm); and he who did not see to it that the fire did not spread stands in the same position. But if he saw to everything that he should have done, or it was a sudden squall of wind that extended the fire, he is free of fault.\n\nIf a slave is wounded, but not mortally, and he dies of neglect, the action will be for wounding, not for killing.\n\n31. (PAUL) If a pruner threw down a branch from a tree and killed a slave passing underneath (the same applies to a man working on a scaffold), he is liable only if it falls down in a public place and he failed to shout a warning so that the accident could be avoided. But Mucius says that even if the accident occurred in a private place an action can be brought if his conduct is blameworthy \u2013 and he thinks there is fault when what could have been foreseen by a diligent man was not foreseen, or when a warning was shouted too late for the danger to be avoided. Following the same reasoning it does not matter much whether the deceased was making his way through a public or a private place, as the general public often make their way across private places. But if there is no path, the defendant should be liable only for positive wrongdoing, so he should not throw anything at someone he sees passing by; but on the other hand he is not to be deemed blameworthy when he could not have guessed that someone was about to pass through that place.\n\n32. (GAIUS) It has been asked whether the practice of the proconsul in cases of theft by a gang of slaves (that is that the demand of the penalty should not be allowed against each one individually, but it suffices if payment is made of what would have been due had one free man done the theft) should be followed also in an action for unlawful damage. But it has seemed best that the same rule should be observed, and rightly too; for the reasoning in the action for theft is that the owner of the slaves should not lose his whole household because of one delict; and the same reasoning being similarly applied to a case of wrongful damage, it follows that the same assessment of damages should be made especially as this form of delict is often less serious, as for instance when damage is done by negligence and not by malice.\n\nIf the same person wounds and then afterwards kills the same slave, he will be held liable for both a wounding and a killing, for there are two delicts. It is otherwise when one kills by many blows delivered in the same attack; for then there will be but one action for killing.\n\n33. (PAUL) If you kill my slave, I think that personal feelings should not be taken into account (as where someone kills your natural son whom you would be prepared to buy for a great price) but only what he would be worth to the world at large. Sextius Pedius says that the prices of things are to be taken generally and not according to personal affections nor their special utility to particular individuals; and accordingly he says that he who has a natural son is none the richer because he would redeem him for a great price if someone else possessed him, nor does he who possesses someone else's son actually have as much as he could sell him for to his father. For under the Lex Aquilia we sue for the amount of the harm suffered and we are said to have lost either whatever we could have gained or what we are obliged to pay out.\n\nIn cases of damage not covered by the Lex Aquilia an _actio in factum_ is given.\n\n34. (MARCELLUS) The slave Stichus was bequeathed to both Titius and Seius. While Seius was still making up his mind, when Titius had already renounced the legacy, Stichus was killed. Thereupon Seius vindicated the legacy. Then Titius can proceed as if he were the sole legatee,\n\n35. (ULPIAN) because his ownership is deemed to have accrued to him retrospectively;\n\n36. (MARCELLUS) for just as a legacy becomes the heir's when a legatee has renounced it, so does Titius have the action as if he were the sole legatee.\n\nIf the owner directs that a slave whom Titius has mortally injured should be freed and become his heir and later Maevius succeeds him, Maevius will not have an action against Titius under the Lex Aquilia, at least according to the opinion of Sabinus, who thought that no action could be transmitted to the heir which was not open to the deceased; and indeed it would turn out absurd if the heir could recover damages as a consequence of the killing of the person whom he succeeded as heir. But if the master had ordered the freed slave to be a part-heir, his co-heir could proceed under the Lex Aquilia on account of his death.\n\n37. (JAVOLENUS) If a free man acting under orders causes damage by his own hand, the action under the Lex Aquilia lies against the person who gave the orders, provided he had a right to give them; but if he had no such right, the action must be brought against the actual wrongdoer.\n\nIf a quadruped, on account of which a _pauperies_ 6 action is being brought against its owner, is killed by someone else and an Aquilian action is brought against the killer, the damages must be assessed not according to the beast's physical value, but in the light of liability in the case involving the _pauperies_ action, and accordingly he who killed it must be condemned in the Aquilian action to pay the amount that it would have profited the owner to make a noxal surrender rather than pay the damages as assessed.\n\n38. (JAVOLENUS) It is generally agreed that I have a good case against you under the Lex Aquilia if my slave, whom you had bought in good faith, was wounded by one of your own slaves while he was in your service.\n\n39. (POMPONIUS) Quintus Mucius writes as follows: a mare was grazing in someone else's meadow and when she was driven out, she miscarried, as she was pregnant. It was asked whether or not her owner could sue, under the Lex Aquilia, the person who drove her off, because in striking her he had done her an injury. It was thought that the owner could bring action if he had struck her too hard or purposely driven her too violently.\n\nPomponius says that even though a person finds someone else's cattle on his land, he should show the same care in driving them off as if those he had found were his own, for if he has suffered any harm on their account he has his own legal remedies. And therefore he who finds someone else's cattle in his field may not lawfully impound them nor must he drive them out other than as we have just said above, that is, as though they were his own; but he must either remove them without hurting them or tell their owner, so that he can come and collect them.\n\n40. (PAUL) If I allege that my handwritten receipt has been erased when it had been recorded that I was owed a sum of money subject to a condition, and for the present I am able to prove this by witnesses (who may not be available when the condition is fulfilled), I ought to win the case under the Lex Aquilia if I can briefly lead evidence to get the judge to accept the likely truth of my tale; but then it is open to me to enforce the judgement only after the condition attached to the debt has been fulfilled; so if it fails, the judgement will have no force.\n\n41. (ULPIAN) Let us see whether an action lies for wilful damage if a man destroys a will. Marcellus, doubting this in the fifth book of his _Digest_ , says that such action does not lie; for how, he says, can the damage be assessed? I made a note in his book that this is certainly true from the testator's point of view, for his interest cannot be valued, but that it is otherwise for an heir or a legatee, for to them wills are almost like signed receipts, and in the very same book Marcellus writes that when a receipt is erased, action lies under the Lex Aquilia.\n\nAnd if someone who is looking after someone's will makes an erasure, or reads it out with other people present, it is better to bring an action _in factum_ , or sue for _iniuria_ if he published the secrets of one's legal affairs with an insulting intent. Pomponius most elegantly says that sometimes it happens that a man does not render himself liable for theft by destroying a document, but he does incur liability for wrongful damage, as for instance where he does it with that intent. He will not then be liable for theft, because theft requires the deed to be accompanied by theftuous intent.\n\n42. (JULIAN) Anyone who is looking after a will or a title deed and alters it so that it cannot be read is liable to an action on the contract of deposit and also to an action for its production in court because he has returned and produced the thing in a damaged state. The Aquilian action also lies on these same facts, for it is rightly said that he who has falsified a document has spoiled it.\n\n43. (POMPONIUS) You have an action under the Lex Aquilia on account of damage done to property comprised in your inheritance before you took it up but after the death of the person whose heir you are, for the Lex Aquilia does not regard as 'owner' only him who was owner at the time the damage was done. If that were so, right of action could not pass from an ancestor to his heir, nor could you sue on your return home on account of what was done to your property while you were a prisoner of war. The law could not be otherwise without great unfairness to posthumous children who are heirs to their fathers.\n\nWe shall also say the same about trees cut down secretly during the same period. I think also that the same can be said about the special action for damage inflicted by force or in secret which lies if a person causes damage after express prohibition or if it becomes clear that he ought to have known that he would have been warned off by those to whom the inheritance belonged.\n\n44. (ULPIAN) Under the Lex Aquilia even the slightest degree of fault counts. Whenever a slave does a wounding or killing with his master's knowledge, the master is without doubt liable to the Aquilian action.\n\n45. (PAUL) We accept knowledge here as including sufferance, so that he who could have prevented harm is liable for not doing so.\n\nOne can proceed under the Lex Aquilia even if a wounded slave recovers.\n\nIf you kill my slave, believing that he is a free man, you will be liable under the Lex Aquilia.\n\nWhen two slaves were jumping over some burning straw they bumped into each other, fell, and one was burnt to death. No action can be brought on that account if it is not known which was knocked over by which.\n\nThose who do damage because they cannot otherwise defend themselves are blameless; for all laws and all legal systems allow one to use force to defend oneself against violence. But if in order to defend myself I throw a stone at my attacker and I hit not him but a passer-by, I shall be liable under the Lex Aquilia, for it is permitted only to use force against an attacker and even then only so far as is necessary for self-defence and not for revenge.\n\n46. (ULPIAN) If action has been brought under the Lex Aquilia when a slave has been wounded one can none the less bring another action under the Lex if he later dies of the wound,\n\n47. (JULIAN) but if after damages have been assessed in the first action and then when the slave has died his owner starts proceedings for the killing he will be prevented by the plea of fraud from recovering more in the two actions than he would have won by bringing an action for the killing in the first place.\n\n48. (PAUL) If a slave damages property in an inheritance before the heir takes it up and then does other damage to that same property after he has been freed, he will be liable to both actions because these actions arise from separate causes.\n\n49. If someone drives away, or even kills, another's bees by making smoke, he seems rather to have provided the cause of their death than directly to have killed them, and so he will be liable to an action _in factum_.\n\nWhat is said about suing under the Lex Aquilia for damage done wrongfully must be taken as meaning that damage is done wrongfully when it inflicts wrong together with the damage, and this is inflicted, save where it is done under compulsion of overwhelming necessity, as Celsus writes about the man who pulled down his neighbour's house to keep a fire off his own; for he writes here that there is no action under the Lex Aquilia because he pulled down the adjoining house in the reasonable fear that the fire would reach his own house. Celsus also thinks that there is no action under the Lex, regardless of whether the fire would actually have reached him or been put out first.\n\n50. (ULPIAN) But he who pulls down someone else's house against the owner's will and puts up baths on the site is liable to an action for the damage caused, quite apart from the rule of natural law that whatever is built on land belongs to the owner of the land.\n\n51. (JULIAN) A slave who had been wounded so gravely that he was certain to die of the injury was appointed someone's heir and subsequently killed by a further blow from another assailant. The question is whether action under the Lex Aquilia lies against both assailants for killing him. The answer was given as follows: a person is generally said to have killed if he furnished a cause of death in any way whatever, but so far as the Lex Aquilia is concerned, there will be liability only if the death resulted from some application of force, done as it were by one's own hand, for the law depends on the interpretation of the Latin word _caedere_. Furthermore, it is not only those who wound so as to deprive at once of life who will be liable for a killing in accordance with the Lex, but also those who inflict an injury that is certain to prove fatal. Accordingly, if someone wounds a slave mortally and then after a while someone else inflicts a further injury, as a result of which he dies sooner than would otherwise have been the case, it is clear that both assailants are liable for killing. This rule has the authority of the ancient jurists, who decided that if a slave were injured by several persons but it was not clear which blow actually killed him, they would all be liable under the Lex Aquilia. But in the case that we are considering the dead slave will not be valued in the same way in assessing the penalty to be paid for each wound. The person who struck him first will have to pay the highest value of the slave in the preceding year, counting back three hundred and sixty-five days from the day of the wounding; but the second assailant will be liable to pay the highest price that the slave would have fetched had he been sold during the year before he departed this life \u2013 and of course in this figure the value of the inheritance will be included. Therefore, for the killing of this slave, one assailant will pay more and the other less, but this is not to be wondered at because each is deemed to have killed him in different circumstances and at a different time. But in case anyone might think that we have reached an absurd conclusion, let him ponder carefully how much more absurd it would be to hold that neither should be liable under the Lex Aquilia, or that one should be held to blame rather than the other. Misdeeds should not escape unpunished and it is not easy to decide if one is more blameworthy than the other. Indeed, it can be proved by innumerable examples that the civil law has accepted things for the general good that do not accord with pure logic. Let us content ourselves for the time being with just one instance: when several people, with intent to steal, carry off a beam which no single one of them could have carried alone, they are all liable to an action for theft, although by subtle reasoning one could make the point that no single one of them could be liable because in literal truth he could not have moved it unaided.\n\n52. (ALFENUS) If a slave were to die as the result of an assault, and without any contributory factor like neglect on the part of his owner or lack of professional skill in a doctor, an action may properly be brought for killing him wrongfully.\n\nOne night a shopkeeper had placed a lantern above his display counter which adjoined the footpath, but some passer-by took it down and carried it off. The shopkeeper pursued him, calling for his lantern, and caught hold of him; but in order to escape from his grasp the thief began to hit the shopkeeper with the whip that he was carrying, on which there was a spike. From this encounter a real brawl developed in which the shopkeeper put out the eye of the lantern-stealer and he asked my opinion as to whether he had inflicted wrongful damage, bearing in mind that he had been hit with the whip first. My opinion was that unless he had poked out the eye intentionally he would not appear to have incurred liability, as the damage was really the lantern-stealer's own fault for hitting him first with the whip; on the other hand, if he had not been provoked by the beating, but had started the brawl when trying to snatch back his lantern, the shopkeeper would appear to be accountable for the loss of the eye.\n\nSome mules were pulling two loaded carts up the Capitol Hill. The front cart had tipped up, so the drivers were trying to lift the back to make it easier for the mules to pull it up the hill, but suddenly it started to roll backwards. The muleteers, seeing that they would be caught between the two carts, leapt out of its path and it rolled back and struck the rear cart, which careered down the hill and ran over someone's slave boy. The owner of the boy asked me whom he should sue. I replied that it all depended on the facts of the case. If the drivers who were holding up the front cart had got out of its way of their own accord and that had been the reason why the mules could not take the weight of the cart and had been pulled back by it, in my opinion no action could be brought against the owner of the mules. The boy's owner should rather sue the men who had been holding up the cart; for damage is no less wrongful when someone voluntarily lets go of something in such circumstances and it hits someone else. For example, if a man failed to restrain an ass that he was driving he would be liable for any damage that he caused, just as if he threw a missile or anything else from his hand. But if the accident that we are considering had occurred because the mules had shied at something and the drivers had left the cart for fear of being crushed, no action would lie against them; but in such a case action should be brought against the owner of the mules. On the other hand, if neither the mules nor the drivers were at fault, as for example if the mules just could not take the weight, or if in trying to do so they had slipped and fallen and the cart had then rolled down the hill because the men could not hold it when it tipped up, there would be no liability on the owner or on the drivers. It is quite clear, furthermore, that however the accident happened, no action could be brought against the owner of the mules pulling the cart behind, for they fell back down the hill not through any fault of theirs, but because they were struck by the cart in front.\n\nA man sold some oxen on approval, but while they were on trial one of them gored the buyer's slave. My opinion was taken as to the seller's liability for the damage. I said that if the oxen had already been bought he would not be liable, but if they were still on approval he would be, if the goring had happened because the ox was vicious \u2013 though he would not be responsible if it had been the slave's own fault.\n\nTake this case of some people playing ball. One of them pushed a little slave boy when he was trying to pick up the ball and he fell and broke his leg. When I was asked if I thought his owner could sue the person who had pushed him over, I replied that he could not, as it seemed to me to be a purely accidental injury.\n\n53. (NERATIUS) You have driven someone else's oxen into a narrow place and the result was that they fell over a precipice. An _actio in factum_ based on the Lex Aquilia will be given against you.\n\n54. (PAPINIAN) An action under the Lex Aquilia is available to a debtor when a person to whom an animal has been contractually promised wounds that animal before the time of performing the contract has passed; and the same is true if he kills the animal. But if the promisee kills it when the promisor is in default on his promise, even though the debtor may be released, this is not an occasion when the Lex Aquilia can properly be brought into operation, for the creditor is deemed to have done an injury to himself rather than to anyone else.\n\n55. (PAUL) I promised to Titius either one of two slaves, Stichus or Pamphilus \u2013 Stichus being worth 10,000 and Pamphilus 20,000. Titius killed Stichus before I was in default. A question was then put about an action under the Lex Aquilia. I answered: since it is put that he has killed the cheaper of the two, for the purposes of this case the creditor is in no different position from any third party. What then should the measure of damages be: 10,000, that is, the value of the dead Stichus, or the value of the one I should now hand over? In other words, what is the value of my interest? What should we say if Pamphilus also dies, without any default on my part? Will the value of Stichus be less because the promisor is released from his obligation? It is enough to say that he was worth more when he was killed or within a year. On this principle, even if he were killed within a year of the death of Pamphilus he will be deemed to have been worth the greater value.\n\n56. (PAUL) If a wife causes damage to her husband's property she can be sued under the Lex Aquilia.\n\n57. (JAVOLENUS) I lent you a horse and when you were out on it in the company of a number of riders, one of them bumped into you and threw you off, and in the accident the horse's legs were broken. In such a case, Labeo would have it that there is no action against you but that if it happened because of a rider's negligence there would be a right of action against that rider. He says it is clear that no action lies against the owner of the horse, and I agree.\n\n# CONCERNING THEFT\n\nBOOK 47, TITLE 2\n\n1. (PAUL) Labeo says that the very word for theft ( _furtum_ ) is itself derived from a Latin word meaning 'black', because it is committed secretly, in the dark and most often in the night; or it may be derived from a corruption of a word for fraud ( _fraus_ ), as Sabinus said; or from the similar Latin words 'to carry' ( _ferre_ ) and 'to carry away' ( _auferre_ ); or it may come from the Greek language in which a thief is denoted by a similar-sounding word \u2013 and the Greeks themselves derive their own word for a thief ( _\u00f8\u03ce\u03c1_ ) from the verb 'to carry' ( _\u00f8\u03ad\u03c1l\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd_ ). Thus it is that the mere intention to steal does not make a man a thief, and accordingly a man who has received someone else's property for safekeeping and then denies his obligation is not liable to an action for theft without more ado, though he is so liable if he conceals that property in order to appropriate it for himself.\n\nTheft is a dishonest handling of a thing in order to gain by it or by its use or possession. Such conduct is against the very law of nature.\n\n2. (GAIUS) There are two degrees of theft: manifest and non-manifest.\n\n3. (ULPIAN) A manifest thief is one whom the Greeks describe as 'caught in the very act', that is, one who is caught with the stolen goods on him. It matters little who it is who actually catches him \u2013 whether it is the owner of the stolen goods, or anyone else. But it may be asked whether a thief is only a manifest thief if he is caught in the very act of stealing or indeed whether it is good enough that he be apprehended just anywhere. The better view \u2013 and this was Julian's opinion \u2013 is that even if he is not caught in the place where he committed the theft, he is nevertheless a manifest thief if he is caught with the stolen thing on him before he has taken it to the place he intended.\n\n4. (PAUL) 'The place he intended to carry it to' is understood as 'the place where he intended to stop that day with the stolen thing'.\n\n5. (ULPIAN) Therefore irrespective of whether he is caught in a public or in a private place, so long as he has not yet borne the thing to the place he was making for, the charge will be one of manifest theft if he is caught with the stolen thing on him: and that was the view of Cassius. But if he has got his loot home, even if he is caught with the stolen things in his possession, he is not a manifest thief.\n\n6. (PAUL) For although theft may be committed many times over by successive handlings of the stolen goods, it was thought right to determine whether or not a theft was manifest at the time of the original thieving.\n\n7. (ULPIAN) Let us consider whether a man who committed theft while he was yet a slave, but was caught only after he had been freed from slavery, could be a manifest thief. Pomponius took the view that one could not proceed against him for manifest theft because the original theft, done while he was still a slave, was not manifest. In the same passage Pomponius remarks very neatly that a thief is only made manifest by the manner of his arrest; and further, if you saw me committing a theft in your house, but hid yourself for fear that I might kill you, even though you watched me, it is not a case of manifest theft. But Celsus extends the meaning of catching like this: if you see the thief carrying something off and run to arrest him, but he makes his escape by throwing away his loot, that is manifest theft; and in his view it matters little whether the owner of the goods makes the arrest or a neighbour, or any passer-by.\n\n8. (GAIUS) What sort of theft is non-manifest is clear: for a stealing which is not within the meaning of manifest theft must be non-manifest theft.\n\n9. (POMPONIUS) Once someone has a right to bring an action of theft, continued handling of the stolen thing by the thief will not give him any further right of action for theft even though there may have been an increase or growth of the stolen thing meanwhile. But even if I brought a _vindicatio_ against the thief my right to recover by _condictio_ 8 remains, though it can be said to be within the competence of the judge who hears the action on the proprietary issues to hold the two cases together so that he can make an order for restitution only if the plaintiff abandons the _condictio_ action. However, if the defendant has already had judgement given against him in the _condictio_ and paid the amount assessed, the judge should either dismiss the _vindicatio_ or (as most people think) if the plaintiff is prepared to pay back that amount but the defendant refuses to give back the stolen slave, he should order him to pay the value as sworn under oath by the plaintiff.\n\n10. (ULPIAN) Anyone whose interest it is that the property should not be stolen can bring an action for theft.\n\n11. (PAUL) But he can only bring the action if his interest in the thing is an honest interest.\n\n12. (ULPIAN) Thus a cleaner who has taken in clothes for cleaning or mending can bring an action if they are stolen from him, provided he is solvent, because he is responsible in his contract for their safekeeping. But if he is not solvent, the right to sue for theft passes to the owner of the clothes, for there can be nothing at risk for a man who already has nothing more to lose. But an action in theft is not available to one who possesses things in bad faith, even though it is in his interest that they should not be stolen; for no one can acquire a right of action by his own dishonesty \u2013 and also the law gives such a right only to someone who possesses property in good faith.\n\nIn the case of goods pledged for security with a pawnbroker, we give the action for their theft to the pawnbroker even though the goods are no part of his own property; and indeed we allow him the right to sue not only a third party, but even the owner himself, as Julian wrote. But it is thought right to allow an action to the owner as well, and thus it may happen that the same person could be both plaintiff and defendant.\n\nThe action is thus available to both, because both have an interest in the safety of the goods. But is this always in the creditor's interest, or is it only in his interest when the pledgor is unable to redeem the pledge? Pomponius thought that the pawnbroker is always concerned to keep the pledge safely and Papinian agreed with this; and indeed it is the better view that the creditor seems always to have an interest. Julian said this many times.\n\n13. (PAUL) He to whom something is owed under a contract of stipulation does not have an action in theft if that thing is stolen so that the debtor cannot hand it over, even though he be in default.\n\n14. (ULPIAN) Celsus wrote that a purchaser has no action in theft if the thing sold to him is not handed over; but as yet the vendor has the right of action, though clearly he can be made to assign to the buyer not only the action in theft, but also the _condictio_ and the _vindicatio_ as well; and he must also make over whatever he has recovered through these actions. This is undoubtedly good law, and Julian agrees. It is certainly the case that the goods are at the purchaser's risk, so long as the vendor takes proper care of them until delivery, but so clearly is it the law that the buyer has no right of action for theft of the goods before delivery that it has been queried whether the purchaser himself would be liable in theft if he were to steal the thing. Julian says this in the twenty-third volume of his _Digest_ : if the purchaser having paid the price carries off the thing for the safety of which the seller is responsible, he is not liable to an action for theft; but clearly, if he takes the thing before paying the price, he is liable, just as if he had wrongly taken away property which he had pawned. Furthermore, tenants have the right of action for theft, even though they are not owners of the tenants' property, because they have the necessary interest in it.\n\nLet us see whether a depositee can bring an action for theft: since he is only liable for fraudulent misuse, the law very properly does not afford him an action for theft, for what is his interest provided he keeps clear of fraud? And even if he is guilty of fraudulently misusing it, the risk of the property is still his, for he should not be able to sue in an action of theft as a result of his own fraud. Julian indeed wrote as follows in the twenty-second volume of his _Digest_ : just as it is agreed law as regards thieves in general that they cannot bring an action in theft in respect of a thing which they themselves stole, similarly a depositee cannot sue for theft even though the risk of the property was his at the time when it was meddled with.\n\nPapinian ponders the following case: if I accept two slaves as security for a debt of 10 _aurei_ and one is stolen, but the other one who remains is alone worth not less than 10 _aurei_ , whether I have an action in theft for only 5 _aurei_ , because the one I still have is good for the other 5; or is it right that because the one I have might die, I should claim 10 in my action, even though the slave I still hold is of sufficient value? This last was Papinian's view. He says that we should consider not so much the value of the security which the thief did not take, but rather that which he did. Considering another problem, he writes that if, when 10 are owed to me and a slave given in security for that amount is stolen, I recover 10 by an action for theft and then the slave is stolen again, I cannot bring action a second time, for my interest in that slave has lapsed when I have recovered the amount owed to me once. All this is true only if he is stolen without fault on my part; for if there is fault on my part I then have a valuable interest, because I would be liable in an action for recovery of the pledge. But if I am not at fault there is no doubt that the action not available to the creditor is open to the owner of the slave; and Pomponius also holds this view in his tenth book on Sabinus. These authorities also say that if the two slaves are stolen at the same time the pledgee may bring action in respect of each one, not for the full amount for each slave but for such part of the whole debt as each of them is worth to him. But if the two slaves are stolen at separate times, if the creditor recovers his whole debt in respect of one, the other will not be worth anything to him. Again Pomponius writes that if someone to whom I lend something is guilty of fraud in respect of the borrowed property I cannot sue him in theft; and he takes the same view of someone who has accepted a commission to convey property.\n\nIt is queried whether a father has an action of theft in respect of property lent to his son. Julian thinks that a father cannot proceed in this case because he is not liable for its safekeeping. He says this is just like the situation of someone who has guaranteed a borrower, and he cannot bring the action either, for he says that it is not everyone who is interested in the safety of the thing who can bring an action of theft, but only he who would be held liable if the thing should be lost by his default. Celsus states this view in the twelfth volume of the _Digest_. If a slave who had been lent gratuitously is stolen, one may ask whether the borrower has a right of action for theft; and seeing he is not himself liable for an action arising from the borrowing (because this sort of arrangement is akin to a free gift \u2013 indeed it is for this reason that the interdict was made available) he will not have an action. It is indeed true that after the interdict is issued he becomes liable for fault and therefore he can also at that time sue for theft. But if someone has hired something, he will have a right to sue for theft provided the stealing was through no fault of his.\n\nIf a son in power of his father is carried off it is obvious that the father has a right of action. If a thing is lent and the borrower of it dies before return, although there can be no theft of an inheritance, so that the heir cannot sue, the lender certainly can. And the same applies if the thing was pledged or hired; for although it be granted that no action lies in respect of a stolen inheritance, he in whose interest it is that the thing should not be stolen most certainly acquires a right to sue.\n\nHe who borrows something not only has a right to sue for the thing itself but also for anything that is produced from it, for he is just as responsible for this as he is for the thing itself. For example, if you borrow a slave you may sue if his clothes are stolen even though you did not specifically also borrow the clothes he was wearing. Similarly, if you borrow from me a team of horses and a foal goes along with them, I have no doubt that you may sue a thief of the foal even though it was not included in our agreement. And so it is asked: 'What sort of action of theft is it that the borrower has?' I think that actions of theft are available for all those who hold other people's goods at their own risk, as in cases of borrowing, hiring and pledging, if those things are stolen; but the _condictio_ is available only to the owner.\n\nIf I send you a letter and it is stolen while in the post, who can bring action for the theft? First of all we must ask who the letter belongs to \u2013 to the sender or to him to whom it was addressed. If I hand it to the addressee's slave, it immediately becomes the addressee's property; or if I hand it to his agent, equally so, since property may be acquired also through a free man, it becomes the addressee's, and particularly if he had an interest in becoming owner. But if I sent the letter on the understanding that it would be returned to me, I continue to be the owner because I did not wish to lose or transfer ownership. Who then should bring the action for theft? It is he who had an interest in its not being stolen, that is, whoever stood to gain by whatever was written in it. Thus it can be asked whether the messenger who was given the letter to deliver can bring an action for theft. He can if he was responsible for its safekeeping and thus had an interest of his own in its delivery \u2013 for example the letter may have contained instructions to give the bearer something or do something for him. If so he can bring an action, as he also can if he undertook responsibility for its safety or was to be paid for delivering it. In such a case he will be in the same position as an innkeeper or the master of a ship; and we allow them the right of action, provided they are solvent, because they stand to bear the risk for loss of things entrusted to them.\n\n15. (PAUL) The interest of a pawnbroker from whom a pledge is stolen is not just the amount of the debt, but he can bring action for the full value of the pledge, though in a pawnbroker's action he can be made to hand over to his debtor any amount recovered in excess of his due.\n\nAn owner who seizes his own property in which someone else has a usufruct is liable to an action for theft on the part of the usufructuary; but Pomponius writes that he who lends you something and then takes it back cannot be sued by you for theft because you have no interest since you are not yourself liable to be sued on that loan. However, if you have some right of retention because of expense incurred on the thing lent to you, you will have an action against the owner if he purloins it, because in such a case the thing is, as it were, a sort of security.\n\n16. (PAUL) Nor can a father bring an action for theft against a son in his family, a restriction which is not because of any provision of the law, but which arises from the very nature of the situation, for a man can no more sue a person subject to his _potestas_ than he can sue himself.\n\n17. (ULPIAN) Our slaves or sons _in potestate_ who commit theft against us are not liable to an action of theft; for a man who can deal with a thief just as he pleases does not need to take him to court for theft. Accordingly no such action has been handed down to us by the ancient jurists. From this proposition there arises a question \u2013 if the slave is sold or manumitted will he be liable to an action for theft? \u2013 and it seems that he will not; for just as no action can be raised against him at the outset, none can arise afterwards. Clearly though, if he meddles further after his manumission, it must be said that he can be liable for theft, because a further theft is committed now.\n\nWhen a slave which I have bought and had delivered to me is returned by me on rescission of the sale, the situation is not on that account just as if he had never been mine, but that he was mine and has ceased to be mine. Therefore, says Sabinus, if he committed theft, the purchaser who rescinded the sale cannot bring the action; and although he cannot sue, he can still nevertheless claim that compensation is owing to him for the misdeed committed before the rescission, and this will be taken into account in the action to rescind the sale.\n\nThis further question is asked: if a slave who was running away stole from his master could he bring an action against the bona fide possessor of the slave, before the slave has returned and come again into his power? The point is that although I am deemed to possess my slave even after he has run away, I am nevertheless not liable if he steals because he is not in my power \u2013 Julian says that the possession I am deemed to have is only of use to me for the bare legal purpose of acquiring him by length of time of possession. Accordingly Pomponius says in the sixteenth book of his writings on Sabinus that the owner of a runaway slave can bring the action.\n\n18. (PAUL) When it is said that 'liability attaches to the guilty party' that is true only to the extent that a right of noxal surrender arises against someone at the moment when the wrong is committed and attaches to the person of the wrongdoer until he gets into such a position that had he been so placed at the time of the offence, no such liability would have arisen. Thus, if your slave steals my property and I later become his owner and then sell him, Cassius and his school are of the opinion that I cannot sue the buyer.\n\n19. (ULPIAN) In an action for theft it is enough if the thing stolen is described sufficiently for it to be identified. It is not necessary to speak of the weight of vessels, for example, and it is therefore enough to refer to 'a plate', 'a dish' or 'a cup' \u2013 but its material should be added, whether it be silver or gold or anything else. But if someone brings an action for unwrought silver, he should speak of a 'lump of silver' and give its weight. In the case of silver coins their number must be stated, and similarly how many gold coins have been taken by theft. It is debated whether the colour of a dress need be specified and indeed it is desirable that it should; for just as in the case of a gold cup the material is stated, so in the case of a dress the colour should be given, though clearly if a man swears on oath that he cannot say for certain what the colour is he must be relieved of this particular obligation.\n\nAnyone who pawns a thing and then purloins it is liable to an action for theft. The owner of a pledged object is deemed to commit theft not only when he carries it off from his creditor who has it in his possession, or indeed in his hands, but even if he takes it when it is not in the creditor's possession, as for example if the owner sells it after pledging it. It is settled that in such a case he is also guilty of theft, and that was Julian's opinion also.\n\n20. (PAUL) If a copper object is given as a pledge and the pledgor says it is gold, he is certainly acting disgracefully, but he is not committing theft. But if having handed over something made of gold, he got it back by saying that he wanted to weigh it or add his seal and then substituted something of bronze base metal in its place, he commits theft, for he is meddling with the thing already pledged.\n\nIf you buy something from me, in good faith, and I carry it off, or if indeed you have a usufruct of something of mine and I interfere with it dishonestly, I shall be liable in your action for theft, even though I am the owner of that thing. But in these cases _usucapio_ (acquisition through long possession) is not impeded as in the usual case of stolen things, for even if a third party had stolen it and then it came back into my hands, it could be usucaped.\n\n21. (PAUL) It is a common question whether if someone takes a bushel out of a whole heap of corn, he commits theft of the heap or only of as much as he carried off. Ofilius says that he steals the whole heap. Consider the case of touching someone's ear. Trebatius says this seems to be a case of touching the whole person. Thence it follows that he who opens a cask and draws off a small quantity of wine seems to be a thief not only of what he takes but of the whole cask, though he will only be liable to pay damages for the amount he actually took. Take the case of a man who opens a chest which is too heavy to lift and handles everything inside and then goes away, but later comes back and carries off some item or other and is caught before reaching the place he was making for: in such a case he is both an 'ordinary thief' and a red-handed (manifest) thief in respect of the same thing. And similarly a man who cuts corn and handles it during daylight is both an ordinary thief and also a red-handed thief in respect of that which he is caught carrying off during the following night.\n\nIf a man who deposits a bag of twenty coins with someone else for safekeeping is later given back another bag of thirty (because of the other person's mistake) and thinks that his own twenty are among them, it seems that he is liable for theft as to the ten.\n\nIf someone steals some copper, thinking it is gold (or vice versa according to the eighth volume of Pomponius on Sabinus), or he thinks he takes a small amount of something whereas it is in fact a lot, he commits theft of that which he actually takes. Ulpian says the same. But if a thief takes two purses, one containing ten coins and the other twenty, of which he thinks one is his own and knows the other is some-one else's, we will surely say he commits theft of only one, that is the one he knows is not his, just as if he took two cups, thinking one was his own and knowing that one was not \u2013 this also is theft of one only. But if he thought the handle of the cup was his \u2013 or indeed if it really was \u2013 this is still theft of the whole cup, according to Pomponius.\n\nAgain, if someone steals a bushel of corn from a whole shipload, is this theft of the whole cargo or just of the bushel? The problem can be considered more easily in respect of a full warehouse. Surely it is a bit hard to hold that this would be theft of the whole contents? But what then should be said of a cistern of wine, or of water \u2013 or what indeed of a ship carrying wine (and there are many ships whose holds are brimming with wine)? What shall we say of someone who draws off some of the wine? Would this be theft of the whole cargo? It is most likely that we would not go that far. There is no doubt though, if you put the case of jars in a storeroom and they are stolen, that that is not one theft of the whole store but of the individual jars, just as when a thief takes away one individual thing from among a number of movable things in a warehouse.\n\nIf someone enters a room with intent to steal he is not yet a thief, even though he entered in order to steal. Well then, to what action is he liable? Certainly he is liable to an action for _iniuria_ (insult), or if he entered by force, he is liable to proceedings for violence.\n\nSuppose someone opens or breaks into something too heavy to be moved. He is not liable to an action of theft for the whole thing but only for those things which he actually stole, because he cannot take the whole. Similarly if anyone opens a case of things which he cannot carry away in order to meddle with the contents and he does meddle with them, then even though he could manage to take away several of the individual things, he is only a thief of the particular things he takes and not of the whole if he cannot carry away the whole lot, case and all. However, if he was capable of carrying away the whole container we say that he is a thief of the whole lot, whether or not he opened it to take away the contents, or some of them, one at a time \u2013 and Sabinus says that this is so.\n\nIf two or more men steal a piece of timber which no one of them could lift by himself, it must be said that they are all equally liable for the whole theft even though no one of them could handle or remove it alone, and this is indeed the law, for we cannot say that each one committed a part of the theft, but the whole thing was the act of them all and thus each man is individually liable for the theft. But although a man may be guilty of the theft of things which he did not himself carry away he will not be liable to make restitution, because the relevant action only lies for the things which a man has actually taken \u2013 and thus Pomponius writes.\n\n22. (PAUL) If a thief has smashed or broken something with which he was not meddling in order to steal, no action for theft lies against him in respect of that thing. By this reasoning, if a chest is broken open, so that pearls, say, may be taken away, and these are handled with intent to steal them, it seems that theft is committed only as to the pearls; and this is right, for other things which are moved aside to get at the pearls are not handled with a view to theft of them.\n\nA person who takes a scraping from a metal dish is a thief of the whole dish and is liable in an action of theft to the extent of its value to the owner.\n\n23. (ULPIAN) Julian writes in his twenty-second book that a child can commit theft if he is old enough to be capable of dishonest intent; and moreover since a child can commit theft he can also be liable for unlawful damage too; but, he says, some limit must be set, so this rule does not apply to infants. I think that if a child is old enough to be legally blameworthy he can be sued under the Lex Aquilia. It is also correct, as Labeo says, that a child cannot be liable as an accomplice in theft.\n\n24. (PAUL) He is however liable to an action for the recovery of the stolen goods, as Julian writes.\n\n25. (ULPIAN) What most of the authorities say \u2013 that there can be no action for theft of land \u2013 is correct. Therefore it is asked whether a man who has been turned off his land can bring an action for its recovery against the dispossessor. Labeo says not; but Celsus thinks he can bring a _condictio_ for possession of land, just as he can when a movable thing is stolen. In the case of things carried off from land, like trees, stone, sand or crops which are gathered with intent to steal, there is no doubt that the action of theft can be brought.\n\n26. (PAUL) If wild bees make a honeycomb in a tree on your land and someone carries off the bees or their honeycomb, you cannot sue him for theft, because they were never yours. It is settled that they are among the things acquired by their captors \u2013 on land, at sea or in the air. But it is also settled that a tenant-farmer may sue in theft anyone who carries off his standing crops because they become his property as soon as they are severed.\n\n27. (ULPIAN) Anyone who steals the deeds or notes of a contract is liable to an action of theft not only for the value of the deeds themselves but also for what they were worth to the plaintiff.\n\n28. (PAUL) But if the document is stolen first and obliterated later, the taker is liable for the value of the owner's interest in its not being taken: the obliteration will not increase the penalty.\n\n29. (ULPIAN) An action can also be brought for its production in court and there will also be an action under the interdict to decide who it belongs to,\n\n30. (ULPIAN) at least, if the defaced documents were among the property left by a deceased person.\n\n31. (ULPIAN) Further, if someone defaces a picture or a book he can be sued for unlawful damage for having destroyed it.\n\nIf someone steals or falsifies deeds relating to the formal business of a city council, Labeo says he is liable for theft; and he says the same of other official documents and partnership papers.\n\n32. (PAUL) Some say that in an action for the theft of deeds, their valuation is what they are themselves worth, because if you can prove to the judge before whom the case of theft is heard how much the debt owed to you was, you can just as well prove that debt before the judge who hears the case for its recovery; but if indeed you cannot establish that in your action of theft, neither could you prove just what your interest is. However, it is possible for a plaintiff to bring such an action after he somehow recovered the deeds, and thus can prove what the value of his interest would have been if he had not recovered them.\n\nHow the plaintiff can establish the value of his interest is a much more important matter in a case under the Lex Aquilia; for if he can prove the amount by other evidence, he does not suffer (further) loss. But suppose perchance a man made a loan of money subject to a condition and at first he had plenty of witnesses whose evidence would prove the amount of the loan \u2013 may they not die while the condition is still unresolved? Or what about this \u2013 suppose I have sued for the money owed to me and because I did not have there in court the witnesses and signatories who remembered the deal I lost both the action and my money; now though, when I sue for theft, I can make use of their memory and their testimony to establish the truth that I did lend the money.\n\n33. (ULPIAN) A tutor is charged with the administration of his pupils' property, but he is not granted any power to appropriate anything for himself; and therefore if he takes anything with dishonest intent, he commits theft and moreover ownership of the thing cannot be acquired by long possession. Although action can be brought against him to account for his tutorship, he can also be held liable for theft too. This rule is laid down in respect of tutors, but the same applies to curators of young persons under twenty-five and indeed to all other curators.\n\n34. (PAUL) He who aids and abets a theft is never himself a manifest thief; and therefore it can happen that the helper is liable for 'ordinary' theft while the actual perpetrator, when caught, is liable as a manifest thief, albeit that they were both involved in the same theft.\n\n35. (POMPONIUS) If someone undertakes to carry goods and he knows they are stolen, it is settled law that if he is caught, that is a red-handed theft, at least so far as he is concerned; but if he did not know, then neither of them is a red-handed thief \u2013 the carrier is not because he was not the thief; and the thief was not because he was not caught.\n\nSuppose one of your two slaves has drawn some water belonging to someone else and carried it away, but that the second is caught still in the act of drawing more water. You will be held liable for 'ordinary' theft on account of the first, but for red-handed theft by the second.\n\n36. (ULPIAN) A person who persuades a slave to run away is not a thief, nor does anyone who simply gives bad advice to someone else commit theft, any more than anyone who persuades another to throw himself off a cliff or to lay violent hands on himself. No action for theft lies for this sort of thing. But if one man persuades a slave to run away, so that his colleague may capture him, he who does the persuading will be liable for theft because theft was committed by his aid and advice. Pomponius writes more on this point \u2013 he says that he who did the persuading, although he would not at that time be liable for theft, does become liable as soon as the other party begins to appropriate the runaway, because this seems to be a proper case of a theft by his aid and advice.\n\nSimilarly, it seems right that anyone who helps another's son, slave or wife in committing theft should himself be liable for theft, even though such thieves are not themselves liable to a theft action. Again, Pomponius says, if a runaway slave takes goods with him he who advised him can also be sued on account of those goods too, because he gave advice to the handler himself. Sabinus says the same.\n\nIf two slaves encourage each other to run away and they both abscond together, neither of them can be a thief of the other.\n\nWhat then if they both concealed each other \u2013 is it possible that they could then be thieves of each other? It can be said that each was a thief of the other to the extent that if other people stole them individually they would be liable if each gave counsel and advice to the other. By the same reasoning Sabinus says they would both be liable for any goods which the other took away with him.\n\n37. (POMPONIUS) If my tame peacock strays from my house and you chase it until it dies, I can sue you in theft as soon as anyone takes possession of it.\n\n38. (PAUL) A mother has no action in theft if her son is stolen from her. There can be an action in theft on account of a free person, but there is no _condictio_ for them.\n\n39. (ULPIAN) It is true that if someone carries off or conceals someone else's slave who is a prostitute, this is not necessarily theft; for we must consider not only the act, but also its motive \u2013 and if the motive was lust, this is not theft. Accordingly even he who broke down a prostitute's door to gratify his desires and thereby let in thieves (acting independently, not in concert with him) who carried off her property is not guilty of theft. But would a man be liable under the Lex Fabia if he secretly harboured a harlot to satisfy his lusts? I do not think so, and I base this opinion on a case which actually happened. In this case he acts more basely than someone who steals, but this is balanced by the disgrace he brings on himself. At all events it is clear that he is not a thief.\n\n40. (PAUL) A person who takes hired horses further than the contract stipulated, or uses someone else's property without his consent, commits theft.\n\n41. (ULPIAN) If a theft is committed against a person's property while he is a prisoner of war and he returns with the benefit of _postliminium_ , we can say that he has an action of theft.\n\nIt is certain that an adopting parent can sue on account of a theft from the person he is adopting provided the theft occurred before the adoption was completed; if the theft was after the adoption, no possible doubt even arises.\n\nAs long as the thief lives, the right of action survives; for the thief must be either _sui iuris_ and responsible for his own actions, or else he has come into someone else's _potestas_ and there is then a right of action against that person to whose power he is subject. This is expressed in our maxim _noxa caput sequitur_ (the guilt attaches to the offender). We should consider whether the right to sue is extinguished if a man is reduced into slavery by the enemy after he has committed a delict. Pomponius wrote that it was extinguished, but that if the offender returns the action revives, either by _postliminium_ (our law's restoration of civil rights to captives when they return home), or in some other way, and that is the present law.\n\n42. (PAUL) If a slave works his master's ship without permission and any goods are lost, an action with the usual formula is given against his master so that in respect of what anyone else lost it will refer to liability 'up to the amount of the slave's _peculium_ '; whereas in respect of the slave's own fault it will provide in the alternative for his noxal surrender. Therefore, if the slave had been freed before action is brought, action up to the extent of his _peculium_ will be available against his owner for a year, though the noxal liability still attaches to the slave personally. Sometimes both the freed slave and his manumittor remain liable for theft, if for example he freed him to try to avoid the liability; but Sabinus was of the opinion that if the action is brought against the owner, the manumitted slave is freed from the liability, just as if the case had actually been decided.\n\n43. (ULPIAN) If a false creditor (that is, someone who dishonestly pretends that he is owed a debt) accepts money, he thereby commits theft and the coins do not become his; and a false agent seems to commit theft in the same way. But Neratius says this may seem to be so only subject to this distinction, namely that it is certainly correct when a debtor hands money to the supposed agent for him to pass it to the creditor and the agent embezzles it. In such a case the money continues to belong to the debtor because the supposed agent does not accept it on behalf of the person to whom the debtor intended it to pass, and thus without doubt commits theft by handling it against the will of the owner. But if the debtor hands over the money intending to pass ownership of it to the agent, Neratius says that he can in no way commit theft of it because he receives it with the consent of the owner.\n\nIf a man receives money which is not owed to him and directs that payment should be made to someone else, that will not be a theft by him if he is not there when the payment is made; but it is otherwise if he is present, in which case he commits theft. If a man does not actually lie about his identity but uses words misleadingly, that is deceit rather than theft; for example, he may say that he is a rich man, or is going to spend what he receives in buying goods, or promises to find substantial sureties or undertakes to pay the money back very shortly. In such cases he is guilty of deception rather than theft, as he will not be liable in an action of theft. But he is fraudulent, so if there is no other action there will at least be an action against him for fraud.\n\nAnyone who finds anything belonging to someone else lying around and takes it with a view to profit is liable for theft, regardless of whether or not he knows who is owner \u2013 and if he does not know whose it is, his action is none the less theft. But if the owner of property has abandoned it, it cannot be stolen even if I intend to steal it, for there can be no theft when there is no one to steal from; and in our case there is no theft against anyone \u2013 indeed this is in accord with the opinion of Sabinus and Cassius, that as soon as we abandon anything it immediately ceases to be ours.\n\nBut if the thing was not really abandoned, the taker will nevertheless not be guilty of theft if he believed that it was. However, if it was not abandoned and the taker did not believe it either, but he found it lying about and took it, not to profit by it, but to return it to the owner, he is not liable for theft.\n\nNext let us consider the case where the finder does not know who is owner, but takes the property just as anyone might who intended to give it back to whoever might claim it or prove that he was owner. Should he be liable for theft? I do not think so. After all, people often do this sort of thing \u2013 publish an advertisement that they have found whatever it is and they will return it to the owner when he asks for it. People like this show clearly that they have no theftuous intentions. What then of someone who asks for a 'reward', as it is called? Even though it is not really proper to ask for anything, such a person does not seem on this account to be guilty of theft.\n\nIn his twelfth book Celsus raises the following question: if someone, of his own accord, deliberately throws something away but without intending to abandon it and you take that thing, are you liable for theft? His view was that if you thought he had abandoned it you would not be guilty. But if you did not think that, Celsus thinks it would be a doubtful point \u2013 though he inclined to the view that you would not be liable, because, he says, a thing cannot be dishonestly purloined from him who threw it away of his own volition.\n\nBut if when cargo has been thrown overboard from a ship someone appropriates it, is he guilty of theft? The question in this case too is whether or not the owner intended to abandon it. If he threw it out with the intention of abandoning it \u2013 which is to be believed in most cases, because he knows it will perish \u2013 he who finds it becomes owner without any question of theft. However, if the owner did not have such an intention, but hoped to have it if it survived, he who found it must give it up; and if the finder knows this and so has a dishonest intent, he will be liable for theft. But on the other hand if his intention is to keep the things safe for the owner, he will not be liable. And if he believes simply that the cargo was jettisoned and nothing further, he is again not liable.\n\nEven if I become a half-owner of a slave who had previously stolen something from me, the better opinion is that my right of action is gone although I have only bought a part share, because if someone had from the outset been a part-owner of the slave he would not have had a right of action. Clearly, however, if I acquire a usufruct in him after the theft, it must be said that the right of action is not extinguished, because a usufructuary is not an owner.\n\n44. (POMPONIUS) If a person who falsely claims to be a creditor's authorized agent is referred by the debtor to a third party and receives payment from him, he is liable to an action of theft by the debtor and the money paid belongs to the debtor.\n\nIf I give something of mine to you, believing it to be yours, whereas you know that it is properly mine, the better view is that this is theft on your part if you did this intending to profit dishonestly.\n\nIf a slave who is part of a deceased person's estate, and was freed in the will of his late owner, steals some part of the inheritance before the heir has entered upon it, he is liable to an action for theft because at no time was the heir his owner.\n\n45. (ULPIAN) If a partner steals something belonging to the partnership (for he can indeed steal such things) it must be said that there is no doubt whatever that an action of theft is available against him.\n\n46. (ULPIAN) All the authorities agree that even if the stolen thing ceases to exist, nevertheless the action of theft still lies against the thief. Thus if a slave who had been stolen dies, the action of theft still retains its force; nor will manumission of the slave cause the action to be extinguished. (Manumission is of course akin to death in so far as it takes the slave out of the ownership of his master.) Thus it appears that no matter in what way the slave is taken out of the ownership of his master, he still has the right of action in theft against the thief, and this is the rule we use; for the action lies not simply to the extent that he is now out of possession but because he was at any time deprived of his services by the thief's doing. The same rule applies in the case of a _condictio_ : that form of action is also available against a thief even if the stolen thing has in some way ceased to exist. The same is also true in respect of goods which have fallen into the hands of the enemy \u2013 it is the law that the action of theft can still be brought; and again, even if the owner abandons his rights of property after the theft, he can none the less bring the action.\n\nIf a slave held in usufruct is stolen, both the usufructuary and the owner have rights of action for the theft. These rights are divided between the two of them \u2013 the usufructuary sues in respect of the loss of his beneficial use, that is for whatever was the value of his interest that the theft should not occur (and this is doubled); the owner sues in respect of the interest he had in not being deprived of his rights of proprietorship. What we have said about double the value of the interest must also be understood to include four-fold damages in the case of red-handed thefts. The action is also available for someone who has the bare right of using the slave's services for whatever might be the value of his interest.\n\nAgain, let us consider the situation when this slave is pawned as security for a debt. It happens that even the pawnbroker has a right of action for theft. So too has the debtor, provided his interest in his slave is more than the amount which he owes.\n\nTo such an extent is it true that the actions of possible plaintiffs are independent of each other that if any one of them settles his loss with the thief, the better view is that only his own action is compromised and the others remain unaffected. This is just like the case where a slave owned by several masters in common is stolen and one of the joint owners settles with the thief \u2013 the other owner who did not settle still has the action of theft.\n\nThe owner also can sue the usufructuary of his property if he gives cause by concealing something which is properly the owner's or keeping it to himself.\n\nIt is rightly said that no one who thinks the owner consents to his dealing with the thing is guilty of theft; for how does a person deal dishonestly with a thing when he thinks the owner is in agreement, whether his belief be sound or unfounded? A person is only a thief if he tampers with a thing in the knowledge that its owner would not consent.\n\nTake the converse case: I think that I am doing something without the owner's consent when in fact he is agreeable. The question is: do I commit theft? Pomponius says that I do; but the truth is that if the owner is agreeable to a course of conduct even though the other party does not know it, that other will not be liable for theft. If a stolen thing returns to its owner's control and then is stolen again, the owner will have a second action for theft.\n\n47. (PAUL) If the ownership of stolen goods should be changed by any means whatsoever, the right to sue for theft is the new owner's, be he an heir, a possessor of goods in good faith, a father making an adoption, or a legatee.\n\n48. (ULPIAN) A man who lost a silver vase brought an action for the theft of it. When there was an argument about its weight and the plaintiff had put it too high, the thief produced it in court \u2013 and the plaintiff (the owner) carried it off, while the thief was nevertheless ordered to pay damages of twice its value. This judgement was absolutely right, for the thing itself does not enter into account in a penal action, be it an action for red-handed or for 'ordinary' theft.\n\nA man who knows a thief, regardless of whether he points him out or not, is not himself a thief, for there are many differences between actually concealing a thief and merely failing to point him out. One who simply knows is not liable for theft, but he who conceals a thief is so liable by virtue of this very fact.\n\nIt is clear beyond doubt that a person who takes in a slave at his master's request is neither a thief nor a kidnapper: how can anyone possibly be called a thief when he has the owner's consent? But if the owner objected and he took the slave regardless, he is still not a thief if he did not have the intent to conceal him, though he is if he did. Therefore he who takes a slave in without concealing him is not a thief, even if he does it against the master's wishes. However, we accept that an owner can prohibit that of which he does not actually know, that is to say, when he does not give his consent.\n\nIf I hire your services to clean my clothes and, without my knowledge or even against my will, you lend them to Titius and then they are stolen from Titius, you have a right to sue the thief because you are liable for their safekeeping; and I have a right to sue you because you should not have lent them and by doing so you committed theft. This is a case where a thief can sue for theft.\n\nIf a slave-girl is pregnant when stolen, or becomes pregnant while stolen, the child, when born, is stolen property and regardless of whether at the time of birth the thief still has her, or she is with a possessor in good faith. However, in this latter case no action lies for the theft of the child. But if she conceives and also gives birth when she has passed to a bona fide possessor, it happens that the child is not only not stolen property, but that it can be acquired by _usucapio_.\n\nFoals of stolen mares become immediately the property of anyone buying the mares, and properly because they are accounted amongst natural proceeds \u2013 but the child of a female slave is not so reckoned. However, the general rule with regard to their young applies to all animals kept in herds.\n\nWhen a thief sold the stolen property and the owner wrested the purchase money from him by force, the view was properly stated that he too had committed theft \u2013 indeed he would even be liable to an action for robbery (by force), because no one is in any doubt that the proceeds realized by selling stolen property are not themselves deemed to be stolen \u2013 therefore the money in this case, which represented the stolen goods, was not itself a _res furtiva_.\n\n49. (GAIUS) From time to time it happens that someone who has an interest in property being kept safe cannot sue if it is stolen. Thus a creditor cannot bring an action in respect of property stolen from his debtor, even though as a result the debtor cannot repay his debt \u2013 of course I am not speaking of where the debt arises by the law of pledge. Again this rule applies in the case of dowry property which is at the wife's risk: it is the husband who can bring action, not the wife.\n\n50. (ULPIAN) In an action of theft, the unit of damages which is doubled or quadrupled is not the value of the plaintiff's interest, but the actual value of the thing stolen. But if the thing shall have ceased to exist by the time the action comes on for hearing, an order as to damages will have to be made just the same. The same is true also if the thing should have dropped in value by then \u2013 in such a case the valuation is made at the time of the theft; but if it should have become more valuable, the assessment to be doubled would be the increased value, because it is true to say that it was indeed a stolen thing at that time.\n\nCelsus says a man commits theft by helping and advising not only when his intent is to enable his colleagues to commit a theft, but also where, without that specific intent, he does have an unlawful object. Pedius says very truly that just as no one can commit theft without dishonest intent, neither can he be guilty of theft 'by help and advice' without that same intent.\n\nA person is guilty of abetting theft by advice if he persuades someone else to commit theft or urges him on or provides him with information; he abets him with help if he provides assistance and co-operation in carrying off the property.\n\nWhen a man holds up a red rag and chases cattle off so that they fall into the hands of thieves that is theft if he did it with dishonest intent; but even if he did not do it with theft in mind, such a pernicious pastime as this should not go unpunished and so Labeo says that an _actio in factum_ should be allowed in such a case.\n\n51. (GAIUS) Of course if cattle are driven over a cliff an _actio utilis_ on the analogy of the Lex Aquilia lies in respect of the wrongful damage caused.\n\n52. (ULPIAN) If anyone gives help or advice to a wife on taking her husband's goods, he will be liable for theft. But if he commits theft together with her, he will be guilty of theft though she is not. And if she herself gives help to the thief she will not be liable for theft but for the removal of goods. However, if her slave steals her husband's goods for her there is no doubt that she is then liable.\n\nThe same rule applies to a son of the family while he is doing his military service; for he cannot be guilty of theft against his father, though he may incur liability through a slave who is part of his _peculium castrense_ if such a slave steals from his father.\n\nBut if my son who has a _peculium castrense_ commits theft against me, it is worth considering whether I can bring some sort of _actio utilis_ against him since he has the means to pay the damages. It could certainly be argued.\n\nLet us consider on the other hand whether a son can sue his father if he takes some part of his _peculium castrense_. I think he can. If so he can accordingly not only commit theft against his son but can also be liable in an action for theft.\n\nIf a creditor does not return an article pledged with him when the debt has been paid off, Mela says he is liable for theft if he retains it with dishonest intent, and I believe this is a sound view.\n\nIf there is a bed of sulphur in a field and someone digs up some of the soil and carries it off the landowner can sue him for theft; and then, if the land is let, the tenant can sue on his lease to get the proceeds of the action handed over to him.\n\nIf your son or slave takes in clothes for cleaning and they are stolen, can you bring an action for theft? The answer is that if they are solvent you can bring the action; but if they have no resources, it must be said that an action does not lie at your suit. Furthermore, if someone buys a stolen thing in innocence and it is stolen from him, he has a right of action for the theft from him.\n\nLabeo reports a case where a man told a corn-merchant to deliver a certain measure of corn to whoever came and asked for it in his name. A passer-by hearing this being arranged went and asked for the corn on the account of that other person, and it was given to him. A theft action lies against him who asked for the corn at the instance of the corn-merchant, not me, because he did that piece of business on his own account, not mine.\n\nIf someone claiming to be his owner gets a magistrate or whoever has the relevant authority to release my runaway slave from prison or other custody, is he liable for theft? It seems that if he gave sureties, an action should be given to me against those who let him go to compel them to assign their action against the sureties to me. But if they did not take sureties and handed him over to the applicant as the apparent owner, I as real owner have an action of theft against the false applicant.\n\nAnyone who knocks gold or silver coins (or anything else) out of someone else's hand is only liable for theft if he did it in order for someone else to pick them up, and that other carries them off.\n\nIf someone carries off a lump of silver belonging to me and makes goblets from it, I can bring an action against him for theft or for a _condictio_ in respect of either the lump of silver or the goblets. It is the same choice in the case of stolen grapes, or their juice or the skins: an action lies for theft, and a _condictio_ too.\n\nA slave who swears he is a free man in order to get a loan of money does not commit theft, for he has done no more than hold himself out as a creditworthy person. It is the same where a _filiusfamilias_ makes out that he is a _paterfamilias_ in order to get a loan the more easily.\n\nJulian writes that if I give a man a sum of money to pay off a debt of mine and he, happening to owe that sum to the same creditor, uses it to pay his own debt, he commits theft.\n\nIf Titius sells something that does not belong to him and receives the purchase money from the buyer, this is not deemed to be theft of the money.\n\nIf one of two partners in a total partnership takes some article as security for a debt and that thing is then stolen, Mela says that only the one who accepted the security can proceed for theft and not the other one.\n\nNo one can commit theft by any use of words or writing, for we use the rule that theft is not committed unless there is some improper meddling with property. Accordingly, the giving of aid and advice alone does not matter \u2013 to attract liability it must be followed by some unlawful handling.\n\nIf someone drives my stallion ass among his mares so that they might get in foal, he is not guilty of theft unless he had theftuous intent. I wrote this in reply to an inquiry sent to me from Dalmatia by my pupil Herennius Modestinus about some stallions which a man was said to have turned in with his own mares \u2013 that he could be liable for theft if he did that with theftuous intent: anything less, and an _actio in factum_ should be brought.\n\nWhen I decided to lend money to a certain man of substance called Titius, you introduced me to another Titius, a person of no means, though you said he was rich, and after I had handed over the money you shared it with your Titius. You are liable for theft because it was done with your aid and advice \u2013 and of course your Titius is also liable for theft.\n\nWhen you were buying goods by weight, someone fixed you up with some overweight weights. Mela writes that that person is liable to the vendor for theft, and you too, if you knew, for you did not accept the goods from a willing vendor because he was mistaken about the weight.\n\nMela also says it is theft if someone persuades my slave to erase his name from, say, a written record of his purchase, and I agree with him.\n\nBut if my slave is persuaded to make copies of my account books, I think an action for corrupting him lies against whoever it was who persuaded him to do it; but if that person does it himself, I should have an action for deceit.\n\nIf a string of pearls is stolen, it should be stated how many there were. Again, in an action for theft of wine, it is necessary to say how many jars were stolen. Whenever vessels are stolen, it is necessary to say how many.\n\nIf a slave of mine, who has freedom to dispose of his _peculium_ , comes to an agreement with someone who had taken some item which he had not intended to give away, this seems to be a proper compromise, for although only the slave's owner could have brought an action for theft, the benefit of the _peculium_ is nevertheless the slave's. Furthermore, if the whole penalty of double damages is paid to the slave, there is no doubt that the thief goes free. The consequence of this is that if perchance the slave receives from the thief whatever seems proper in the circumstances of the case, there is again a valid compromise of the action.\n\nIf someone takes an oath that he has not committed a theft, and then later handles the allegedly stolen thing, the action of theft can still not be pursued, though of course the owner can sue for the recovery of the thing.\n\nIf a slave is stolen and later instituted as someone's heir, the plaintiff can recover through his judgement for the theft even the value of the inheritance itself in case the slave should die before taking up his inheritance on his owner's instructions. It is the same if a claim of restitution is made after the slave is dead.\n\nIf a conditionally freed slave, or a thing left by way of legacy on condition, is stolen, and the condition in either case be fulfilled before entry is made upon the inheritance, an action for theft cannot be brought because the heir no longer has any interest in those items: but while the condition is yet unfulfilled they should be valued at what they would fetch on sale.\n\n53. (ULPIAN) If a man robs an unoccupied house, he can be sued in an action for rapine for four times the value of the goods taken \u2013 but not for manifest theft, at least if no one catches him red-handed.\n\n54. (PAUL) A person who breaks down the door of a house intending to perpetrate an insult will not be held guilty of theft even if things are carried off from the house by others, for the offences are characterized by the intent and disposition of the delinquent.\n\nIf a slave who has been lent steals something and the borrower is solvent, Sabinus says that the action on loan is possible against the borrower, as also is the action for theft against the owner in the name of the slave. But if the money demanded by the owner be paid, the action for theft disappears; the same is true if the owner waives his action on the loan. But if your own slave steals something which you have borrowed, there will be no action for theft against you, the thing being at your risk; but only the action for loan will lie.\n\nOne who applies himself to the affairs of another will not have the action on theft, although the thing would be lost at his risk; but he will be condemned in the action for unauthorized administration only if the owner cedes to him the action for theft. The same is to be said of one who acts as a tutor or of a tutor who owes a duty of care, for instance, a tutor being one of several named in a will who, having given due security, undertakes sole administration of the ward's estate.\n\nIf you hold something of mine because a third person gave it to you and I take it away, Julian says that you could have the action for theft against me, only if you have an interest in retaining possession of it; instances would be that you defend the donated slave in noxal proceedings or give him attention when sick, so that you would have a good ground for retaining the slave against one asserting title to him.\n\n55. (GAIUS). A pledgee who makes use of the property pledged with him is guilty of theft. It has also been held that he who lends someone else something which he has himself borrowed is liable for theft. This seems clearly enough a case of theft where he turns the use of another's property to his own profit. Nor is it an answer to this point that he did it without a positive intention to make a profit, for it is a form of profit when a man is generous with property that is not his and thus puts someone else under an obligation to do him a good turn. From this it follows that he who takes someone else's goods to give them to a third party is also guilty of theft.\n\nThe Law of the Twelve Tables does not permit us to kill a thief who is caught by day unless he defends himself with a weapon. The word weapon however means swords, sticks, stones \u2013 indeed anything which can be used for wounding.\n\nSince the action for theft is appropriate for inflicting a penalty, whereas a _condictio_ or the _vindicatio_ are for the recovery of the stolen property, it is clear that if the thing has been got back, the action for the penalty can still be brought even though the _condictio_ and _vindicatio_ are dead; just as, conversely, when only the double or four-fold penalty has been paid, the _condictio_ and _vindicatio_ are still available.\n\nIf someone lends iron tools knowing they are to be used in breaking down a door or opening a chest, or knowingly lends a ladder for a thief to climb up, then, even though his advice was not a primary factor in the commission of the theft, he is liable to an action for theft.\n\nIf a tutor who is looking after his ward's affairs, or a curator, makes a compromise with a thief, the right to sue for theft dies.\n\n56. (ULPIAN) When a creditor takes away property pawned with him, he is not considered to make a fraudulent dealing, but simply to avail himself of the pawning arrangement.\n\n57. (JULIAN) Sometimes a thief incurs a further liability even while still under his penal obligation, so that an action for theft can be brought against him several times on account of the same property. An example occurs if the cause of possession is changed, as for example when the owner may have recovered his property and then the same thief steals the same thing again, either from the same owner or from someone to whom he had lent it or sold it. Furthermore if the personality of the owner is changed, the thief incurs a new liability.\n\nHe who brings a thief before the chief of police or the governor of the province is considered to have made his choice as to the means of seeking recovery of his property; and if the matter is thereby brought to a conclusion and judgement is given against the thief, the thing restored or the stolen money recovered, the whole question of the theft is settled, especially if the thief is not only ordered to restore the stolen property but also to suffer some additional punishment. But even if the judge orders nothing more than restitution, the very fact that the thief brought before him was in danger of some severer penalty is to be understood to bring the whole question of the theft to a conclusion.\n\nIf an item which was part of a slave's _peculium_ is stolen but later comes back into the slave's possession, the taint of theft is removed and for this reason the thing is again part of the slave's personal belongings and thus in the possession of his owner. However when a slave himself removes some part of his _peculium_ with theftuous intent, its legal character does not change so long as he retains it, for in such circumstances it has not been taken out of his owner's possession; but if he passes it to someone else, he commits theft.\n\nA tutor who actually runs his pupil's affairs can settle an action for theft with the thief and if the stolen property is returned to his possession it ceases to be 'stolen goods' because the tutor is in position of owner; and the same may be said of the guardian of a lunatic, who represents the personality of the mad owner so closely that he is deemed to pass ownership of the lunatic's property by handing it over. Furthermore, a tutor and a guardian of a lunatic can recover stolen goods by a _condictio_ brought in the names of their charges.\n\nIf two slaves of yours steal a suit of clothes and a piece of silver and you are sued on account of one for the clothes and the other for the silver, you will have no defence in the case about the silver on the ground that action has already been given against you for the clothes.\n\n58. (ALFENUS) If a man digs a pit to dig chalk and carries the chalk away, he is a thief, not because of his digging but because of his carrying away.\n\n59. (JULIAN) If theft is committed against a son in his father's family, it is right that he can bring an action on that account when he becomes independent. Similarly, if goods which he has hired are stolen, he can likewise sue when he is a _paterfamilias_ himself.\n\n60. (JULIAN) If a man lends a thing and then secretly takes it back, it is not possible to bring an action of theft against him, because it is his own property that he recovered \u2013 and the borrower is freed of the contractual liabilities of the loan. This rule must be understood subject to the proviso that the borrower had no special right of retention, as for instance he would have if he had incurred necessary expenditures on the borrowed property; then it would be in his interest to keep hold of it rather than sue on the contract of loan. Because of this interest he can bring an action for theft.\n\n61. (AFRICANUS) A runaway slave-girl is deemed to commit theft of herself; and she makes her child stolen property by handling it.\n\n62. (AFRICANUS) If a slave owned in common by several owners steals from one of them it seems right that the action used to wind up partnerships should be brought and that the decision of the judge should include an order for the defendant either to make good the loss or give up his share in the slave. From this it seems to follow that if one co-owner disposes of his share, the action can be brought against his purchaser in the same way \u2013 just as a noxal action attaches to the wrongdoer personally. But Julian says we should not push the analogy to the extent that we would say the action could be brought against the slave himself if he became free \u2013 just as the action could not have been brought if he had been the complainant's own slave and not owned in common. From this he says it therefore appears that if the slave is dead the plaintiff cannot gain anything on this account, unless perchance some part of the stolen property has come to one of the co-owners. He says that from this it also follows that if you pledged your slave with me as security for a loan and he commits theft against me, I can sue you by an action on the contract of pledge and get a decision against you in the same way either to compensate me for my loss or else surrender the slave to me on account of his offence. The same must be said about a slave whose sale had been agreed, but subject to a possible rescission of the deal. Therefore, just as the buyer would be obliged to hand back any accessions and profits made through the slave, so also the seller would have to pay compensation for any loss or hand over the slave himself to discharge his liability. But the law may provide even further: if for example the owner knowingly pledges a slave whom he knows to be a thief with a pledgee who is ignorant of this fact, he will be compelled to make good all loss however caused without the option of surrendering the slave \u2013 for this much is required by good faith. In an action on a sale, however, we must above all look at the warranty the seller gave as to the slave's character. But if the action arises out of a contract of mandate, Julian says he is in doubt whether this too might be a case where the defendant would have to make good any loss without the chance of the alternative and that even more so in this case than in the others mentioned above, the person who gave the mandate to buy the slave who proved to be a thief will, even though he was ignorant that he was a thief, nevertheless be obliged to make good the loss, for he who was the purchasing agent may very fairly allege that he would not have incurred the loss if he had not undertaken the mandate \u2013 and this point comes out even more clearly in the case of a contract of deposit for safekeeping. He grants, moreover, that it seems equitable that a man should not have to suffer loss through a slave's doings beyond the value of the slave himself \u2013 so it is even more just that no one should suffer because of a good turn done solely for the benefit of the person with whom he made a contract and with no advantage to himself. Therefore, just as in the above cases \u2013 sale, hire and pledge \u2013 it is maintained that it is the deliberate dishonesty of him who keeps back the information he has that should be punished, so also in this case fault on the part of the person who benefits under a contract ought to be at his expense only, rather than fall on the other party. It certainly was the fault of the person who gave the mandate in that he commissioned his agent to buy such a slave as the one described above \u2013 and it is the same in the case of the man who deposits a slave for safekeeping because he was not more careful in warning the other party about the slave's character. It is not unreasonable that the rule should be different in a contract of free loan for use, because after all in that case the only person who gets any benefit is the borrower who asks for the use of the slave. Therefore, the lender, just like a hirer, will have to make good any loss occasioned by his fraud; but if he is not dishonest he will not forfeit anything beyond the slave's value. Indeed, even so the term fraud is being interpreted rather freely, as Julian says, because the lender is getting no benefit from this arrangement. I think all the above is true provided there is no fault on the part of the party who undertook the agency or safe custody; but the case is quite different if he of his own choice entrusts, say, plate or money to someone else's slave when the owner himself would never have done so.\n\nI let a farm to you and, as is the usual custom, it is agreed that the produce should be my security for payment of the rent. If you should then secretly cart it off the farm, Julian says I can sue you for theft. Again, if you should sell such crops before they are gathered in and the purchaser takes them away, we submit that they become stolen property, with all that that implies, for the fact is that crops, as long as they are attached to the soil, are deemed to be part of the land and therefore whatever the tenant gathers in becomes his because he is held to do it with his landlord's consent. However, this certainly cannot properly be said of the present case, for by what reasoning can the produce possibly be said to become the tenant's when the purchaser takes it on his own account?\n\nA _statuliber_ who was directed by a testator to become a free man on payment of 10 _aurei_ was defended in a noxal action by the testator's heir (when he had committed theft). While the case was being heard he paid 10 _aurei_ to the heir and thus gained his freedom; and the question was asked whether the case against the heir could be dismissed other than by his handing over to the plaintiff the 10 _aurei_ he had received. The opinion given was that it all depended on where the money came from. Thus, if it came from a source other than the former slave's _peculium_ the heir would no doubt have to hand it over because, if the slave were not yet come to his freedom, he would himself have been handed over and the money would also have to be given to the plaintiff to whom he would himself have been surrendered. On the other hand, if it came from his _peculium_ , the decision would be the opposite because the slave would have given the heir what was already his own money and the heir would not have allowed him to be in a position to have given this to the plaintiff.\n\n63. (MARCIAN) A man who points out his route to a runaway slave does not thereby commit theft of the slave.\n\n64. (MACER) The governor of a province has no power to prevent a conviction of theft bringing infamy on the defendant.\n\n65. (NERATIUS) A testator appointed Titius as his heir and left a slave as a legacy to Seius, but before Titius entered into his inheritance the slave stole some of his property. If thereafter Seius still wishes to have his legacy Titius can sue him for the theft on the part of the slave, because he did not yet belong to Titius when he committed the theft and, however much some would argue that as the slave himself becomes the property of the person from whom he stole that would put an end to the right to sue and that the right would not revive even if he were transferred to someone else, in this case he did not even belong to Titius after he entered into his inheritance because the law is that things left as legacies pass directly from the testator to the beneficiary.\n\n66. (ULPIAN) He who dishonestly handles someone else's property with intent to gain is a thief \u2013 and no less so if he later gives it back having changed his mind, for no one expunges his existing guilt by repenting of his offence.\n\n67. (PAUL) If he who has given a thing as a pledge sells it, he commits a theft even though he is still its owner. This applies whether he has already handed it over to the creditor or has only so far entered into the agreement, and Julian agrees with this view.\n\nIf a man from whom a thing has already been stolen leaves it to me as a legacy while it is still in the hands of the thief and the thief thereafter meddles with it again, shall I have a right of action for theft? According to the opinion of Octavenus the action is available for me only and the heir has no right to sue on his own account because, regardless of the reason why ownership of the thing changed, it is the present owner who is competent to sue for theft.\n\nThe old lawyers held that he who maliciously summoned a mule-driver to answer a case in court would be liable for theft if the mules came to grief meanwhile.\n\nJulian gave the opinion that a slave who was employed to collect debts for his master would be liable for theft if he continued to collect them after being granted his freedom. The same can be said also of a tutor who collected payment of a debt after his pupil came of age.\n\nIf you recommend a certain Titius to me as a man to whom I could safely lend money and I make inquiries about this Titius but you then bring along someone else to me as if he were Titius, you commit theft because I believe that man to be that selfsame Titius \u2013 at least if he who is brought along is aware of the situation; if he is not, he will not commit theft nor will you who brought him along seem to be aiding and abetting a theft because no such offence is committed. However, you will be liable to an _actio in factum_.\n\nIf I make a verbal contract of stipulation with you that 'nothing shall be done on your part to impede the handing over of the slave Eros to me by the first of the month', although I have an interest in his not being stolen (because if he is, you are not liable under our agreement, provided, that is, that you did not do anything to impede the transfer), nevertheless I cannot bring an action for theft.\n\n68. (CELSUS) No one commits theft by denying that a thing was left with him for safekeeping, for theft is not committed by the denial itself, although it comes close to it; but if he takes possession of it with intent to convert it to his own use, he does then commit theft. Nor does it make any difference whether he wears a ring on his finger or keeps it in a jewel box if, when it was left with him for safekeeping, he appropriates it for himself.\n\nIf you had promised to pay a penalty in case of failing to deliver something by a certain date and that thing was stolen from you, so that you had to pay the penalty, the amount of that loss will be included in reckoning the damages in the proceedings for the theft.\n\nA stolen slave-child grew up in the thief's household. The thief is deemed to have stolen the adult just as surely as he stole the child, though it is all one case of theft. Accordingly he is liable for twice the highest value the slave ever had while he was in the thief's household. But since he can only be sued once for the theft, how does that apply to the foregoing case? Just suppose for instance that the stolen slave had been stolen again from the thief and that he recovered him from the second thief. In such a case even if the first thief might have committed two thefts, he could not be sued more than the once. Nor do I doubt that in our original case it is the value of the adult rather than the child which ought to be taken into account. What could be more ridiculous than that the thief's position should be better the longer the theft continues?\n\nWhen a sale of a slave is rescinded it is not possible for the purchaser to bring action against the vendor in respect of theft which the slave committed after the date of the sale but before the time when he was returned.\n\nIf a stolen slave steals from the thief who stole him, it is held that the thief can sue the slave's owner on that account, so that the misdeeds of such slaves should not go unpunished and also so that they should not be a source of profit to their owners \u2013 for very often the _peculia_ of such slaves are increased by their thieving.\n\nIf after the expiry of his lease a farmer harvests the crop of the next year against the wishes of his landlord, it is worth considering whether he can be sued for the produce and the vintage. There seems to me no doubt at all that he is a thief and that if he has consumed what he stole he can be sued for its value.\n\n69. (MARCELLUS) Julian maintained that the assets of a deceased person were not susceptible of theft in the time between the deceased's death and the heir's entry into his estate, except those things which the deceased had pledged or lent\n\n70. (SCAEVOLA) or things in which someone else had a usufruct.\n\n71. (MARCELLUS) Julian thought that in those cases the deceased's property could be stolen and that _usucapio_ would be suspended and that accordingly the heir could bring an action for theft.\n\n72. (JAVOLENUS) If someone borrows a thing and then appropriates it he is liable to actions both for theft and on the contract of loan. However, if he is sued for theft the action on the loan is extinguished; and if he is sued on the loan he will have a defence to a further action for theft.\n\nA man who takes possession of a deceased person's property before the entry of the heir cannot sue for theft in respect of any such property which is stolen, even though he could acquire ownership of such property by _usucapio_. The reason for this is that the party who can sue for theft is the one who has an interest in the thing not being stolen and in the eyes of the law that party is the one who would suffer actual loss through the theft rather than the one who would merely lose an expectation of gain.\n\n73. (JAVOLENUS) Sempronia drew up a written statement of her case ready to hand to the centurion for him to send to the appropriate office, but she never handed it to him. Lucius however read it out in court as if it had been properly handed in, but it was not in the office nor had it been given to the centurion. I wonder what charge should be laid against someone who dared to take such a statement from a private house and read it out in court when it had never been handed in in the usual fashion? Modestinus gave the opinion that if he took it surreptitiously he committed theft.\n\n74. (JAVOLENUS) If he who accepts property as a pledge sells it although nothing was agreed about selling it, or, in a case where there is such an agreement, he sells it before the due date, he thereby makes himself liable for theft.\n\n75. (JAVOLENUS) Attius stole from my possession a slave-woman whom I had bought in good faith for 2 _aurei_ , not knowing that she was stolen property. Both the true owner and I sue Attius for theft and I wonder how the damages of each of us are to be assessed. The answer is: the buyer's damages are twice the value of his interest and the owner's are twice what she is worth to him. The fact that damages are due to two parties should not affect the answer for, indeed, the damages due to them both are assessed on the same principle: the buyer gets the value of his possession and the owner the value of his ownership.\n\n76. (POMPONIUS) If a man pretending to be someone else's agent induced me to make payment either to himself or to someone else to whom he delegates the collection, I cannot sue him for theft because there is no physical thing involved which was handled with dishonest intent.\n\n77. (POMPONIUS) Someone who borrows something or undertakes to look after it safely and then uses it in some way other than as agreed will not be guilty of theft if he does this believing that the owner would not mind. Nor will he incur any liability under the contract of deposit for safekeeping; but whether or not he might be liable on the loan will depend upon his degree of fault, that is, in this case, whether he could reasonably have believed that the owner would have permitted him to do as he did.\n\nIf a man steals another's property and someone else steals it from him, the owner can bring an action against the second thief, but the first thief cannot, because it is the owner and not the first thief who has an interest in the safety of that property. This is the view of Quintus Mucius and it is quite right, for although the first thief has a sort of interest in the property's safety because he may be liable in an action to return it or its value, nevertheless an interest upon which an action of theft is founded must be an honest interest. We have not adopted the opinion of Servius, who thought that if no one appears as owner, nor seems likely to appear, the first thief could then take action, for even then a person is not understood as having an interest who will be making an improper gain. The owner will accordingly have rights of action against both the thieves, so that if he starts proceedings against one of them, he still keeps his right to sue the other; and he also has an action for recovery against both, because they are liable on distinct grounds.\n\n78. (POMPONIUS) A man who takes a purse containing money is also liable to action for theft of the purse even though his dishonest intent was mainly directed at the money rather than the purse.\n\n79. (PAPINIAN) A man handed over some property for inspection by someone else; if the inspector accepted also the risk of keeping it safe he can bring the action of theft if it is stolen from him.\n\n80. (PAPINIAN) If a debtor takes back an article which he pledged he will by no means be able to recover what he has to pay in damages in an action of theft.\n\n81. (PAPINIAN) If I sell a slave and before I hand him over he is stolen through no fault on my part, the better view is that it is I who can sue for the theft. It seems that it is I who have the necessary interest, either because I was owner at the time or because I would be liable to assign my right of action.\n\nWhen a right to sue for theft is available through right of ownership, the question of what the thing is worth must still be settled by reference to its value to me (assuming I have no further special interest) for a man has no right of action at all unless he has some interest and this rule is illustrated in the case of _statuliberi_ and legacies left to them conditionally. If any different principle were applied it would be impossible to make any assessn ent at all readily. Therefore the valuation is made simply by reference to what the use of the thing is worth to the plaintiff only in cases where a right of action of theft is given to a person who is not owner, because in those cases it is not possible for the action to proceed on the basis of the value of the physical thing itself.\n\nIf I bring an action for the production of things in court in order to exercise an option left to me as a legacy to choose from among a household of slaves, one of which has been stolen, it is the heir who has the right to action for the theft. He has the requisite interest, and it matters nought why he has the obligation to keep them all safely.\n\nSince a robber necessarily commits theft, he should be deemed a manifest thief, but he who instigates robbery is not liable to an action for theft but for robbery.\n\nIf Titius ratifies the acts of a false agent who accepts money on his account which was not owed to him, he can bring an action of agency against the dishonest party and the person who made the payment that was not due can sue Titius for unjust enrichment and will also have a _condictio furtiva_ against the dishonest agent. However, if he chooses to sue Titius first, Titius cannot unreasonably make use of the defence of pleading fraud against him and thus oblige him to assign his right to bring a _condictio furtiva_. On the other hand, if the money really was owing, the debtor loses his right to sue for theft as soon as Titius ratifies the action of the agent because he is freed of his debt. The false agent would only commit theft of the money if he assumed the name of some genuine agent of the creditor and thus a debt owed to someone else. This rule applies equally to the case of someone who asserts that money is due to him as the heir of Sempronius (a real creditor) although he is in truth someone quite different.\n\nSomeone who was conducting Titius's business for him paid money on his behalf to a pretended agent of a creditor and Titius ratified the payment. A right of action for theft does not arise for him, even though it does for the payer as soon as he hands over the money, because Titius was not then owner of the money, nor was it in his possession. Titius will, however, have a right to recover what was paid in error and the man who handed over the money can proceed by _condictio furtiva_. The judge will require him to assign this right to Titius if he should bring action against Titius for any matters arising out of the conduct of his affairs.\n\n82. (PAPINIAN) For theft of civic funds there is liability for theft rather than embezzlement of public money.\n\n83. (PAUL) A fuller or tailor who takes in clothes to clean or mend but then wears them would seem to be guilty of theft on the ground of wrongful meddling, because he did not take them for that purpose.\n\nBoth the landlord and the tenant farmer can sue for theft of crops taken from the farm because they both have an interest in recovering them.\n\nA man who carries off for immoral purposes a slave girl who is not a prostitute is guilty of theft and, furthermore, if he keeps her hidden away he is liable to punishment under the Lex Fabia.\n\nAnyone who steals accounts and securities is liable for theft up to the amount of the sums recorded; nor does it matter whether the accounts are cancelled or not, because it can be proved from them that the money paid was owed.\n\n84. (NERATIUS) If anyone takes possession as supposed heir of the property of someone thought to be dead but who is actually alive; he does not commit theft.\n\nA person who has an action of theft brought against him on his own account and another on account of the separate acts of his slave will not be granted leave to plead the defence to those charges that the alleged theft was the joint act of them both.\n\n85. (PAUL) Although a stolen thing cannot be acquired by _usucapio_ unless it shall first have returned to its owner, nevertheless, if its value has been assessed in an action for its recovery, or if the owner has sold it to the thief, the correct view now is that there is nothing to prevent _usucapio_.\n\n86. (PAUL) He who has an interest in property not being stolen has the right of action for theft, provided he held the property with the consent of its owner as, for example, in the case of a man to whom something is hired. On the other hand, he who willingly manages someone else's property, for example as a tutor or curator, does not have the action in respect of property which is stolen as a result of his own neglect. Again, a man to whom a slave is owed under a formal promise or as a legacy does not have a right to sue for theft even though he has some interest; and it is the same in the case of a surety for rent owed by a tenant farmer.\n\n87. (TRYPHONINUS) If something that was stolen or taken by force in a robbery returns into the hands of its former owner without his knowledge, it does not appear that it has come into his power again; accordingly, even if it is sold to a bona fide purchaser after a recovery of possession of this sort on the part of the owner, _usucapio_ cannot follow.\n\n88. (PAUL) The action of theft is available to a creditor for the amount of the pledge stolen rather than the amount of the debt. However, where the debtor himself stole the pledge the rule is otherwise, so that the damages for such a theft include the whole sum of money owed, plus the interest on it.\n\n89. (PAUL) If a plaintiff sues for robbery he cannot sue for theft as well; but if in a robbery case he chooses to bring the theft action for double damages, he can also sue for robbery provided his total claim does not exceed four times the value of the property in question.\n\n90. (PAUL) If a freedman or client steals from his patron, or a hired servant from his employer, that does not give rise to an action for theft.\n\n91. (JAVOLENUS) A cleaner (from whom a customer's clothes had been stolen) was released by the owner from his liability under the contract for the hire of his services. Labeo correctly says he has no right to sue for the theft. Furthermore, if the cleaner should already have sued the thief before the customer brought action against him on the contract of hire and then, before the theft action came to judgement, he was released from his liability under his contract, his own action against the thief would have to be dismissed; but if the customer had not granted such a release, the thief would have to be found guilty. In all these cases the reason is that the cleaner only has a right of action to the extent that he has an interest.\n\nNo one can be found guilty of giving aid or advice to another who is himself incapable of forming the intent of committing theft.\n\n92. (LABEO) If a man, when he knows that something of his is being stolen, does nothing to prevent it, he cannot sue for theft. (PAUL) But, on the contrary, if a man knows his property is being taken and submits because he cannot prevent it, he can bring an action; and indeed, even if he could do something to stop it but does nothing, he can still sue. This is how it happens from time to time that a patron steals from his freedman, and so also may someone who is regarded with great respect steal from a person who is so overcome with awe when in his company that he cannot resist.\n\n93. (ULPIAN) It must be remembered that nowadays it is usual to bring criminal proceedings in cases of theft and that the complainant signs a criminal charge, not because the proceedings are on a state charge but because it seemed right to keep a check on frivolous charges by threat of punishment out of the ordinary. However, no one is any less free to bring a civil action if he so chooses.\n\n# CONCERNING ROBBERY WITH VIOLENCE AND RIOTOUS ASSEMBLY\n\nBOOK 47, TITLE 8\n\n1. (PAUL) Anyone who seizes property by force is liable to an action of non-manifest theft for double damages and to an action of robbery with violence for quadruple damages; but if the action for robbery is brought first, the action for theft will be refused. However, if the theft action is proceeded with first, the other will not be refused, though only damages beyond those recovered in the first action will be awarded.\n\n2. (ULPIAN) The Praetor says: 'If any damage is alleged to have been committed maliciously and with evil intent against anyone by persons unlawfully assembled, or property is said to have been seized by violence, I will grant an action against whoever is said to have done this. Furthermore, if it is alleged that a slave has committed such acts I will grant a noxal action against his master.'\n\nIn this Edict the Praetor has been mindful of offences which involve violence. If anyone can prove that he has suffered violence he can proceed by a public criminal action against violent offences, and some authorities hold that the private action should not be decided before the criminal proceedings; but it seems to be more readily available and although the case should be heard first under the Lex Julia concerning private violence an action ought not to be refused to those who choose the private prosecution.\n\nIt is not only he who perpetrates robbery with violence who acts 'maliciously' and with evil intent (in the words of the Edict) but also he who according to his previously formed plan collects together armed men for the same purpose. Therefore it is not only the man who actually assembles the band together, but also he who makes use of armed men already got together by someone else for the purposes of robbery with violence, who is considered to have acted with malice aforethought. In this context we should understand 'men got together' to mean men assembled specially to commit the offence. No mention is made of any particular sort of men, so it matters not whether they be slave or free. Moreover, if only one accomplice is involved we still speak correctly of 'men got together'; and again, if you put the case where only one man actually commits the offence, I do not think the words of the Edict fail to cover that case also, for when it refers to 'persons unlawfully assembled', it means that whether he acts in concert with others, armed or not, who assembled for the purpose, he will still be liable under this Edict.\n\nThe mention of dishonest malice includes violence, for he who resorts to violence acts maliciously; but on the other hand, he who is malicious does not always necessarily resort to violence. Thus malice is one thing and violence is another and he who commits an offence without using violence himself but by deceitfully inciting others is equally included.\n\nThe Praetor speaks also of 'damage'. This includes every kind of injury, even that which is clandestine. However, I do not think all clandestine damage is included, but only that which is combined with violence; and thus one is correct in one's law to say that a person who commits damage alone and without violence is not included in the terms of this Edict, but that if it is committed by people got together, even without violence provided they act with malice, it will come within the terms of the Edict.\n\nFurthermore, neither the action of theft nor the action under the Lex Aquilia are incorporated into the terms of this Edict, even though sometimes they have much in common with it. Julian writes that he who commits robbery with violence is a more shameless thief, and that he who causes damage with the aid of persons assembled together can also be held liable under the Lex Aquilia.\n\n'Or property is said to have been taken by violence.' When the Praetor says 'property taken by violence' we understand it thus: that it applies even when only one article has been seized by force.\n\nA defendant who does not himself get men together but is found among them and either takes something by force or causes some damage will be liable under this action. But it has been asked whether this Edict refers only to damage caused fraudulently or violently by persons got together by the defendant, or whether it also includes robbery with violence or damage committed by the men referred to although they may have been assembled by someone else. The better view is that this is included as well, together with any harm caused by persons assembled by another, so that he who assembled them, as well as he who merely joined them, would both seem to be liable.\n\nIn this action the whole price of the property within the relevant year is quadrupled as the measure of damages, not merely the value of the plaintiff's interest in it.\n\nThe action can also be brought with reference to a household without the necessity of showing which particular men of that family committed the robbery or did the damage. The term 'household' also includes the slaves, that is those engaged in its service even though they may claim to be free men, or the slaves of others who are serving us in good faith. I do not think it possible for the plaintiff to use this action to proceed against a master on account of a number of his slaves individually, because it suffices for the master simply to pay four times the amount claimed once and for all. However, under this action noxal surrender should not be made of the whole household of slaves but only of those (or that individual) who are proved to have acted maliciously.\n\nThese proceedings are commonly called the action for robbery with violence. Only a person who has acted with malicious intent is liable to this action. Therefore anyone who resorts to force to seize what is his own will not be liable for robbery with violence, but he will be dealt with in a different way. So too, anyone who seizes by force his own slave who is possessed in good faith by someone else will similarly not be liable under this action because he removes his own property. What then if he seizes something with a mortgage on it in his favour? He will be liable.\n\nThe action for robbery with violence will not be granted against a child below the age of puberty who is not capable of forming a criminal intent unless it is alleged that it is his slave, or a group of his slaves, who committed the offence, in which case he could be liable to a noxal action for the surrender of that slave or group of slaves for the robbery.\n\nIf a tax collector drives away my cattle because he thinks I have committed some infringement of the tax laws I cannot, says Labeo, sue him for robbery even if he is mistaken because he is lacking any fraudulent intent. However, if he shuts them up so that they cannot feed and they die of hunger an _actio utilis_ will lie against him under the Lex Aquilia. On the other hand anyone who shuts up cattle which he had taken by force will be liable to the action on that account.\n\nIn this action we do not merely look to see if the property concerned belonged to the plaintiff; for whether it did or not, if he had any connection with it he will have grounds to bring the proceedings. Therefore if it is lent or let to me, or pawned with me or left with me for safekeeping, so that it is my concern that it should not be taken away, or if I am bona fide possessor of it or have a usufruct or any other right in it so that it is in my interest that I should not be robbed of it, it must be said that I have the right to bring this action, which lies not to recover ownership but to allow me to recover my property, that is to say any part of my assets. It must also be observed that, generally speaking, I can also sue in theft in all the above cases when the taking is done secretly. So I am entitled to that action in such circumstances, though some would argue that we do not have a right of action for theft in respect of property left for safekeeping. But on that point I have added 'if it is in our interest that the thing should not be seized by force' and in such a case I now have an action for theft, provided that in a case of deposit for safekeeping I have accepted liability for negligence or have received the value of the thing deposited other than as a payment. It is useful to observe that even when there may not be an action of theft in respect of a thing deposited for safekeeping action can be brought for robbery, because there is no small difference between an offender who steals secretly and one who commits robbery with violence \u2013 the former does at least conceal his offence, the latter not only publishes his but even commits it publicly. Therefore when a person proves he has even a minimal interest in the property involved he should be able to bring an action for robbery.\n\nIf a runaway slave of mine buys some things for his own use and they are taken from him by force, I can bring an action for robbery because those things are my property.\n\nWhen property is taken by violence an action can be brought for theft or for wrongful damage, or proceedings may be instituted either for its value or for the specific recovery of each article.\n\nThis action is granted to a man's heir and to other successors; but it is not granted against heirs and other successors because penal actions do not lie against them. However, let us see whether it should be granted in respect of any property by which they have been enriched. I think that the Praetor did not promise that this action would lie against heirs in respect of property they inherit, because he thought that personal proceedings for its value should suffice.\n\n3. (PAUL) If a slave committed robbery and action was instituted against him after he had been freed, even though the action could have been brought against his master it cannot be brought against the slave after his manumission, because, regardless of the fact that it is possible to sue other people, the plaintiff will fail in his action against him. Furthermore Labeo says that if action is instituted against the master within the available year after the offence and then another is started later against the slave after he has been freed, he will have a defence on the ground that the matter has already been tried.\n\n4. (ULPIAN) The Praetor says: 'In the case of anyone alleged to have committed unlawful damage maliciously as one of a mob, I will grant an action against him for double damages, provided the proceedings are started within a year of the right to sue arising; after that year has elapsed I will grant an action for simple damages.'\n\nThis Edict is promulgated to deal with damage caused by any member of a disorderly crowd. Labeo says that the term 'crowd' means any sort of riotous assembly and that it is derived from the Greek word for making a tumult. How many, then, do we agree make a 'crowd'? If two people are quarrelling we shall not acccept them as constituting a crowd, for two people cannot reasonably be said to make any sort of mob. However, if there are more, say ten or fifteen men, they can be called a crowd. But suppose there are three or four? That is not a crowd. Labeo very rightly points out that there is a great difference between a tumult and a mere quarrel, because a tumult is the uproar and upheaval made by a multitude of men whereas only two may make a quarrel.\n\nThis Edict applies not only to a person who causes damage as one of a mob but also to anyone who acts maliciously to bring it about that a mob does cause damage, whether he himself is then present or not, for malice can indeed make its presence felt even if the person concerned is not there. It must also be said that if someone joins a crowd by chance and then incites the doing of damage, the Edict applies to him as well, provided he was present at the time as one of the crowd and had the requisite evil intent, though on these facts it cannot be denied that the crowd did the damage because of his malicious incitement.\n\nIf a man on arrival excites a crowd and incites it to an unlawful object by his shouts or by any act such as making accusations against someone or even by arousing pity, and if damage is committed as a result of his malicious incitement, he will be liable, even if he did not originally have the intent of getting the crowd together; for there is no doubt that the damage was caused by the crowd being excited through his malice, and the Praetor does not require that the defendant should have got the crowd together, but only that the damage should result from the malicious incitement of one of the members of it.\n\nThere is this difference between this Edict and the one mentioned earlier: in the first one the Praetor refers to damage committed maliciously by people assembled riotously and to robbery with violence done by people who are not part of a crowd; but in the second Edict he deals with damage committed maliciously by a crowd where the defendant did not gather the crowd together but where it was incited by his cries or inflammatory language, or because he aroused pity. Here he is liable even though someone else assembled the mob, because he himself was part of it.\n\nAccordingly, because of the seriousness of this sort of thing the first Edict provides for a penalty of four-fold damages and the second stipulates double damages. However, they both grant the right of instituting such proceedings only within one year of the alleged offence, and after that year has elapsed action will only lie for single damages. Moreover, the second Edict only mentions damage suffered and property lost and makes no reference to robbery with violence; but no matter \u2013 action can be brought for robbery under the first Edict. Property is said to be lost in this context when it has been left by anyone and destroyed \u2013 for example cut or broken to pieces. This is an action _in factum_ and is granted for double the value of the property, calculated by reference to its true value, estimated at the present time, and is always doubled if the action is brought within a year. The plaintiff must prove that the damage was caused by a mob; if it was caused in any other way this action will not lie.\n\nIf when Titius struck my slave a crowd collected and as a result my slave lost something, I can sue the person who struck him even though it was the crowd that caused the loss \u2013 that is of course if the defendant started it by striking him so that the loss might result. However, this action will not lie if there was any other reason for striking the slave. On the other hand, when a person gathers a crowd together himself and beats a slave in front of the crowd in order to do him an unlawful injury rather than with intent to cause loss, the Edict will apply, for it is true that he who causes unlawful injury shows malice and that he who shows an intent to cause damage is responsible when it occurs.\n\nThe Praetor will grant the action against a single slave or against a whole household of slaves. What we have already said above about heirs and other successors being entitled to sue for robbery with violence also applies here.\n\n# CONCERNING INSULTING BEHAVIOUR AND SCANDALOUS LIBELS\n\nBOOK 47, TITLE 10\n\n1. (ULPIAN) Anything which is done unlawfully is called 'injury', for everything which is done otherwise than according to law is deemed to be injurious; and this is the general meaning of the term. Here are some further examples: damage caused by negligence is sometimes referred to as injury, in the general sense, and we are in the habit of using the term in this way for the purposes of the Lex Aquilia; at other times we speak of injustice as an injury, for in cases where someone pronounces a judgement inequitably or unjustly an injury is said to arise because it is without law or justice and thus not lawful.\n\nBut in a more particular sense the term 'injury' is used to indicate an outrageous insult. The term 'insult' is derived from the verb 'to despise'.\n\nLabeo says that an 'injury' in the above sense may arise either from something done or from words. By 'something done' he means with the hands; by words, when the hands are not used, as by insult.\n\nEvery insult is either inflicted upon the person or relates to someone's dignity or dishonour. Insult is, for example, inflicted upon the person when someone is beaten; it relates to dignity when a lady's attendant is abducted and it tends to disgrace when modesty is violated.\n\nAgain, a person may suffer an insult either on his own account or through others \u2013 on his own account when the outrage is perpetrated against the _paterfamilias_ or mother of a family; and through others when there is a natural succession, as where it is directed against my children, my slaves, my wife or my daughter-in-law \u2013 for an insult reflects on us when it is directed against anyone who is in our family or entitled to our affection. And if perchance an outrage is perpetrated upon the corpse of a deceased person, if we are his heir or possessors of his effects, we can on our own account bring an action for the insult; for the insult to the deceased reflects upon our own honour. The same applies if it is the reputation of him whose heir we are which is attacked. Furthermore, any insult perpetrated upon our children is also a reflection upon our own honour, to the extent that even if someone sells a son with his own consent, his father may bring an action for the insult, even though the son is not competent to sue because no insult is perpetrated upon him who consents to it.\n\nWhenever the funeral or the corpse of a deceased testator is insulted after his heir has succeeded him, it must be said that it is in a way an insult to the heir, for it is always in the heir's interest to preserve the testator's reputation untarnished. If the outrage to the deceased occurred before the heir succeeded to the estate, the right of action accrues to the estate and is thus acquired by the heir through inheritance. And lastly Julian writes that if the body of the testator is detained before the heir has entered upon the estate there is no doubt that the actions will accrue for the inheritance. He also thinks that the same will apply if any insult is done to a slave of the estate before the entry of the heir, for the action passes to the heir from the estate.\n\nLabeo writes that if, before the heir has entered, someone lashes a slave belonging to the estate who has been given his freedom by the will of the deceased, the heir can bring an action for the outrage, but if he is thrashed after the heir has made his entry, the slave himself can bring the action, regardless of whether or not he knew at the time that he was freed.\n\nNeratius writes that whether or not the insulter knew that his victim was my son or wife, I have a right to sue him in my own name. Neratius also says that sometimes three rights of action may arise from one outrage and further that one person's right to sue is not extinguished when another sues. Take the case for example of an insult to my wife who is still a daughter in her own family: a right of action lies not only for me and for her father but also for my wife herself.\n\n2. (PAUL) If an insult is inflicted upon a husband, his wife cannot bring an action because it is right and proper that wives should be defended by their husbands, but not husbands by their wives.\n\n3. (ULPIAN) It is said that those who can suffer an insult can equally well commit one. Granted, there are some who cannot commit one, such as, for example, madmen and infants, who are not capable in law: such persons may suffer an outrage but cannot perpetrate one. For it is the essence of outrages that they are done intentionally; so we must say it follows that if such persons even resort to blows or defamation, they do not seem to have committed an outrage. Thus one may suffer an insult without perceiving it, but cannot commit one without knowing of it, even though he may not know precisely who it is directed at. Therefore, if someone strikes another person for a joke or in sport he will not be liable, nor if he beats a freeman he thought was his slave.\n\n4. (PAUL) Nor if I, intending to strike my slave with my fist, should unwittingly hit you when you were standing near by.\n\n5. (ULPIAN) The Cornelian law of outrage provides for the case of the person who wishes to bring action because he claims that he has been struck or beaten or that his house has been entered by force.\n\nThis law also provides that no one can preside as judge who is son-in-law, father-in-law, stepfather, stepson, cousin or is any more nearly related to the plaintiff by consanguinity or affinity, or is his patron, or the father of any of the persons already mentioned.\n\nThe Lex Cornelia gives an action for three causes: where someone is struck, or is thrashed or his house is forcibly entered. Thus it seems that any injury which can be inflicted by hand is within the scope of the Cornelian law.\n\nAccording to Ofilius there is this difference between striking and beating: to beat is to inflict a blow in anger, but mere striking does not imply infliction in anger.\n\nIn the context of this law we understand by 'house' not only one which is owned by the plaintiff, but where he happens to have his home; and so the law applies regardless of whether he lives in his own house, or in one which he rents or indeed where he lives free; or even if he is just there as a guest.\n\nWhat if someone lives in a country seat or place surrounded by gardens? The same should apply. And if the owner lets a farm and it is entered by force, it is the tenant and not the landlord who can bring the action.\n\nBut when anyone enters the land of another, who is tending it for the owner, Labeo says it is not the owner who can bring the action under the Lex Cornelia, because he cannot have his home everywhere \u2013 that is, in all his houses. I think this law applies to every house which is the home of the head of a family, even though he may not actually be living there. Let us consider for example the case of someone who goes to Rome to study: he has not made Rome his home and so it should be said that if his home is entered by force, the Cornelian law would still apply. To this extent therefore it does not apply to temporary lodgings nor to pothouses, though in other cases it may apply to those who live in a place for more than a brief spell, even though they do not make their homes there.\n\nThe question is put whether when a son _in potestate_ has suffered an injury the head of the family may sue under the Lex Cornelia; and it seems that he cannot, though the father may bring the action granted by the Praetor while the son brings action under the Lex. Indeed a son still in his father's family can bring action under any of the heads covered by the Lex Cornelia, even without warranting that his father approves his action; indeed Julian writes that a son who brings action for outrage under any other laws cannot be compelled to give any assurance of his father's approval. By this law the plaintiff may tender the oath so that the defendant can swear that he has committed no insult. Sabinus in his writings on Assessors says that even the Praetors have to follow this rule, and indeed it is so.\n\nIf someone composes, writes or publishes something tending to bring another into hatred, ridicule or contempt, or maliciously causes this to be done, even though it be published in the name of another, or even anonymously, he can be sued under this law and if he is found guilty, he will be declared to be untrustworthy so that his word cannot be given in court, nor can he make a will. And by a Decree of the Senate the same fate awaits anyone who publishes any scurrilous epigrams or anything else of the like, even in shorthand, and anyone who offers such things for sale or purchase. Any free person or slave who gives evidence leading to the successful prosecution of such persons will be rewarded according to the means of the accused person in the judge's assessment; and in the case of a slave, maybe he could even be freed \u2013 and why not if some public good comes of his action?\n\n6. (PAUL) This decree of the Senate is a necessary addition to the law for those cases where the name of the person who suffered the wrong is not given; then, because proof is difficult, the Senate wishes the offence to be dealt with by a public inquisition. On the other hand, if his name is given he can bring an action in the normal way according to the common law; nor should he be prevented from getting judgement in a private action which is prejudicial to a public proceeding, because the case relates to private matters. It is clear that if a public proceeding is instituted, a private action will not be allowed, and vice versa.\n\n7. (ULPIAN) The Praetor's Edict says: 'Anyone who brings an action for outrage must say precisely what injury has been done,' because he who brings an action which may result in public disgrace should not be vague over a critical matter for someone else's public reputation but he must define and specify precisely the wrongful injury which he alleges he has suffered.\n\nIf it is said that a slave has been killed to cause an insult, why shouldn't the Praetor allow the public action to give way to the private one under the Cornelian law, just as if someone wished to bring an action because you administered poison for the purpose of killing the slave? So he would act more justly if he did not grant the public action in a case of this sort. However, it is our custom to maintain that in cases where there is a public action we should not be prevented from bringing a private proceeding. This is indeed true but only where it is not the main object publicly to prosecute for punishment. What then shall we say of the Lex Aquilia, for this law is mainly concerned with the public prosecution of a penalty and not primarily with the death of the slave? For its concern is the loss caused to the owner; but in an action for outrage the proceedings are to avenge murder or poisoning itself rather than make amends for the loss. What then if someone seeks to bring action for outrage because he has been hit on the head with a sword? Labeo says he should not be prevented from suing, for he says this is not an action which concerns the public; but this is not right, for who can doubt that the defendant can be sued under the Lex Cornelia?\n\nA further reason for stating precisely the nature of the plaintiff's injury is so that we may know what sort of insult it was and whether judgement might have to be given against a patron on account of his freedman. For it is important to remember that an action for insult is not always, but only from time to time, given to a freedman against his patron, in those cases where the insult suffered is gross \u2013 the sort of treatment only meted out to slaves. For we allow a patron a right of reasonable chastisement of freedmen and the Praetor will not hear a freedman's complaint of an insult which he claims to have suffered unless he is moved by its exceptional severity. For the Praetor should not put up with yesterday's slave who is today's freedman complaining that his erstwhile master spoke to him roughly or struck him lightly or corrected him. But if he was scourged or severely beaten or seriously wounded, it would be entirely proper for the Praetor to intervene on his behalf.\n\nIf one of his children who is not _in postestate_ wishes to bring an action against his father, the action for insult should not be allowed lightly, but only if the atrocity of the outrage is the persuading factor. But it is clear that the action is not available to someone subject to paternal authority, even though the outrage be atrocious.\n\nWhen the Praetor says, 'Whatever is the cause of action must be clearly stated,' how is this to be understood? Labeo says a person speaks 'clearly' when he makes his statement of claim without ambiguity (unlike those who say 'on the one hand but maybe on the other') and alleges that he has suffered a specific injury.\n\nIf you inflict several outrages on me \u2013 if for example you get together a disorderly mob and enter my house, so that I am at the same time both beaten and insulted \u2013 the question arises whether I can bring separate actions against you for each outrage. Marcellus, following the view of Neratius, approves of joining together in one action all the injuries that a person has suffered at the same time.\n\nOur Emperor has said in a Rescript that at the present time we can proceed in a civil action even in atrocious cases, by which we mean those which are graver and more insulting than usual. Labeo says that an insult may be deemed atrocious by reason of its place or timing, or the person insulted. An insult becomes more atrocious in respect of the person when committed against a magistrate or a parent or patron, and in respect of time when committed in public during the games. He also says it matters greatly whether the insult is committed in the presence of the Praetor or in private, because it is much more serious if done in public; and that it may also be atrocious by its very nature, as for example when a wound is inflicted or someone is hit in the face.\n\n8. (PAUL) The gravity of the wound makes it atrocious and sometimes the part affected, as where an eye is pierced.\n\n9. (ULPIAN) While we are considering insults atrocious by their very nature, and granted that it is atrocious when inflicted upon the person, there is still the question whether it can be atrocious when not caused to one's body, as for example when one's clothing is torn, or one's companion is abducted or outrageous language is used. Pomponius maintains that insult can be said to be an aggravated one even without a blow being struck, when the aggravation depends on the person insulted. But when someone strikes and wounds somebody in the theatre or the Forum he commits an aggravated insult even though the wound itself is not serious; and it matters little whether it is a head of a family or a son in power on whom the injury is inflicted, for this is still considered an aggravated case.\n\nIf a slave causes an atrocious insult his master can be sued for it if he was present; but if he was not, the slave is to be taken before the Governor who will order him to be flogged.\n\nIf anyone makes lewd advances, be it to a man or woman, freeborn or freed, he will be liable for the outrage and even if an attempt is made on the chastity of a slave, this too is deemed to be an outrage.\n\n10. (PAUL) The modesty of a person is said to be attacked whenever anything is done tending to deprave an otherwise virtuous person.\n\n11. (ULPIAN) It is not only the perpetrator of an outrage, for example he who actually struck the blow, who is liable to an action; but anyone who aided and abetted is equally liable.\n\nThe action for outrage is based upon justice and equity, but the right of action is lost if the outrage is disregarded. If someone overlooks an outrage, that is, if someone, having suffered it, lets it pass from his mind, he cannot revive it if he later regrets having condoned it.\n\nHence, if any agreement about an outrage, or a compromise is made or any oath is exacted in court, an action for that outrage can no longer be pursued.\n\nAnyone can bring an action for outrage either himself or through some representative such as an agent or guardian, or through any other such person who is accustomed to acting on behalf of others.\n\nIf an outrage is perpetrated against anyone else on my orders, most of the authorities say that both I, who gave the order, and he who acted on it are liable to an action. Thus Proculus rightly maintains that if I hire you to commit an outrage for me, proceedings can be brought against both of us for our offence, because the outrage was perpetrated at my instigation. He also says the rule is the same if I order my son to commit an outrage against you; but Atilicinus says that if I prevail upon someone to commit an outrage who would otherwise be unwilling to obey me, the action lies against me.\n\nAlthough an action for outrage is not granted to a freedman against his own patron, it can be brought by the husband of a freedwoman, in her name, against her patron; for whenever a wife suffers an outrage, her husband is deemed to bring the action in her name, and Marcellus concedes this point. But more recently I have made a note that this cannot be said in every case \u2013 for just because she is married, why should reasonable correction or even strong language (short of the obscene) be denied to a freedwoman's patron? But if the woman was married to a freedman, we would say, by all means, that her husband ought to be allowed an action against her patron for an outrage; and this is a view with which many agree. From all this it seems that our freedmen can not only not sue us in respect of outrages they suffer themselves, but also cannot bring actions on behalf of those in whom they have an interest that they should not suffer in this way.\n\nIt is clear that if the son or wife of a freedman wishes to bring an action for outrage they themselves have suffered, they should be allowed to proceed, for the action is not granted to the father or husband on their behalf, since they can bring proceedings in their own name.\n\nThere is no doubt that anyone who is said to be a slave but asserts that he is a free man can bring the action against a defendant who alleges that he is his master. This is so whether the alleged master is trying to reduce him to slavery, or whether the slave is asserting his liberty, for we use this law without regard to such distinctions.\n\n12. (GAIUS) When an action is brought to reduce anyone from liberty to slavery, and the plaintiff knows all along that he is a free man, nor is he doing this in the course of recovering some of his own property by due judicial process, he is liable to an action for the outrage.\n\n13. (ULPIAN) An action for outrage is not granted for or against an heir. The same rule applies when this wrong has been inflicted on my slave: in this instance too, the action for injury is not available for my heir. But once the action has been actually joined, it may be continued by one's successors.\n\nHe who proceeds by public law cannot be deemed to have caused an outrage thereby, for the execution of legal process cannot be deemed an actionable injury. Similarly, if someone is arrested for not having obeyed a Praetor's decree, he cannot on that account bring an action; but if anyone should bring me before a tribunal maliciously and simply to harass me I can sue him for the outrage.\n\nIf someone will not suffer a person's case from being heard when public honours are being considered \u2013 for instance if a statue or some other such thing is involved \u2013 should he then be liable to an action for the injury? Labeo says not, even though he may have caused an insult; but he says it matters a great deal whether something was done deliberately to cause affront or whether he simply prevents an act from being done in honour of another.\n\nAgain, Labeo says that when one man had earned appointment as an ambassador, and the electing board gave the responsibility to someone else, he could not bring an action for injury on account of the labour he had put in; for it is one thing to impose a duty upon a person and quite another to inflict an insult upon him, and this rule should be adopted in the case of other offices and duties which are unjustly bestowed. Thus if anyone should pronounce such a decision for the purpose of giving affront, the same rule should apply, but no action lies in respect of any act of a magistrate performed by virtue of his judicial authority.\n\nIf someone prevents me from fishing or casting a net into the sea can I bring the action for _iniuria_ against him? Some authorities say that I can, and they include Pomponius. The majority, however, maintain that the case is the same as that of a man who is not allowed to bathe publicly, or take a seat at the theatre, or go into, sit down or associate with other people in any public place, or indeed if anyone prevents me from making use of my own property. In such cases the action for _iniuria_ can be brought. In olden days an interdict was available to anyone who took a lease of public places because it was necessary to prevent the use of force against him by which he might have been stopped from enjoying his lease.\n\nBut what is to be said of the case where I prevent anyone from fishing in front of my house or country seat? Am I liable to an action for _iniuria_ , or not? For the sea, just like the seashore and the air, is the common property of all men, and it has often been stated in rescripts that no one can be prevented from fishing, nor from bird-catching \u2013 except that he can be prevented from going onto someone else's property. Nevertheless, it has been maintained, though quite without legal authority, that I can stop anyone from fishing in front of my house or country seat \u2013 accordingly someone so stopped can sue for _iniuria_ on that account; however, I can properly prevent anyone from fishing in a lake which is my private property.\n\n14. (PAUL) It is clear that if anyone enjoys a private right to any part of the sea he will be entitled to the interdict for protection of possession if he is hindered in the exercise of his right, because this relates to a private rather than a public matter, as enjoyment of a right based upon private title rather than public right is involved. Interdicts are adapted to private, not public, affairs.\n\n15. (ULPIAN) A further question is put by Labeo: if someone should turn the mind of another by some drug or other, will an action for _iniura_ lie? Labeo maintains that it does.\n\nIf a man has not been physically beaten, but hands have been threateningly raised against him and he has been repeatedly terrified that he was about to be thrashed, even though he was not actually struck, the assailant will be liable to an equitable extension of the action for _iniura_.\n\nThe Praetor says: 'I will grant an action against anyone who raises an outcry against another contrary to good morals or who has caused this to be done.'\n\nLabeo says that to raise an outcry amounts to _iniuria_. An outcry is said to consist in a tumult or in concerted vociferous abuse. When several voices come together it is called 'concerted vociferous abuse' when the voices are indeed concerted against the individual; but the requirement added by the Praetor, that it be contrary to good morals, shows that he takes cognizance not of every united clamour but only that which violates good morals and also tends to bring someone into hatred, ridicule or contempt. He also says that 'contrary to good morals' should not only be understood to relate to the standards of the offender, but must be taken to refer to the moral standards of the community in general.\n\nLabeo says that the defamatory clamour of a mob of voices not only can be raised against a party who is present, but can also be directed against a person in his absence. Thus, if they come to your home, a clamour is said to be raised against you even though you are not actually there; and the same rule applies to your lodgings or your shop. And it is not only the person who himself joins in the shouting who is deemed to have raised a clamour against you, but also he who has instigated others to raise a tumult, or who sent them.\n\nThe words 'against another' were not added without reason, for if the clamour is not raised against some specific person, the offence is not committed.\n\nIf someone attempts to raise a clamour against a person, but it does not come about, he will not be liable.\n\nFrom the foregoing it seems that not all abuse is technically a clamour, but only that which is bawled aloud; and as to whether one or many yelled such things, a clamour is only where such is done in concert. Whatever is said other thar by yelling or in a crowd cannot properly be said to be a clamour, but is rather defamation.\n\nIf an astrologer or anyone else professing unlawful power: of clairvoyance is consulted and says that a person was a thief when he was not, an action for defamation cannot be brought against him, but he is liable under the Imperial Ordinances.\n\nAn action for _iniuria_ which is based upon a clamour does not lie for or against one's heirs.\n\nIf anyone accosts young girls who are dressed as slaves he would seem to have committed only a minor offence \u2013 and less still if they are got up as prostitutes and not dressed like respectable mothers of families. Therefore if a woman was not (soberly) dressed in matronly clothes, anyone who calls out to her or who entices away her female companion is not guilty of _iniuria_. We must accept the term 'companion' to mean someone who accompanies and follows anyone, and, as Labeo says, they may be slave or free, male or female. Labeo defines 'companion' in this context as one who is appointed to follow someone around for the purpose of keeping him or her company, and it is the abduction of such a person either privately or in a public place which is _iniuria_ ; and teachers are included amongst companions. Labeo says further that the abduction is committed not at its outset but only when someone has actually removed the companion from the company of his or her master or mistress. Moreover, not only someone who employs force to do this, but he who simply persuades the companion to leave also seems guilty. And it is not only he who actually abducts the companion who is liable under the Edict, but also anyone who calls out to one of them or follows them around. To 'call out' for this purpose is to make improper suggestions or alluring proposals \u2013 this is not like raising a clamour, but it is contrary to good morals. He who simply uses foul language is not making an assault on anyone's virtue but he is liable to an action for the affront.\n\nIt is one thing to call out or accost someone, and another thing to follow them about; for he who accosts a woman attacks her virtue by his speech, whereas he who follows her constantly, even silently, dogs her steps. Such assiduous pursuit can be productive of a certain degree of dishonour. It must be remembered however that not everyone who accosts someone or follows her about can be guilty under this Edict (nor will he who does it as a merry prank or by way of rendering some honourable service come within the terms of this Edict), but only someone who acts contrary to good morals.\n\nI think that a betrothed man should be able to bring the action for outrage, for any insult inflicted upon his intended wife is deemed to be an insult to him too.\n\nThe Praetor says: 'Nothing shall be done to bring a person into hatred, ridicule or contempt, and if anyone violates this rule, I will punish him according to the facts of the case.'\n\nLabeo says this Edict is mere surplusage, for we can anyway bring a general action for _iniuria_ ; but it also appears to Labeo himself (and this is indeed correct) that the Praetor, having examined this matter, wished to make special mention of it, for it seems that when public acts do not have attention specifically drawn to them they tend to be forgotten.\n\nGenerally the Praetor forbade anything which would make someone infamous, so whatever anyone does or says which brings dishonour to someone else may give rise to an action for the insult. This is true of almost anything which brings disgrace on someone \u2013 as for example the malicious use of mourning dress or filthy clothes, or allowing the beard to grow unkempt, or the composing of scurrilous lampoons, or the publishing or singing of anything which casts aspersions on anyone's reputation.\n\nWhen the Praetor declares, 'If anyone breaks this rule, I will punish him as befits the circumstances of the case' he should be understood to mean that he will consider fully all the relevant facts; that is to say that he will take into account both the personal character of the plaintiff who brings the action and the record of the defendant, and also the nature of the complaint itself and the particulars of the plaintiff's injury.\n\nIf anyone attacks another's reputation by making a complaint to the Emperor or to anyone else, the action for injury can be brought \u2013 so says Papinian. He also says that he who is prepared to sell the outcome of a case can, even before he is paid any cash, be condemned in an action for the outrage, and also suffer a whipping on the orders of the Governor \u2013 for it is clear that he has caused great insult to the person whose judgement he offered for sale.\n\nWhen anyone takes possession of someone else's property, even a single article, in order to cause an affront, he will be liable to an action. Similarly if anyone gives notice of the sale of a pledge which he has received from me, in order to defame me (as a defaulting debtor), Servius says I can bring an action for the insult. Further, anyone who calls someone else his debtor when he is not, intending thereby to insult him, will also be liable.\n\nThe Praetor says: 'If anyone is alleged to have beaten the slave of another improperly, or to have had him tortured without his master's order, I will give an action against him. Likewise where any other similar thing is alleged, I will grant an action if proper cause is shown to me.'\n\nIf anyone injures a slave in a way which is also an injury to his master, I reckon that the master can bring an action in his own name. But even if he did not act intending to affront the master, the Praetor should not let the injury to the slave pass unpunished, especially if it was caused by torture or by beating \u2013 for it is clear that the slave suffered thereby. If however one of a number of co-owners beats a slave who is owned jointly, it is clear that he will not be liable to this action, because he acted within his rights as a master; but if a usufructuary does this, the master may sue him, as indeed a usufructuary may sue a master who thus infringes the contract of usufruct.\n\nThe Edict speaks of acts 'contrary to good morality' meaning that it is not everyone who strikes a slave who is liable, but only he who strikes him improperly, and so if anyone does so with the intention of correcting or reforming him he is not liable to action. And hence Labeo asks whether I could take action for the impropriety against a city magistrate if he wounded my slave with a whip. He says that the judge should find out what my slave had done which caused him to be whipped, for if the slave had made an impudent attack on his dignity or sneered at his badge of office, the case against the magistrate should be dismissed.\n\nThe verb 'to beat' is in this context not properly used in respect of blows with a fist.\n\nWe understand the word 'torture' to mean torment and bodily pain used to extract the truth; accordingly mere interrogation or a reasonable use of terror is not a subject for this Edict. However, we include in the term 'torture' such things as that called 'the bad quarters': thus when interrogation is carried out forcibly and with the infliction of bodily torment, that is to be understood as 'torture'. Even if torture is inflicted on the orders of the slave's master, Labeo says that he too must be held liable if it exceeds the proper limits.\n\nThe Praetor's Edict also says: 'Where any other illegal act is alleged, I will grant an action if proper cause is shown.' Thus if a slave has been excessively beaten or subjected to torture, judgement can be passed against the guilty party without further inquiry; but if he has suffered some other sort of hurt, action will not lie unless proper cause is shown. Thus the Praetor does not promise the action on the slave's account for every sort of injury. For if he was only lightly struck or not grossly abused, he will not grant an action; and if he was defamed by any act or by any scurrilous verses, I think that the Praetor's inquiries should be widened to take account of the slave's own character, for it matters a great deal what sort of slave he might be, whether he was frugal, methodical and careful or whether he was a vulgar scullion or a lowly drudge or whatever \u2013 and what if he was shackled, a known bad lot or \u2013 the ultimate disgrace \u2013 branded? Thus it is that the Praetor must take account not only of the alleged injury, but also the character of the slave against whom it is said to have been perpetrated and it is in the light of these factors that he will allow or refuse an action.\n\nSometimes the injury done to a slave reflects upon his master, sometimes not; for if someone, thinking a slave belonged to someone else and not to me, beat that slave even though he maintained that he was a free man, and he would not have beaten him had he known he was mine, Mela says that I cannot sue him for an injury against me.\n\nIf anyone should start proceedings for insult because his slave had been beaten and later starts another action for wrongful damage, Labeo says that they are not the same thing because one action relates to damage done wrongfully, whereas the other arises from insult.\n\nIf I have the right of usufruct in a slave and you have the ownership of him and he is beaten or subjected to torture, you rather than I have the right to sue. The same applies if you have thrashed a slave whom I possess in good faith, for the master has a better right to bring the action for the insult.\n\nAgain, if anyone beats a free man who was in my service in good faith as a slave, it should be settled whether he beat him in order to insult me. If he did, I can bring an action. Again, therefore, an action lies with respect to the slave of another who was serving me in good faith whenever the injury was committed with the intention of insulting me, for we give the right of action to the master in the name of the slave. If however he touches or beats me the action lies on my own account \u2013 and the same distinction can be drawn in the case of the usufructuary.\n\nIf I cudgel a slave who belongs to several masters it is clear that they will all be able to bring actions for the insult to them all,\n\n16. (PAUL) but, as Pedius says, it is not right that judgement should be given for a larger amount than the particular owner's individual share, so it is the judge's duty to work out the values of the different shares.\n\n17. (ULPIAN) But if I did this with the consent of one of the owners, thinking that he was the sole owner of the slave, an action for insult will not lie for any of them; if however I knew that the slave belonged to several owners, no action will lie for the owner who allowed me to thrash the slave though it will lie for the others.\n\nIf torture has been inflicted by order of a tutor, guardian or manager, it must be said that the action for insult will not be available.\n\nMy slave was whipped on the orders of the magistrate before whom we were appearing through your doing or because of your plea. Mela thinks I should be granted an action for _iniuria_ against you for whatever amount the court thinks fair. Furthermore Labeo says that if the slave should die his master can sue because the case then concerns loss to him caused by the unlawful insulting act. Trebatius agreed with this view.\n\nSome sorts of insults might seem slight and of no importance when caused by free men, yet they are serious when inflicted by slaves, for an insult increases in the light of who it was who caused it. When a slave gives affront it is clear that he commits an offence. It is reasonable therefore that a noxal action should be granted in such circumstances in respect of the harm suffered, but, if he prefers, his master can bring the slave to court and have him whipped and thus appease the insulted party. It is not necessary for the master to show cause for his whipping though he has power to say why he should be whipped, or, if the aggrieved party is not satisfied by this, the slave can be handed over by way of recompense, or the amount of damages fixed by the court will have to be paid. The Praetor's Edict says that damages are 'in the discretion of the judge', so that he can fix the punishment according to the standards of good and reasonable men. If before the master produces his slave in court to be whipped to satisfy the aggrieved party in pursuance of some decision of the court, the plaintiff then changes his mind and insists upon bringing action against the master for his alleged insult, his action should not be entertained, for he who has received satisfaction has had his affront settled; for if he had swallowed his insult voluntarily it may be said with confidence that the right of action for that insult would have been extinguished, in just the same way that the right to sue for insult is annulled by effluxion of time.\n\nIf a slave should cause an insult on the orders of his master, the master can certainly be sued even in his own name; but if evidence is given that the slave has been freed, Labeo says that the action can lie against him because the blame attaches personally to the wrongdoer and a slave is not obliged to obey his master's every whim. But if he should kill anyone on his master's orders we exempt him from the penalties of the Lex Cornelia.\n\nIt is clear also that if he commits some offence in the defence of his master he has reason on his side and he has a good defence if he is prosecuted on that account.\n\nIf a slave in whom I have a usufruct commits an _iniuria_ against me I can bring a noxal action against his owner. My legal position should not be any weaker because I have a usufruct than it would have been if I had not had that right. But the rule is otherwise if the slave is owned in common by several owners (including me) \u2013 then our law will not grant an action to another co-owner because he too is in part liable for the offence.\n\nThe Praetor's Edict says: If someone is alleged to have insulted someone who is under the control of another, and that person to whose authority he is subjected, or anyone else who can act on his behalf, is not in court, I will, provided good cause is shown, grant a right of action to the person who alleges that he has been insulted.'\n\nWhen a son who is still under his father's power has suffered insult and his father was present but is unable to bring the action because of insanity, or on account of some other mental disorder, I think that the action still lies and in this sort of case the father is deemed not to have been present.\n\nHowever, if the father is present but will not commence the action because he wishes to postpone or abandon it or even pardon the insult, the better opinion is that the right to sue should not be granted to the son, because in those cases when the father is absent the son is allowed to sue only because of the supposition that his father would probably have done so if he had been there.\n\nSometimes, however, we think that even if the father excuses the insult, the son should nevertheless still be allowed to sue, for instance if the father is himself a shady or depraved character whereas the son is a man of honour. The reason for this is that a father who is beneath contempt should not evaluate the insult to his son by his own debased standards -consider for example the situation where the father is a person for whom both law and reason would require the Praetor to appoint a legal guardian.\n\nIf, however, once the case has been brought before the court the father should go away or neglect to prosecute the case or proves to be grossly depraved, it must be admitted that the right of action should be conceded to the son if proper cause is made out. The same applies if it is shown that the son has been emancipated.\n\nThe Praetor gave preference to sue to the father's agents rather than to the insulted parties themselves. But when such an agent neglects the case, or is in collusion with the other side or is not able to sue those who committed the insult, the action will then be available to the complainant himself. Here we understand an agent to be not necessarily a specially appointed legal representative to plead the case \u2013 it is sufficient if the general care of the ward's property has been entrusted to him. However, when the Praetor says that if a proper case is made out he will grant an action to the party who was insulted, this must be understood to mean that when inquiry is made it must be shown how long the father has been away and when he is expected back, and whether the person who wants to sue for insult is dilatory or unbusinesslike to the point of uselessness, and on that account unfitted to bring the action. When the Praetor then refers to the party 'who has sustained the insult' this must be understood to mean that sometimes his father will be entitled to sue, for example in a case where a grandson suffered an insult and although his grandfather was not present his father was. Julian's opinion was that the action should be granted to the father rather than to the grandson himself, for he took the view that the father has a duty to protect his son whenever necessary even while the grandfather is still living.\n\nJulian also says that a son should not only be able to bring an action himself, but could also appoint a solicitor to act for him; for otherwise, he says, it could happen that if we do not allow him a solicitor and he should be prevented by illness from getting to court, there would be no one to conduct the case and it must then be dismissed. He says furthermore that when a grandson suffers an insult and there is no one to conduct the case on behalf of the grandfather, the father should be allowed to do so, or to appoint a solicitor, for the right to have a solicitor is allowed to everyone permitted to sue in their own names. He also says that a son should be deemed to bring an action in his own name, because when a father fails to do so, the Praetor will allow him to sue.\n\nIf a son under his father's power brings the action for insult, the father is not competent to sue.\n\nJulian also says that an action for insult is allowed to a son under his father's power when there is no one to act on the father's behalf and that in such a case the son is deemed to be head of the household. For this reason, if he has been emancipated or appointed an heir by a will, or even if he is disinherited or has refused his father's estate, authority is granted to him to conduct his case. It would be quite absurd that someone who might for proper cause be granted permission by the Praetor to prosecute an action even while under his father's power should be deemed incapable of avenging his insults after he had become head of a family, and that this right should be transferred to his father who had abandoned him in so far as it lay within his power to do so; or (which would be still more objectionable) if the right should be transferred to the father's heirs, who, without doubt, are in no way concerned with an insult inflicted upon a son under his father's power.\n\n18. (PAUL) It is not right or just to condemn anyone for bringing a guilty person into disrepute, for it is necessary and proper for the offences of guilty persons to be known.\n\nIf one slave causes an affront to another, an action should be brought just as if his master had been affronted.\n\nIf a married woman who is still subject to her father's _potestas_ is insulted, both her husband and her father can sue for the affront. Pomponius rightly maintains that the defendant should be condemned to pay damages to her father in the sum that would have been payable had she been a widow, and to her husband in the same amount just as if she were independent, because the injury suffered by each party has its own separate valuation. Accordingly if a married woman is in no one's power she still cannot bring the action herself because her husband can bring it in her name.\n\nIf an insult should be inflicted upon me by someone who does not know me, or if anyone thinks I am Lucius Titius whereas I am Gaius Seius, the main issue will be the prime consideration, that is the fact that he intended to insult me; for I am a particular individual although he may think I am someone other than myself and therefore I shall be entitled to bring an action for the insult. But when anyone thinks a son under his father's power is the head of a family, he cannot be held to have insulted that person's father any more than he insults the husband when he believes a woman to be a widow, because in these cases the insult is not directly aimed at the father or husband personally, nor can it be transferred to them from the son or widow merely by thinking about it, because the intention of the insulter does not extend beyond the aggrieved party and he thought he was the head of a family. However, if he was aware that he was indeed a son in his father's power but did not know whose son he was, I would hold (so says Pomponius) that his father could sue on his own account, just as a husband can bring an action if he knew that the woman he insulted was married; for he who knows these facts intends to inflict an insult to the son or wife upon the father or husband whoever they may be.\n\n19. (GAIUS) If my creditor, whom I am ready to pay, should molest my guarantors in order to cause affront to me, he will be liable to an action for the insult.\n\n20. (MODESTINUS) It was his view that if Seia intending to cause an insult, sealed up the house of her debtor while he was away without the authority of the magistrate who has the authority to allow such a thing, an action for insult could be brought.\n\n21. (JAVOLENUS) The assessment of damages for the insult suffered should not date from the giving of judgement but from the time when the affront was given.\n\n22. (ULPIAN) If a free man is arrested as a runaway slave he can bring an action for insult against his captor.\n\n23. (PAUL) Ofilius says that if anyone enters another's house against the owner's will, even though his object be to summon him before a magistrate, he will be liable to an action for the insult.\n\n24. (ULPIAN) When anyone is prevented from selling his own slave he may bring an action for the insult he suffered.\n\n25. (ULPIAN) If anyone should have sexual intercourse with a female slave, the owner can sue for insult; but if he hides the slave or does anything else with theftuous intent, he will also be liable for theft. If, however, he should ravish (and thus spoil) a young virgin girl slave, some authorities maintain that he would also be liable under the Lex Aquilia.\n\n26. (PAUL) Whenever anyone makes a laughing stock of my slave or my son, even with his consent, I am still considered to have suffered an affront, as for example if he takes him to a tavern and gets him involved in playing dice; and this will always be the case when the person who persuades him does so intending thereby to insult me. However, it is possible for the evil counsellor not to know who the master is, and so it becomes necessary to have an action for corrupting a slave.\n\n27. (PAUL) If a statue of your father which was placed on his monument is broken by having stones thrown at it, Labeo says that the action for defiling a tomb will not lie, but an action for insult will.\n\n28. (ULPIAN) The action for injury does not affect interests in property until the pleadings have been settled.\n\n29. (PAUL) If you free or alienate a slave on whose account you are entitled to sue for an insult, you nevertheless retain the right to bring the action.\n\n30. (ULPIAN) Who doubts that an action for an insult sustained during slavery will not lie after the slave has been freed?\n\nIf an insult has been inflicted upon a son, even though both father and son will acquire a right to sue, the measure of damages will not be the same for both,\n\n31. (PAUL) for the insult may be greater to the son than to the father \u2013 if for example he is of superior rank to his father.\n\n32. (ULPIAN) It is not allowed for magistrates to do anything which might cause insult, and so if a magistrate does cause an insult, either as a private person or in his official capacity, he can be sued for it. But can he be sued while he is still a magistrate or must the action wait until he has given up his office? The better opinion is that if he is a higher magistrate who cannot (except in a case of fraud) legally be summoned to court, it will be necessary to wait until he relinquishes his office. However, if he is one of the inferior magistrates, that is, one who does not have the highest power and authority, he can be sued even during his magistracy.\n\n33. (PAUL) Anything done in accordance with good morality to uphold the interests of the state and causing insult to anyone will not be subject to action because the magistrate did not intend any affront, but was concerned to uphold the standing of public affairs.\n\n34. (GAIUS) If a number of slaves jointly beat someone or raise a clamorous mob against him, each of them is individually guilty of the whole offence; and, of course, the insult is all the greater as it was committed by slaves. Indeed, there are as many insults as there are persons inflicting them.\n\n35. (ULPIAN) When someone commits an atrocious insult and he can shrug off the judgement against him in an action because of his notoriety and indigence, the Praetor must prosecute the case with the greatest severity and punish all concerned in the insult.\n\n36. (JULIAN) If I wish to bring an action in a son's name against his father, and the father appoints a solicitor, it is understood that the son is not defended unless he gives security against costs of the suit. Therefore an action should be given against him just as if he were not defended by his father.\n\n37. (MARCIANUS) It is provided by Imperial Constitutions that anything placed upon public monuments to defame someone shall be removed. The action for insult can even be brought as a civil matter under the Lex Cornelia and the amount of damages will be in the discretion of the judge.\n\n38. (SCAEVOLA) A decree of the Senate provides that no one shall carry about a statue of the Emperor to excite unpopularity. Anyone breaking this law shall be publicly put in chains.\n\n39. (VENULEIUS) No one may wear filthy clothes or dishevelled long hair in public under the name of an accused person unless he is so closely related to him that he could not be compelled against his will to give evidence against him.\n\n40. (MACER) The late Emperor Severus of blessed memory sent a rescript to Dionysius Diogenes as follows: 'Anyone who has been found guilty of an atrocious insult cannot be a member of the Decurian Order: nor can it be of any help to you if a governor or anyone else who pronounces on this matter, or indeed even those who oppose the established law on this subject think that you remain a member of the Order.'\n\n41. (NERATIUS) A father who has suffered an insult through the person of his son should not be prevented from taking action for his own affront and that of his son by two sets of proceedings.\n\n42. (PAUL) Litigants appearing before a judge should not raise a clamour in court, or they will be branded with infamy.\n\n43. (GAIUS) Anyone who brings an action of insult on false evidence will be condemned in special proceedings \u2013 that is to say he will suffer exile, deportation or expulsion from his order.\n\n44. (JAVOLENUS) If the owner of a house lower down makes smoke in order to smoke out his neighbour higher up, or if the owner of the upper house throws or pours anything down onto his neighbour lower down, Labeo would have it that no action can be brought for insult. I do not think he is right if the reason for doing these things was to give affront.\n\n45. (HERMONGENIANUS) At the present time it is usual in cases of insult to pass sentence to suit the circumstances of the case and parties involved in it. Thus in some cases slaves who have been whipped are restored to their masters and free men of the inferior classes are thrashed with rods, while others are punished by banishment for a time or by denial of the use of their property.\n\n# NOTES\n\n. _Colluctatio_ was wrestling, rather as we know it today. To the Greeks it was both a science and an art, so that not only did the contestants seek to win; they also sought to win gracefully and according to the precepts of the various schools. Like so much of their art, literature and architecture, the Romans adopted also the Greek styles and attitudes to wrestling. The two main styles were the upright, where one sought to throw one's opponent, three throws usually winning a bout, and ground wrestling, where the bout continued until one of the combatants conceded defeat. The Romans practised keenly in order to gain physical fitness generally and as an important part of military training.\n\n. _Pancratium_ (\u03c0ANKP\u00c1TION): 'In the event boxing and wrestling were combined with kicking, strangling and twisting. It was a dangerous sport, but strict rules were enforced by umpires who closely watched the combatants. Biting and gouging were forbidden, but nearly every manoeuvre of hands, feet and body was permissible. You might kick your opponent in the stomach; you might twist his foot out of its socket; you might break his fingers. All neck-holds were allowed, the favourite method being the 'ladder-grip' in which you mounted your opponent's back and wound your legs around his stomach, your arms round his neck.' (F. A. Wright, _Oxford Classical Dictionary_ , p. 775.)\n\n. Usufruct was a strictly personal servitude giving a specified person a right to use and enjoy the subject of the right and to take its fruits or income for himself, provided the substance of the thing remained unimpaired. Kaser suggests that it was of early origin dating from the days of the agricultural economy in order to provide maintenance for members of the family who were virtually disinherited by the rules of succession on the death of the _paterfamilias_ , especially the widow and unmarried daughters. This he says, would account for its strictly personal and non-transferable nature, even though it was later developed for a far wider range of beneficiaries. (See Kaser, _Roman Private Law_ 29.1.1.) For a contrary view of the origins of usufruct see Buckland, _Textbook of Roman Law_ , p. 268.\n\n. If a son _in postestate_ or a slave committed a delict, the father or owner was liable for the penalty, but could avoid paying it by handing over the son or slave to the injured party (noxal surrender). The original idea was to allow the plaintiff to wreak personal vengeance on the wrongdoer, but this was inconsistent with the sovereign rights of the father's or owner's _potestas_. Eventually, therefore he was virtually given the choice of buying off the vengeance by paying the penalty or surrendering the wrongdoer to the plaintiff.\n\n. In English law an easement is a right over someone else's land (known as the servient tenement) such as a right of way or right of support which a landowner enjoys by virtue of owning his particular plot (called the dominant tenement). The Romans called these rights servitudes, as do almost all non-English lawyers.\n\n. The Twelve Tables gave an action ( _actio de pauperie_ ) similar to a noxal action, whereby the owner of an animal which did damage would be liable either to pay compensation or to surrender the animal to the plaintiff. The action was available only where the damage was caused as a result of the animal acting out of character. It therefore probably did not apply to wild animals, since they were more or less expected to cause damage, but even if it did, the owner would not have been liable once such an animal had escaped, since he thereupon ceased to be owner of it. The Aediles, who were the magistrates responsible for markets and fairs and the safety of the streets, therefore forbade the keeping of wild animals, such as wild dogs, boars, bears or lions, near a public road and imposed penalties for contravention of this edict.\n\n. The text reads '10,000' and '20,000' without specifying the unit. It serves to make its point without. However, monetary units are referred to elsewhere. The most valuable of the Roman coins were the gold _aureus_ and the half _aureus_ ; next the silver _denarius_ and half- _denarius_ , then the _sestertius_ and _dupondius_ , which were brass, and smallest of all were the _as_ and _quadrans_ , which were copper. 16 _asses_ = 1 _denarius_ ; 25 _denarii_ = 1 _aureus_.\n\n. The object of _vindicatio_ was to recover property. _Condictio_ was appropriate to recover the money value where the property was irrecoverable.\n\n. Justinian refers to this law in _Institutes_ 4.18.10, as follows: 'Among the laws giving rise to public prosecutions [criminal actions] there is also the Lex Fabia, which inflicts capital punishment according to the imperial constitutions in certain cases, but lesser punishments in others.' Cicero also refers to this law ( _Pro Rabirio_ , 3) but nothing more is known of it.\n\n. Captured soldiers expected death, or at least to be enslaved; this was general in the classical world, and was reflected in the Roman law in that the legal position of a Roman citizen captured by the enemy was similar to that of a slave, though as a humane concession (deplored for example by Horace, who considered it decadent for captives to hope to return rather than face a 'manly' death ( _Odes_ III.5)) his rights remained in suspense ready for him to resume them, should he return to Roman territory. By right of _postliminium_ the returning captive resumed his freedom and his rights just as if he had never been captured. In Justinian's law, marriage continued although the husband was a captive, but if he died in captivity he died a slave: but by a law of Sulla his will, if made before capture, remained valid.\n\n. Titius and Se\u012dus (and their feminine forms) are the names normally used in giving examples referring to Roman citizens. Similarly, Stichus and Pamphilus are slave names.\n\n. The office or rank of centurion is best and most generally known in a military context. In later times however, the term is also used to indicate an officer of the court (see _Codex Theodosianus_ 1.16.7) though it is unlikely to have been used in this way in the time of Modestinus. Jolowicz, however ( _De Furtis_ , p. 110), suggests that this usage here does not necessarily indicate an interpolation in the text, for a military officer might quite well have been employed by some tribunal in the time of Modestinus.\n\n. See p. 120 and note 9 above. '\n\n. The bad quarters' ( _Mala Mansio_ ) was a kind of punishment not unlike the rack, in which the victim was stretched out and tied fast to aboard.\n\n. The Decuriones were the local councillors of the fully developed Roman municipal system of local government. They were recruited from the ex-magistrates and by appointment by the censors at the quinquennial census. Once appointed they held office for life. Wealth, age, status and reputation were taken into account, though the minimum age of twenty-five was often overlooked in the cases of members of influential families, who were elected as a mark of respect to the family. From being an honour, the position later became a burden, for the Decuriones were made responsible for collecting the imperial taxes due from the municipality; moreover they were personally liable for any default of payment. This later became an intolerable burden and was a substantial contributory factor in the breakdown of the municipal system in the later Empire. A. N. Sherwin-White concludes that 'the Decurionate became an hereditary inescapable _munus_ (public duty) of the wealthy, who degenerated from a ruling class to a tax-collecting caste known as _curiales_ ' (see _Oxford Classical Dictionary_ , p. 318).\n\n# FURTHER READING\n\n_Textbooks_\n\nThe major statement of Roman law in English is to be found in W. W. Buckland, _A Text-Book of Roman Law_ (3rd edition by Peter Stein, Cambridge University Press). This is a monumental work to which all subsequent accounts must necessarily be heavily indebted. Simpler accounts suitable for introductory reading are: Alan Watson, _Law of the Ancient Romans_ (Southern Methodist University Press); Barry Nicholas, _An Introduction to Roman Law_ (Oxford University Press); and J. A. C. Thomas, _Textbook of Roman Law_ (North Holland).\n\n_General Background_\n\nA great deal of useful background material specifically related to the Roman Law is to be found in J. A. Crook, _Law and Life of Rome_ (Thames and Hudson). Background matters specifically related to the reign of Justinian are to be found in P. N. Ure, _Justinian and his Age_ (Penguin).\n\n_Historical Background to Roman Law_\n\nThe standard work is H. F. Jolowicz and B. Nicholas, _Historical Introduction to the Study of Roman Law_ (3rd edition by Barry Nicholas, Cambridge University Press). Other useful details are to be found in H. Kunkel, _An Introduction to Roman Legal and Constitutional History_ (translated by J. M. Kelly, 2nd edition, Oxford University Press); and H.J. Wolff, _Roman Law_ (University of Oklahoma Press).\n\n_Comparative Studies_\n\nW. W. Buckland and A. D. (Lord) McNair, _Roman Law and Common Law_ (2nd edition by F. H. Lawson, Cambridge University Press) is a comparison in outline concerned with the fundamental rules and institutions of the Roman law and the common law, and examines the approaches of the lawyers of the Romans and the English to the same facts of human life. F. H. Lawson's _Negligence in the Civil Law_ (Oxford University Press) contains a detailed examination of the Lex Aquilia and the adoption of its principles in modern legal systems. Lawson's _Roman Law Reader_ (Oceana) contains a useful and interesting anthology collected from both ancient and modern writers.\n\n_Roman Legal Texts_\n\nF. de Zulueta, _Institutes of Gaius_ , Vol. I (Oxford University Press) and J. A. C. Thomas, _Institutes of Justinian_ (North Holland) contain the original texts of the _Institutes_ and give side-by-side English translations.\n. A. P. d'Entreves, _Natural Law_ , p. 17.\n\n. Barry Nicholas, _An Introduction to Roman Law_ , p. 18, note 3.\n\n. H. V. Morton, _A Traveller in Rome_ , pp. 98\u20139.\n\n. Barry Nicholas, _An Introduction to Roman Law_ , pp. 28\u201333.\n\n. Cicero, _De Oratore_ 3.33.133\u2013135; see also 1.48.212; _Pro Murena_ 9.19; _Topica_ 5.28; and see Justinian, _Digest_ 1.2.2.37.\n\n. W. W. Buckland, _A Textbook of Roman Law_ , p. 26.\n\n. Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1776\u20131831) was Prussian Ambassador to the Holy See 1816\u201323, and Professor of Roman History at Bonn 1823\u201331. His _History of Rome_ was written between 1811 and 1832.\n\n. Theodor Mommsen (1817\u20131903) was Professor of Ancient History at Berlin 1858\u20131903. His _Roman History_ was published in 1854\u20136.\n\n. The date of Ulpian's murder has traditionally been given as 228 and this is stated in most of the legal and historical textbooks. Recently, however, Modrzejewski has advanced convincing arguments for his murder having occurred in 223 (see _R.H.D_., 1967, pp. 565 ff.).\n\n. Edward Gibbon, _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ , Ch. 3.\n\n. F. Bluhme, _Zeitschrift f\u00fcr Geschichtliche Rechtswissenschaft_ , IV, 257 ff.\n\n. W. A. J. Watson, _Law of Obligations in the Later Roman Republic; Law of Persons in the Later Roman Republic; Law of Property in the Later Roman Republic; Law-making in the Later Roman Republic._\n. _An Introduction to Roman Law_ , p. 20.\n\n. F. H. Lawson, _Negligence in the Civil Law_ , 15.\n\n. Buckland, _A Textbook of Roman Law_ , p. 589.\n. Quoted by Justinian, _Institutes_ 1, 1, 3: _Digest_ 1, 1, 10. 'The maxims of the law are these: to live honestly, to harm no one, and to give everyone his due.'\n\n. Erskine, _Institute_ 3, 1, 13.\n\n. Wright, _Cases on the Law of Torts_ , p. 1.\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":" \n# ACCLAIM FOR ALEJANDRO ZAMBRA\n\n_My Documents_\n\nNamed one of the Best Books of 2015 by _The Boston Globe_\n\nA _New York Times_ Editors' Choice\n\nFinalist for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award\n\n\"All of [Zambra's books] are very short and strikingly original. . . . In his new book, Zambra returns to the twin sources of his talent\u2014to his storytelling vitality, that living tree which blossoms often in these pages, and to his unsparing examination of recent Chilean history.\"\n\n\u2014James Wood, _The New Yorker_\n\n\"Zambra's books have long shown him to be a writer who, at the sentence level, is in a world all his own. . . . Let us now forget the smallness of simply spearheading a new Latin American fiction. _My Documents_ goes beyond that, brighter than most anything we'd call exceptional, yesterday or today and in any language.\"\n\n\u2014NPR\n\n\"This dynamite collection of stories has it all\u2014Chile and Belgium, exile and homecomings, Pinochet and Simon and Garfunkel\u2014but what I love most about the tales is their strangeness, their intelligence, and their splendid honesty.\"\n\n\u2014Junot D\u00edaz, NewYorker.com\n\n\"Zambra knows how to turn the familiar inside out, but he also knows how to wrap us up in it. His generous stories satisfy our demand for narrative even as they question it.\"\n\n\u2014Natasha Wimmer, _The New York Times Book Review_\n\n\"[A] dazzlingly funny and playful collection.\"\n\n\u2014John Freeman, _The Boston Globe_\n\n\"Sentence-by-sentence pleasure . . . [Zambra's] most substantial achieve-ment yet.\"\n\n\u2014 _The Seattle Times_\n\n\"Much like Junot D\u00edaz's _Drown_ , the stories in Chilean author Zambra's collection are discrete tales that blend together with an impressive fluidity. . . . Through eleven stories, the author's charming cast examines religion, soccer, relationships, and the lure of solitude\u2014all from a distinctly Chilean perspective. But the view is also a youthful one, neatly capturing the puzzling process of trying to figure out who you really are. A\u2013\"\n\n\u2014 _Entertainment Weekly_\n\n\"Compulsive . . . rich and thought-provoking . . . If you are going to read Zambra, which you should, don't just read _My Documents_ : read everything he's done.\"\n\n\u2014 _The Guardian_ _(London)_\n\n\"Zambra's sentences comically dance around narrative convention without disrupting the immersive pull of the story. I can think of no one else who does this, and the effect is spellbinding. . . . His fiction is, quite simply, some of the best being produced today.\"\n\n\u2014Matt Kessler, The Rumpus\n\n\"Zambra is so alert to the intimate beauty and mystery of being alive that in his hands a raindrop would feel as wide as a world.\"\n\n\u2014Anthony Marra, author of _A Constellation of Vital Phenomena_\n\n\" _My Documents_ is an act of literary levitation\u2014luminous, magical, and profound, written with the mysterious quality of weightlessness.\"\n\n\u2014Jess Walter, author of _Beautiful Ruins_\n\n\"Zambra is one of my favorite living writers. He brings such clarity, exactitude, compassion, oddity, and inventiveness to his books that every new volume he publishes goes on my read-this-immediately list.\"\n\n\u2014Kevin Brockmeier, author of _The Brief History of the Dead_\n\n_Ways of Going Home_\n\n\"[Alejandro Zambra's novels] are written with startling talent. And Zambra's latest novel represents, I think, his deepest achievement. . . . The best conjuring trick is the one where you're shown how it's done, which in no way contradicts your belief that what you've seen is magic.\"\n\n\u2014Adam Thirlwell, _The New York Times Book Review_\n\n\"In many ways, [this] book recalls the miniature roominess Philip Roth achieved in his great novel, _The Ghost Writer_. The stories we tell imagine us as much as us them, Zambra reminds, with the power and intensity of a writer who grew up in the shadow of a terrible war.\"\n\n\u2014 _The Boston Globe_\n\n\"Funny, contemplative, and quietly moving, _Ways of Going Home_ pulls off the intoxicating trick of making the world feel smaller in its familiar touchstones found in a time of unique tragedy.\"\n\n\u2014 _Los Angeles Times_\n\n\"Complex yet sophisticated, [ _Ways of Going Home_ ] places Zambra at the spearhead of a new Chilean fiction and sets him alongside other Latin American writers such as Colombia's Juan Gabriel V\u00e1squez, who weave some of the continent's most difficult historical themes into an exciting modern art form.\"\n\n\u2014 _The Guardian_ (London)\n\n\"I envy Alejandro the obvious sophistication and exquisite beauty of the pages you are about to read, a work which is filled with the heartfelt vulnerability of testimony. I loved it and I read it with the great joy of anticipation that one has reading a writer one hopes to read more and more of in the future.\"\n\n\u2014Edwidge Danticat, _Granta_\n\n\"I read all of Alejandro Zambra's novels back-to-back because they were such good company. His books are like a phone call in the middle of the night from an old friend, and afterward, I missed the charming and funny voice on the other end, with its strange and beautiful stories.\"\n\n\u2014Nicole Krauss, author of _Great House_\nPENGUIN BOOKS\n\nMULTIPLE CHOICE\n\nAlejandro Zambra is the author of the story collection _My Documents_ , which was a finalist for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, and three previous novels: _Ways of Going Home_ , _The Private Lives of Trees_ , and _Bonsai_. His books have been translated into more than ten languages. He has received numerous prizes in Chile, including the Chilean Literary Critics' Award in 2007 and the National Book Council's award for best novel in 2007 and 2012, as well as international distinctions such as the Prince Claus Award in Holland. His stories have appeared in _The New Yorker_ , _The Paris Review_ , _Harper's_ , _Tin House_ , and _McSweeney's_ , among others. In 2010, he was named one of _Granta'_ s Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists. A 2015\u20132016 Cullman Center fellow at the New York Public Library, he divides his time between New York and Santiago, Chile.\n\nMegan McDowell is a Spanish language literary translator from Richmond, Kentucky. With the exception of _Bonsai_ , she has translated all of Zambra's books. She lives in Santiago, Chile.\n\n# ALSO BY ALEJANDRO ZAMBRA\n\n_Bonsai_\n\n_The Private Lives of Trees_\n\n_Ways of Going Home_\n\n_My Documents_\n\nPENGUIN BOOKS\n\nAn imprint of Penguin Random House LLC\n\n375 Hudson Street\n\nNew York, New York 10014\n\npenguin.com\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2014 by Alejandro Zambra\n\nTranslation copyright \u00a9 2016 by Megan McDowell\n\nPenguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.\n\nOriginally published in Spanish as _Facsimil_ by Editorial Huerders, Santiago de Chile.\n\nA selection from this book appeared in _The New Yorker_ under the title \"Reading Comprehension: Test No. 1.\"\n\nISBN 9781101992173\n\nThis is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.\n\nCover design: Nayon Cho\n\nVersion_1\nFor my teachers Juan Luis Morales Rojas, Elizabeth Az\u00f3car, Ricardo Ferrada, and Soledad Bianchi\n\n# CONTENTS\n\n_Acclaim for Alejandro Zambra_\n\n_About the Author_\n\n_Also by Alejandro Zambra_\n\n_Title Page_\n\n_Copyright_\n\n_Dedication_\n\nI. Excluded Term\n\nII. Sentence Order\n\nIII. Sentence Completion\n\nIV. Sentence Elimination\n\nV. Reading Comprehension\n\n# I. EXCLUDED TERM\n\nIn exercises 1 through 24, mark the answer that corresponds to the word whose meaning has no relation to either the heading or the other words listed.\n\n1. MULTIPLE\n\nA) manifold\n\nB) numerous\n\nC) untold\n\nD) five\n\nE) two\n\n2. CHOICE\n\nA) voice\n\nB) one\n\nC) decision\n\nD) preference\n\nE) alternative\n\n3. YOURS\n\nA) hers\n\nB) his\n\nC) mine\n\nD) their\n\nE) ours\n\n4. FIVE\n\nA) six\n\nB) seven\n\nC) eight\n\nD) nine\n\nE) one\n\n5. BLINK\n\nA) sweat\n\nB) nod\n\nC) cough\n\nD) cry\n\nE) bite\n\n6. BODY\n\nA) dust\n\nB) ashes\n\nC) dirt\n\nD) grit\n\nE) smut\n\n7. MASK\n\nA) disguise\n\nB) veil\n\nC) hood\n\nD) face\n\nE) confront\n\n8. BEAR\n\nA) endure\n\nB) tolerate\n\nC) abide\n\nD) panda\n\nE) kangaroo\n\n9. TEACH\n\nA) preach\n\nB) control\n\nC) educate\n\nD) initiate\n\nE) screech\n\n10. COPY\n\nA) cut\n\nB) paste\n\nC) cut\n\nD) paste\n\nE) undo\n\n11. LETTER\n\nA) uppercase\n\nB) lowercase\n\nC) cursive\n\nD) dead\n\nE) silent\n\n12. CUT\n\nA) erase\n\nB) annul\n\nC) blot\n\nD) expunge\n\nE) wound\n\n13. HEARTBREAKING\n\nA) breathtaking\n\nB) earthshaking\n\nC) lovemaking\n\nD) forsaking\n\nE) mistaking\n\n14. BLACKLIST\n\nA) backlist\n\nB) checklist\n\nC) playlist\n\nD) shitlist\n\nE) novelist\n\n15. CHILDHOOD\n\nA) childlike\n\nB) childproof\n\nC) childcare\n\nD) childless\n\nE) childfree\n\n16. PROTECT\n\nA) care for\n\nB) cover for\n\nC) dote on\n\nD) watch over\n\nE) look after\n\n17. PROMISE\n\nA) complete\n\nB) silence\n\nC) promise\n\nD) complete\n\nE) silence\n\n18. PRAY\n\nA) please\n\nB) praise\n\nC) prey\n\nD) prays\n\nE) pleas\n\n19. BLACKOUT\n\nA) whiteout\n\nB) pitch-black\n\nC) lights-out\n\nD) nightfall\n\nE) dead of night\n\n20. RAZE\n\nA) flatten\n\nB) raise\n\nC) level\n\nD) demolish\n\nE) subdue\n\n21. SPARE\n\nA) time\n\nB) room\n\nC) change\n\nD) tire\n\nE) life\n\n22. PAUSE\n\nA) hesitation\n\nB) recess\n\nC) break\n\nD) breath\n\nE) silence\n\n23. SILENCE\n\nA) fidelity\n\nB) complicity\n\nC) loyalty\n\nD) conspiracy\n\nE) cowardice\n\n24. SILENCE\n\nA) silence\n\nB) silence\n\nC) silence\n\nD) silence\n\nE) silence\n\n# II. SENTENCE ORDER\n\nIn exercises 25 through 36, mark the answer that puts the sentences in the best possible order to form a coherent text.\n25. Nineteen eighty-something\n\n1. Your father argued with your mother.\n\n2. Your mother argued with your brother.\n\n3. Your brother argued with your father.\n\n4. It was almost always cold.\n\n5. That is all you remember.\n\nA) 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 1 \u2013 4 \u2013 5\n\nB) 3 \u2013 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 4 \u2013 5\n\nC) 4 \u2013 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 5\n\nD) 4 \u2013 5 \u2013 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3\n\nE) 5 \u2013 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 4\n26. The second\n\n1. You try to remember your first Communion.\n\n2. You try to remember your first masturbation.\n\n3. You try to remember the first time you had sex.\n\n4. You try to remember the first death in your life.\n\n5. And the second.\n\nA) 1 \u2013 5 \u2013 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 4\n\nB) 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 5 \u2013 3 \u2013 4\n\nC) 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 5 \u2013 4\n\nD) 4 \u2013 5 \u2013 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3\n\nE) 4 \u2013 3 \u2013 2 \u2013 1 \u2013 5\n27. A child\n\n1. You dream that you lose a child.\n\n2. You wake up.\n\n3. You cry.\n\n4. You lose a child.\n\n5. You cry.\n\nA) 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 4 \u2013 3 \u2013 5\n\nB) 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 5 \u2013 4\n\nC) 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 4 \u2013 5 \u2013 1\n\nD) 3 \u2013 4 \u2013 5 \u2013 1 \u2013 2\n\nE) 4 \u2013 5 \u2013 3 \u2013 1 \u2013 2\n28. Your house\n\n1. It belongs to a bank, but you prefer to think of it as yours.\n\n2. If all goes well, you'll finish paying for it in 2033.\n\n3. You've lived here for eleven years. First with a family, and later on with some ghosts who ended up leaving, too.\n\n4. You don't like the neighborhood. There are no parks nearby and the air is dirty.\n\n5. But you love this house. You'll never leave it.\n\nA) 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 4 \u2013 5 \u2013 1\n\nB) 3 \u2013 4 \u2013 5 \u2013 1 \u2013 2\n\nC) 4 \u2013 5 \u2013 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3\n\nD) 3 \u2013 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 4 \u2013 5\n\nE) 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 4 \u2013 3 \u2013 5\n29. Birthday\n\n1. You wake up early, go for a walk, look for a caf\u00e9.\n\n2. It's your birthday, but you don't remember.\n\n3. You feel like you are forgetting something, but it's only a sense of unease, an intuition that something is out of place.\n\n4. You go about your routine, like any other Saturday.\n\n5. You smoke, turn on the TV, fall asleep listening to the midnight news.\n\nA) 5 \u2013 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 4\n\nB) 4 \u2013 5 \u2013 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3\n\nC) 3 \u2013 4 \u2013 5 \u2013 1 \u2013 2\n\nD) 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 4 \u2013 5 \u2013 1\n\nE) 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 4 \u2013 5\n30. Two hundred twenty-three\n\n1. You remember the freckles on her breasts, on her legs, on her belly, on her ass. The exact number: two hundred twenty-three. One thousand two hundred and seven days ago there were two hundred twenty-three.\n\n2. You reread the messages she used to send you: They are beautiful, funny. Long paragraphs, vivid, complex sentences. Warm words. She writes better than you do.\n\n3. You remember the time you drove five hours just to see her for ten minutes. It wasn't ten minutes, it was the whole afternoon, but you like to think it was only ten minutes.\n\n4. You remember the waves, the rocks. Her sandals, a wound on her foot. You remember your eyes darting from her thighs to her eyelashes.\n\n5. You never got used to being with her. You never got used to being without her. You remember when she said, in a whisper, as if to herself: _Everything is OK_.\n\nA) 5 \u2013 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 4\n\nB) 4 \u2013 5 \u2013 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3\n\nC) 3 \u2013 4 \u2013 5 \u2013 1 \u2013 2\n\nD) 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 4 \u2013 5 \u2013 1\n\nE) 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 4 \u2013 5\n31. Relatives\n\n1. You group them into two lists: the ones you love and the ones you don't.\n\n2. You group them into two lists: the ones who shouldn't be alive and the ones who shouldn't be dead.\n\n3. You group them according to the degree of trust they inspired in you as a child.\n\n4. For a moment you think you discover something important, something that has been weighing on you for years.\n\n5. You group them into two lists: the living and the dead.\n\nA) 1 \u2013 3 \u2013 4 \u2013 5 \u2013 2\n\nB) 5 \u2013 2 \u2013 1 \u2013 3 \u2013 4\n\nC) 1 \u2013 3 \u2013 5 \u2013 2 \u2013 4\n\nD) 3 \u2013 4 \u2013 5 \u2013 2 \u2013 1\n\nE) 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 4 \u2013 5\n32. A kick in the balls\n\n1. You think of all the people, living or dead, near or far, men or women, from your country or abroad, who have reason to kick you in the balls.\n\n2. You wonder if you deserve a kick in the balls.\n\n3. You wonder if you deserve to be hated. You wonder if anyone really hates you.\n\n4. You wonder if you hate anyone. You wonder if you hate the people who hate you.\n\n5. Insomnia wounds and accompanies you.\n\nA) 1 \u2013 1 \u2013 1 \u2013 1 \u2013 1\n\nB) 2 \u2013 2 \u2013 2 \u2013 2 \u2013 2\n\nC) 3 \u2013 3 \u2013 3 \u2013 3 \u2013 3\n\nD) 4 \u2013 4 \u2013 4 \u2013 4 \u2013 4\n\nE) 5 \u2013 5 \u2013 5 \u2013 5 \u2013 5\n33. Rhyme\n\n1. You search for words that rhyme with your first name.\n\n2. You search for words that rhyme with your last name.\n\n3. Your first and last names do not rhyme, but you search for words that rhyme with both your first and last names.\n\n4. You search for words that don't rhyme with either your first name or your last name, or with anything else.\n\n5. You are not crazy.\n\nA) 5 \u2013 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 4\n\nB) 5 \u2013 4 \u2013 3 \u2013 2 \u2013 1\n\nC) 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 4 \u2013 5\n\nD) 1 \u2013 5 \u2013 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 4\n\nE) 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 4\n34. First person\n\n1. You believe the only solution is to keep your mouth shut.\n\n2. You never say _I_.\n\n3. Thanks to several bottles of wine, you learn to say _I._\n\n4. You never say _we_.\n\n5. Thanks to a bottle of pisco, you learn to say _we_.\n\n6. You are rehabilitated.\n\nA) 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 4 \u2013 5 \u2013 6\n\nB) 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 4 \u2013 3 \u2013 5 \u2013 6\n\nC) 2 \u2013 4 \u2013 1 \u2013 3 \u2013 5 \u2013 6\n\nD) 4 \u2013 5 \u2013 6 \u2013 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 1\n\nE) 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 6 \u2013 4 \u2013 5 \u2013 1\n35. Swimming\n\n1. The scale says 92.1 kilos. You tune the radio to 92.1 FM. You loathe this station, every program on it. You have to lose weight.\n\n2. You're at the public pool. Sitting on the edge with your feet in the water, you watch some kids who are learning how to swim. The teacher is emphatic, her voice does not sound sweet. The children look very serious.\n\n3. When you were a kid, you were in love with silence. Later, you wanted words to flood you, sink you. But you already knew how to swim, no one had to teach you. They just threw us into the water, you think, and like dogs, we learned to swim right away.\n\n4. Or maybe they taught you in school. Maybe that was the only thing they taught you. Not to swim, but to move your arms and legs. And to hold your breath for hours.\n\n5. Everyone knows that swimming is the best exercise. You're going to be OK, you think to yourself, you're going to lose weight. You dive into the cold water. Swimming strengthens your muscles and your memory.\n\nA) 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 4 \u2013 5\n\nB) 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 4 \u2013 5\n\nC) 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 4 \u2013 5\n\nD) 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 4 \u2013 5\n\nE) 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 4 \u2013 5\n36. Scars\n\n1. You think about how the shortest distance between two points is the length of a scar.\n\n2. You think: the introduction is the father, the climax is the son, and the resolution is the holy spirit.\n\n3. You read books that are much stranger than the books you would write if you wrote.\n\n4. You think, as if it were a discovery, that the last point in the line of time is the present.\n\n5. You try to go from the general to the specific, even if the general is General Pinochet.\n\n6. You try to go from the abstract to the concrete.\n\n7. The abstract is the pain of others.\n\n8. The concrete is the pain of others colliding with your body until you are completely invaded.\n\n9. The concrete is something that can only grow.\n\n10. Something like a tumor, or the opposite of a tumor: a child.\n\n11. In your case, it's a tumor.\n\nA) 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 4 \u2013 5 \u2013 6 \u2013 7 \u2013 8 \u2013 9 \u2013 10 \u2013 11\n\nB) 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 4 \u2013 5 \u2013 6 \u2013 7 \u2013 8 \u2013 9 \u2013 10 \u2013 11\n\nC) 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 4 \u2013 5 \u2013 6 \u2013 7 \u2013 8 \u2013 9 \u2013 10 \u2013 11\n\nD) 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 4 \u2013 5 \u2013 6 \u2013 7 \u2013 8 \u2013 9 \u2013 10 \u2013 11\n\nE) 1 \u2013 2 \u2013 3 \u2013 4 \u2013 5 \u2013 6 \u2013 7 \u2013 8 \u2013 9 \u2013 10 \u2013 11\n\n# III. SENTENCE COMPLETION\n\nIn exercises 37 through 54, complete the sentence using the appropriate elements. Mark the answer that best fits the sentence.\n\n37.  the thousand amendments they've made to it, the Chilean Constitution of 1980 is a piece of shit.\n\nA) After\n\nB) Due to\n\nC) In spite of\n\nD) Thanks to\n\nE) Notwithstanding\n\n38. I often used to lie,  I wore dark glasses.\n\nA) but\n\nB) though\n\nC) so\n\nD) but even so,\n\nE) but only when\n\n39. A lot of people want me dead,  I'm not  ill.\n\nA) | but | that\n\n---|---|---\n\nB) | though | actually\n\nC) | even though | gravely\n\nD) | yet | even\n\nE) | though | yet\n\n40. Students go to university to  , not to  .\n\nA) | study | think\n\n---|---|---\n\nB) | study | protest\n\nC) | drink | think\n\nD) | sleep | die\n\nE) | buy | window-shop\n\n41. And if they have any  left, that's what  for.\n\nA) | energy | sports are\n\n---|---|---\n\nB) | hope | reality is\n\nC) | illusions | the void is\n\nD) | dissent | the cops are\n\nE) | neurons | crack cocaine is\n\n42. What is impossible for  is possible for  .\n\nA) | men | God\n\n---|---|---\n\nB) | men | women\n\nC) | the right | the left\n\nD) | Rebecca | Becky\n\nE) | the poor | the rich\n\n43. What is impossible for  is possible for  .\n\nA) | my mom | my dad\n\n---|---|---\n\nB) | Pisces | Leo\n\nC) | me | you\n\nD) | McCartney | Lennon\n\nE) | tomorrow | the day after tomorrow\n\n44. If the  within you grows  , how deep is  your  !\n\nA) | light | dark | darkness\n\n---|---|---|---\n\nB) | confusion | light | flashlight\n\nC) | candor | lustful | schlong\n\nD) | love | furious | divorce\n\nE) | humor | bitter | book\n\n45. If someone strikes you on the right  , offer him the other as well.\n\nA) cheek\n\nB) week\n\nC) wing\n\nD) chord\n\nE) time\n\n46. I want to gather these words together,  nothing makes any sense.\n\nA) though\n\nB) so that\n\nC) even if\n\nD) but\n\nE) until\n\n47. I seek words that  appear in books.\n\nA) sometimes\n\nB) never\n\nC) always\n\nD) only\n\nE) don't even\n\n48. You are not  , you are not  , you are not  .\n\nA) | good | bad | wrong\n\n---|---|---|---\n\nB) | wrong | right | here\n\nC) | here | there | gone\n\nD) | gone | around | mine\n\nE) | mine | mine | mine\n\n49. Last night I dreamed you were  and I was  and we were  together.\n\nA) | here | here | lying\n\n---|---|---|---\n\nB) | coming | coming | coming\n\nC) | lost | lost | walking\n\nD) | lost | not | not\n\nE) | sick | dead | almost\n\n50. Last night I dreamed you were a  and I was a  and we were  together.\n\nA) | dog | dog | barking\n\n---|---|---|---\n\nB) | leg | leg | dancing\n\nC) | tooth | tooth | biting\n\nD) | nun | priest | sleeping\n\nE) | ghost | ghost | always\n\n51. You were a bad son,  you write.\n\nYou were a bad father,  you write.\n\nYou are alone,  you write.\n\nA) | so | so | so\n\n---|---|---|---\n\nB) | of that | of that | of that\n\nC) | but | but | but\n\nD) | because | because | because\n\nE) | and still | and still | and still\n\n52. You were a bad son, so you write  .\n\nYou were a bad father, so you write  .\n\nYou are alone, so you write  .\n\nA) | letters | letters | letters\n\n---|---|---|---\n\nB) | novels | stories | poetry\n\nC) | badly | badly | badly\n\nD) | your will | your will | your will\n\nE) | a lot | a lot | a lot\n\n53. You were a bad son, but  .\n\nYou were a bad father, but  .\n\nYou are alone, but  .\n\nA) people vote for you\n\npeople vote for you\n\npeople vote for you\n\nB) I love you\n\nI love you\n\nI love you\n\nC) I'm not your father\n\nI'm not your son\n\nthat's not my problem\n\nD) you know it\n\nyou know it\n\nyou know it\n\nE) no one knows\n\nno one knows\n\nno one knows\n\n54. You were a bad son, but  .\n\nYou were a bad father, but  .\n\nYou are alone, but  .\n\nA) you're happy\n\nyou're happy\n\nyou're happy\n\nB) it's so hard to be a son\n\nit's so hard to be a father\n\nwe are all alone\n\nC) a good soldier\n\na good Christian\n\nJesus is with you\n\nD) your backhand is amazing\n\nyou lent me sixty bucks\n\nman, you have a good time\n\nE) your father died so long ago\n\nyour son died so long ago\n\nyou want to be alone\n\n# IV. SENTENCE ELIMINATION\n\nIn exercises 55 through 66, mark the answer that corresponds to the sentences or paragraphs that can be eliminated because they either do not add information or are unrelated to the rest of the text.\n\n55.\n\n(1) For years, no one came to visit my grave.\n\n(2) I didn't expect anyone to, if I'm being honest.\n\n(3) But today a woman came and left me flowers.\n\n(4) Four red roses, two pink ones, and one white.\n\n(5) I don't know who she is; I don't remember ever having met her.\n\n(6) I don't think she knows I was a shitty person.\n\nA) None\n\nB) 2\n\nC) 4\n\nD) 5\n\nE) 6\n56.\n\n(1) There are hamburgers in the refrigerator.\n\n(2) There's some lettuce and mustard, too.\n\n(3) I went to the beach with the kids.\n\n(4) It's normal, they're my kids too.\n\n(5) I'm afraid of you.\n\n(6) And they're afraid of you too.\n\n(7) And that, too, is normal.\n\nA) None\n\nB) 1 and 2\n\nC) 2\n\nD) 4\n\nE) 7\n57.\n\n(1) A curfew is a regulation prohibiting free circulation in public within a determined area.\n\n(2) It tends to be decreed in times of war or popular uprising.\n\n(3) The dictatorship imposed one in Santiago, Chile, from September 11, 1973, until January 2, 1987.\n\n(4) One summer evening my father went out walking with no destination in mind. It grew late, and he had to sleep at a friend's house.\n\n(5) They made love, she got pregnant, I was born.\n\nA) None\n\nB) 5\n\nC) 1, 2, and 3\n\nD) 4 and 5\n\nE) 2\n58.\n\n(1) I didn't want to talk about you, but it's inevitable.\n\n(2) I'm talking about you right now. And you're reading this, and you know it's about you.\n\n(3) Now I am words that you read and wish did not exist.\n\n(4) I hate you.\n\n(5) You would like to have the power of a censor.\n\n(6) So no one else would ever read these words.\n\n(7) I hate you.\n\n(8) You ruined my life.\n\n(9) Now I am words you cannot erase.\n\nA) None\n\nB) A\n\nC) B\n\nD) C\n\nE) D\n59.\n\n(1) They found the breast cancer when she was sixty-five years old.\n\n(2) They had to remove one of her breasts.\n\n(3) Not long after that, the Alzheimer's started.\n\n(4) She didn't recognize her children, or her grandchildren, not anyone.\n\n(5) She didn't even recognize me.\n\n(6) But she never forgot she was missing a breast.\n\nA) None\n\nB) 1\n\nC) 2\n\nD) 4\n\nE) 5\n60.\n\n(1) I only saw my mother's father three times in my life. It's unclear how many children he had: more than twenty, fewer than thirty, according to my mother's calculations.\n\n(2) The first time I saw him, he came to our house at night, when we were about to go to bed. He introduced us to Ver\u00f3nica, his youngest daughter. She was four or five years old, younger than I was.\n\n(3) \"Say hi to your aunt Verito,\" he said to me and my sister. And then: \"I've got your birthdays written down. I never forget my grandchildren.\"\n\n(4) They left around midnight, driving away in a Renoleta. It was cold. My mother had to lend Verito one of my sister's sweaters.\n\n(5) \"They'll never give that sweater back,\" my mother told my sister over breakfast, containing her rage, or maybe just resigned.\n\n(6) The second time I saw him, some time later, was on my mother's birthday.\n\n(7) She was happy. I remember that absurd and true sentence: _He will always be my father._\n\n(8) The last time I saw him was in a hospital. He shared a room with three other dying old men. My mom told me to go in and see him, to say good-bye.\n\n(9) I looked at the old men; all of them looked alike. I tried to recognize my mother's father, but I couldn't. I stared at them for a while, and then I left.\n\nA) None\n\nB) 3\n\nC) 4 and 5\n\nD) 7\n\nE) 8 and 9\n61.\n\n(1) While we're making tea, Mariela tells me that when she was in school, there was a pregnant nun.\n\n(2) I ask her when, where. \"At Mater Dei. I was really little, in the fourth grade.\"\n\n(3) Mariela's eyes are brown. For a second, I manage to picture her face when she was little.\n\n(4) \"They kept her hidden away, but we saw her once. They asked us to keep the secret.\"\n\n(5) I ask her if they kept the secret. \"I don't know about my friends,\" she replies, \"but I did.\"\n\n(6) \"You're the first person I've told,\" she says.\n\n(7) \"Thirty years later?\"\n\n(8) \"Yes, thirty,\" she says.\n\n(9) She looks down at her hands. I also look at her hands.\n\n(10) She pinches or caresses a breadcrumb. She lights a cigarette.\n\n(11) \"No,\" she says then. \"Thirty-five.\"\n\nA) None\n\nB) 3\n\nC) 9\n\nD) 10\n\nE) 11\n62.\n\n(1) In Chile, no one says hi to each other in elevators. You get in and pretend you don't see anyone, you pretend you're blind. And if you say hello, people look at you strangely, sometimes they don't even return the greeting. You share your fragility in silence, like a sacrifice.\n\n(2) How hard would it be to say hello, you think, while the door opens on an in-between floor. There are already nine, ten people, and no one else can fit. Someone's headphones are playing a song that you know and like.\n\n(3) It would be easier to embrace the woman standing there in front of you. What you and she share is the effort to avoid touching each other.\n\n(4) You remember getting punished once when you were little, maybe eight years old: you'd been caught in the girls' bathroom swapping kisses with a little classmate. It wasn't the first time you and she had kissed each other. It was a game, a kind of dare. A teacher saw you, scolded you, brought you to the principal's office.\n\n(5) Your punishment was to stand face-to-face, staring into each other's eyes and holding both hands, in the middle of the playground for the entire recess, while the other children yelled and teased you.\n\n(6) She cried from the shame. You were on the verge of tears, but you kept your eyes on her face, you felt a kind of sad fire burning. Her name, the girl's, was Roc\u00edo.\n\n(7) How long was that recess? Ten minutes, maybe fifteen. You never again spent fifteen minutes looking into another person's eyes.\n\n(8) It would be easier to just embrace the stranger there in front of you. You are both looking down; you are taller than she is. You focus on her black, still-wet hair.\n\n(9) The tangled strands of that long, straight hair: you think about the hair that you used to untangle, carefully, on certain mornings. You learned the technique. You know how to untangle the hair of another person.\n\n(10) Now almost everyone has gotten off the elevator, and only she and you are left. With each new space that opens up, you take the opportunity to move apart. You could stand even farther apart, each of you clinging to your corner, but that would be demonstrating something. It would be the same as embracing.\n\n(11) She gets off one floor before you. And it's strange and somehow horrible that when you see your body multiplied in the mirrors you feel the immense relief that you feel now.\n\n(12) \"In Chile, no one says hello to each other in elevators,\" you say that night, at a dinner with friends from abroad. \"They don't in my country, either,\" everyone answers, maybe out of politeness. \"No, really, in Chile no one says anything. People don't even look at each other in elevators,\" you insist.\n\n(13) \"Everyone fakes their absence. Old friends, enemies, or lovers could be in the same elevator and never know it.\"\n\n(14) You add generalizations about Chilean identity, rudimentary sociology. As you speak, you feel you are betraying something. You feel the sharp point, the weight of your imposture.\n\n(15) \"In Chile, no one says hi to each other in elevators,\" you say again, like a refrain, at a dinner where everyone competes to be the best observer and to inhabit the worst country.\n\nA) None\n\nB) 4, 5, 6, and 7\n\nC) 8 and 9\n\nD) 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11\n\nE) 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15\n63.\n\n(1) I was his friend, I was his pal. I knew him. And it's not true what they say about him. Some things, sure, but not all of it. I care about what they say, it hurts. It's as if they were talking about me.\n\n(2) It's true he thought fags were revolting, but he never fired anyone for being one. We all knew Salazar was batting for the other team\u2014you only had to look at him. But he was lazy. My buddy fired him for being lazy, not for smoking pole.\n\n(3) It isn't true that he mistreated the maid. There was a reason she kept working in his house so long. He used a bell to call her; sometimes he said \"please\" when he asked her for things. And every Christmas he gave her a brand-new, spotless uniform. And in February he brought her to the house in Frutillar. The old lady got a one-month vacation, all expenses paid.\n\n(4) And what is the problem, if I may ask, with the bell? Do you mean to tell me it's better to call the maid by shouting at her?\n\n(5) It's true he didn't like Mapuches, but it's just that these days you have to respect everyone. I mean, come on, you can't say anything\u2014everything offends someone, and everyone's a victim. And my buddy was consistent. He said what he thought and that was his only sin.\n\n(6) And what's the big deal with the Mapuches, anyway? They lost the war, same as the Peruvians. They lost, that's it. The Bolivians, too\u2014now they go around crying about how they don't have access to the sea, yapping on and on about maps. They're like little kids begging their parents for candy.\n\n(7) Today you'll find people saying they didn't know about the disappearances, or the torture, or the murders. Of course they knew. My buddy knew, I knew, everyone did. How could we not? I remember years ago, we were in Rome, in a real swanky hotel, and this exiled guy comes over to us holding hands with a thin little redhead. I didn't much like the guy\u2014I thought he was pretty dense and uppity\u2014but my buddy ended up making friends with him, and later on they did some business together.\n\n(8) My friend didn't discriminate against anyone. He could do business with any kind of person, he didn't care about race or creed or anything political. He didn't go around asking for favors. My buddy worked his whole life.\n\n(9) Never, in forty-nine years of marriage, did he fool around on Tut\u00fa. He didn't even fuck that secretary, Vania, who drove him crazy flashing her panties at him all the time. I remember he told me, pretty desperate, that if he went to bed with Vania he wouldn't be able to look Father Carlos in the eye. Later we found out Father Carlos was a bigger lady-killer than any of us.\n\n(10) I want to repeat this, because it goes to show the kind of moral stature my friend had: He never once fooled around on Tut\u00fa\u2014he didn't even go to whores. He just didn't like them. To each his own, I guess.\n\n(11) He didn't just donate to Legionaries of Christ\u2014I think my friend was like a drug addict with donations. He was always helping out his neighbors, the guy was just sick with solidarity. And at the end of the year, he gave every one of his employees a gift basket that was nothing to sneeze at.\n\n(12) Whatever they may say of him, it's easy enough to bad-mouth him now that he's dead. But I would like you all to know that my friend isn't all that dead, because he still has me, come what may. I'll always defend him. Always, buddy\u2014always.\n\nA) None\n\nB) All\n\nC) 4\n\nD) 9 and 10\n\nE) 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11\n64.\n\n(1) They ask my name and I answer: Manuel Contreras. They ask me if I am Manuel Contreras. I say yes. They ask if I'm Manuel Contreras's son. I reply that I am Manuel Contreras.\n\n(2) Once, I took the phone book and tore out the page with my name, our name. I counted twenty-two Manuel Contrerases in Santiago. I don't know what I was looking for: company for my misery, maybe. But then I stuck the page into the paper shredder. Having common first and last names hasn't done me any good.\n\n(3) How does it feel to be the son of one of the biggest criminals in Chilean history? What do you feel when you think about your father, sentenced to more than three hundred years in jail? Can you sense the hate of the families your father destroyed?\n\n(4) I can't answer these questions, the ones people always ask. With rage, but also with genuine curiosity. I guess it makes people curious.\n\n(5) It makes me curious too. What does it feel like _not_ to be the son of one of the biggest criminals in Chile's history? What does it feel like to think about how your father never killed anyone, never tortured anyone?\n\n(6) I must say that my father is innocent. I should say it. I have to say it. I'm obliged to say it. My father will kill me if I don't say he is innocent. The children of murderers cannot kill the father.\n\n(7) I decided not to have children. I had my father to worry about. He's sick. His declining health is a public matter; it's been in all the papers.\n\n(8) When my father dies, then I can have a life and a son. He'll be Manuel Contreras's son. But I won't name him Manuel. I'll tell his mother to pick a different name. I don't want to be Manuel Contreras's father.\n\n(9) I've had enough just being Manuel Contreras's son. I don't want to be Manuel Contreras's father too. Better yet, let it be a girl.\n\n(10) This is not me talking. Someone is talking for me. Someone who is faking my voice. My father will die soon. The person faking my voice knows this, and doesn't care.\n\n(11) Maybe by the time the book this fucking voice faker is writing gets published, my father will be dead. And people will think that there is something true in what my fake voice says. Even though it isn't my voice. Though I would never really say what I'm saying now. Though no one has the right to speak for me. To make a fool of me. How easy it is to laugh at me. To blame me, to feel sorry for me. It has no literary merit.\n\n(12) Clap for the writer, how ingenious. Clapping for him the way you have to clap for that kind of person. But clap him right in the face, with both hands, until you can't tell anymore where the blood is coming from.\n\n(13) Now he's saying that I give orders, that I know how to torture. That I'm a chip off the old block. Now he says I'm telling you to stick a pitchfork up his ass.\n\n(14) Now he's saying I don't have the right to challenge my destiny. That I'm one of the walking dead. That I'm saying things I'm not saying. That I even thank him for saying them for me. Now he's searching for words to tattoo on my chest using the biggest drill he has.\n\nA) None\n\nB) 9\n\nC) 10, 11, and 12\n\nD) 13 and 14\n\nE) 14\n65.\n\n(1) With the money he won in the lottery, the old man decided to fulfill his lifelong dream, but since his lifelong dream had been to win the lottery, he didn't know what to do. In the meantime, he bought himself a Peugeot 505 and hired me to drive it.\n\n(2) I went to pick him up one Saturday, and the plan was to hit the racetrack, but he was watching _S\u00e1bado Gigante_ on TV and didn't feel like going out. He handed me a beer, and together we watched the segment \"So You Think You Know Chile?\" Don Francisco was traveling through Ancud and Castro, interviewing people who lived in some stilt houses, helping to cook a _curanto,_ making a lot of effort to tug a Chilote wool cap over his extra-large head.\n\n(3) \"That's what we'll do,\" he told me, like he'd had a revelation: \"We're going to tour Chile in the new car.\" I asked him why not travel the whole world, like Don Francisco himself in \"The Spotlight Abroad.\" He replied that before seeing the world, one had to really see one's own country. I asked him where we would start, in the north or the south. \"In the north, man, the north. What do you mean where do we start? This shit goes north to south.\"\n\n(4) His opinion at the end of the trip: \"Chile is a beautiful country. People are always complaining about the lack of freedom and the dictatorship and all that, but they don't realize that Chile is a beautiful country.\"\n\n(5) I liked seeing my country too, but I don't remember that much. I drove like a zombie, to the beat of the old man's terrifying snores. Sometimes, out of the corner of my eye, I'd see the glint of drool in his open mouth. When he was awake, he didn't like to listen to music, just some cassettes with jokes by Coco Legrand. I came to hate Coco Legrand\u2014his jokes, his voice, everything.\n\n(6) I remember the cold near Los Vilos, where I smoked alone on the side of the road while five meters away, in the backseat of the car, the old man fondled two sad, big-titted whores. I remember when I woke him up on the beach at Cavancha and he thought I was a mugger. In Pelluhue a giant wave almost swallowed him, and I had to dive into the water in my underwear to save him. In Pichilemu he started to scold two pot smokers who were pacifists but still wanted to kick his ass. I also had to defend him in Talca, Angol, and Temuco.\n\n(7) I remember the fear I felt in restaurants when the old man started to harass the waiters. My only moment of freedom was when he came down with some kind of stomach illness and had to be hospitalized in Puerto Montt. Those days I was fairly happy, but maybe only for a few hours, parked close to downtown, eating cheese empanadas while I listened to Los Angeles Negros and Los Prisioneros and the rain fell. And in Ca\u00f1ete. I was also happy in Ca\u00f1ete, but now I can't remember why.\n\n(8) The old man paid me well, I have to admit. Afterward he went to travel around Europe and the United States, and we lost contact. Then one day he called me to ask if I knew anyone who could ghostwrite his autobiography for him. I told him I could do it myself, that I'd become a writer. It wasn't true, but I needed the money. He believed me.\n\n(9) We agreed on a rate per word; the only thing he cared about was that the book was fat. I started to write his story. We met every morning and I listened to him. He was so presumptuous, such a poor observer, so arrogant, but I listened to him and took plenty of notes. \"The Spanish are friendly,\" he might say to me, for example. \"The Spanish from where?\" I asked him. \"What do you mean from where, asshole? The Spanish from Spain,\" he replied.\n\n(10) I also had to interview his children, a man and a woman more or less my age, who had helpless faces and claimed to love and admire the old man, as did his ex-wife, a woman who always held a rosary in her right hand and who talked up a storm. It was clear they were lying, and I couldn't understand why they collaborated. Later, I learned that my boss had doubled their monthly allowances.\n\n(11) One time I asked him, without any mean intention, if he thought the money had changed him. \"You really ask some idiotic questions, kid. Of course it did,\" he replied. \"Money changes everyone.\" Later I asked him for his opinion on Pinochet, which I already knew, I only wanted to make sure. It was 1987, one year after the assassination attempt, a year before the referendum. I warned him that Chilean public opinion about Pinochet was going to change in the coming years whether he won or lost the referendum, and that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to come off as a fervent supporter of the dictator. \"Let it be very clear in my book that I think Pinochet saved Chile, and that I want those mongoloids who tried to kill him to rot in hell,\" he answered.\n\n(12) I asked him what he thought about Don Francisco. \"Don Francisco was always my inspiration,\" he replied. \"Don Francisco has traveled all over the world,\" I told him. \"But no one invites Pinochet anywhere.\" I don't know why I said that to him. He sat there thinking. I warmed to the subject, and added that Don Francisco had shown us the Chile that Pinochet destroyed. \"Go fuck your sister,\" he replied.\n\n(13) I said nothing; I was used to that kind of humiliation. At the end of the day, I was only a ghostwriter. I worked for two more months and finished the book. Three hundred fifty-nine pages. I'm ashamed to confess that I was proud of some passages, that they struck me as well written, even eloquent. The book was garbage, but at least there were some parts that were, to my mind, inspired, and some elegant, almost baroque turns of phrase. He paid for a printing of five hundred copies. _My Journey Through the World and My Nation_ was the title he chose.\n\n(14) I thought I would never see him again. For fifteen years I heard nothing from him, until one day he called me out of the blue. I asked him how he'd gotten my number. \"A man has his ways,\" he said. He told me he was sick and could die soon, and he wanted to correct some things in the book for a second edition. I asked him if the first one had sold out. \"I still have about a hundred books,\" he said, \"but that's not enough.\" \"What is it you want to correct?\" I asked him. \"Just the grammatical errors,\" answered that old piece of shit.\n\nA) None\n\nB) All\n\nC) Any\n\nD) A\n\nE) B\n66.\n\n(1) I have six children: four boys and two girls. One of the girls is a lesbian, but I love her anyway because she's a good person. If I classify my children according to those terms, four are good and two are bad. One hundred percent of the girls: good. The boys: fifty percent bad.\n\n(2) Classified according to their ages: The oldest is forty-five years old and the youngest twenty-nine. According to their mothers: Eleonora (two boys and the two girls), Silvana (one), Daniela (the youngest).\n\n(3) I suggested names for all my children, but I only managed to get my way in two of the six cases.\n\n(4) Children of mine with moles on their faces: three. With a cleft chin: two. Long eyelashes: two.\n\n(5) Four of my children came to see me in the hospital when they removed my left kidney. The other two didn't, but they called.\n\n(6) Percentage of my children who have at some point said to me _I hate you_ : 33.3.\n\n(7) Percentage of my children who declared their hate for me not with words but with action (a punch in the left eye): 16.6.\n\n(8) Children of mine who have asked my forgiveness: four.\n\n(9) Two of my sons learned to clip their fingernails and tie their shoes before they were three years old. I taught all of them to drive before they were eighteen.\n\n(10) Children of mine who have run over dogs: two. Children of mine who have run over people: one.\n\n(11) Children of mine who work in the public sector: two. Private: two. Neither public nor private: two.\n\n(12) Chilean presidential elections in the year 2013, my children's votes in the first round, with 100 percent reporting:\n\nMichelle Bachelet: two\n\nMarcel Claude: zero\n\nMarco Enr\u00edquez-Ominami: zero\n\nTom\u00e1s Jocelyn-Holt: zero\n\nRicardo Israel: one\n\nEvelyn Matthei: one\n\nRoxana Miranda: one\n\nFranco Parisi: zero\n\nAlfredo Sfeir: one\n\nnull votes: zero\n\nblank votes: zero\n\n(13) My children's votes in the second round: three for Bachelet, one for Matthei, one drew a dick on the ballot, and one daughter didn't vote.\n\n(14) Children of mine who have spent more than two consecutive nights in jail: zero.\n\n(15) Children of mine dependent on drugs: five. Fluoxetine: two. Clonazepam: two. Lithium: one. Children of mine with flat feet: 100 percent. Children of mine with flat feet who refused to use insoles: two. Children of mine operated on for appendicitis: three.\n\n(16) Five of my children are myopic and four of those also suffer from astigmatism.\n\n(17) Of my five children with vision problems, two wanted surgery but couldn't afford it. Three use glasses, two prefer contacts. Of the three who wear glasses, two have thick rectangular frames. With the other one, it's no use: He has round frames, even though he knows people with round faces should wear square or rectangular frames.\n\n(18) In general, when I have them all over for lunch, two of my children talk about politics and two about soccer. The oldest tends to relate his interminable amorous entanglements, and the other remains in absolute silence, just like when he was a boy, always looking at his plate as if he were rigorously analyzing the food.\n\n(19) Children of mine who sometimes ask me for loans to buy medicine: two. To go to the track: one. To pay debts: two.\n\n(20) Children of mine for whom I'd give my life: at least three.\n\n(21) Children of mine who were planned: four.\n\n(22) Children of mine who, in times of distress, tell me their problems: three. Children of mine to whom, in times of distress, I tell my problems: two.\n\n(23) Children of mine who will be present at my funeral: six.\n\n(24) Children of mine who will spit on my grave: one.\n\n(25) Children of mine who have children: zero.\n\nA) None\n\nB) Any\n\nC) All\n\nD) 21\n\nE) 25\n\n# V. READING COMPREHENSION\n\nNext you will read three texts, each of them followed by questions or problems based on their content. Each question has five possible answers. Mark the one that you think is most appropriate.\n\n## TEXT #1\n\nAfter so many study guides, so many practice and proficiency and achievement tests, it would have been impossible for us not to learn something, but we forgot everything almost right away and, I'm afraid, for good. The thing that we did learn, and to perfection\u2014the thing we would remember for the rest of our lives\u2014was how to cheat on tests. Here I could easily ad-lib an homage to the cheat sheet, all the test material reproduced in tiny but legible script on a minuscule bus ticket. But all that superb workmanship would have been worthless if we hadn't also had the necessary skill and audacity when the crucial moment came: the instant the teacher lowered his guard and the ten or twenty golden seconds began.\n\nAt our school in particular, which in theory was the strictest in Chile, it turned out that cheating was fairly easy, since many of the tests were multiple choice. We still had years to go before we'd take the Academic Aptitude Test and apply to university, but our teachers wanted to familiarize us right away with multiple-choice exercises, and although they designed up to four different versions of every test, we always found a way to pass information around. We didn't have to write anything or form opinions or develop any ideas of our own; all we had to do was play the game and guess the trick. Of course we studied, sometimes a lot, but it was never enough. I guess the idea was to lower our morale. Even if we did nothing but study, we knew there would always be two or three impossible questions. We didn't complain. We got the message: Cheating was just part of the deal.\n\nI think that, thanks to our cheating, we were able to let go of some of our individualism and become a community. It's sad to put it this way, but cheating gave us a sense of solidarity. Every once in a while we suffered from guilt, from the feeling that we were frauds\u2014especially when we looked ahead to the future\u2014but in the end our indolence and defiance prevailed.\n\n__________\n\nWe didn't have to take religion\u2014the grade didn't affect our averages\u2014but getting out of it was a long bureaucratic process, and Mr. Segovia's classes were really fun. He'd go on and on in an endless soliloquy about any subject but religion; his favorite, in fact, was sex, and which teachers at our school he wanted to have it with. Every class we'd do a quick round of confessions: Each of us had to disclose a sin, and after listening to all forty-five\u2014which ranged from _I kept the change_ to _I want to grab my neighbor's tits_ to _I jacked off during recess,_ always a classic\u2014the teacher would tell us that none of our sins were unforgivable.\n\nI think it was Cordero who confessed one day that he had copied someone's answers in math, and since Segovia didn't react we all contributed variations of the same: _I copied on the Spanish test, on the science test, on the PE test_ [laughter], and so on. Segovia, suppressing a smile, said that he forgave us, but that we had to make sure we didn't get caught, because that would really be unforgivable. Suddenly, though, he became serious. \"If you are so dishonest at twelve,\" he said, \"at forty you're going to be worse than the Covarrubias twins.\" We asked him who the Covarrubias twins were, and he looked as if he were going to tell us, but then he thought better of it. We kept at him, but he didn't want to explain. Later, we asked other teachers and even the guidance counselor, but no one wanted to tell us the story. The reasons were diffuse: It was a secret, a delicate subject, possibly something that would damage the school's impeccable reputation. We soon forgot the matter, in any case.\n\nFive years later, it was 1993 and we were seniors. One day, when Cordero, Parraguez, little Carlos, and I were playing hooky, we ran into Mr. Segovia coming out of the Tarapac\u00e1 pool hall. He wasn't a teacher anymore; he was a Metro conductor now, and it was his day off. He treated us to Coca-Colas, and ordered a shot of pisco for himself, though it was early to start drinking. It was then that he finally told us the story of the Covarrubias twins.\n\n__________\n\nCovarrubias family tradition dictated that the firstborn son should be named Luis Antonio, but when Covarrubias senior found out that twins were on the way he decided to divide his name between them. During their first years of life, Luis and Antonio Covarrubias enjoyed\u2014or suffered through\u2014the excessively equal treatment that parents tend to give to twins: the same haircut, the same clothes, the same class in the same school.\n\nWhen the twins were ten years old, Covarrubias senior installed a partition in their room, and he sawed cleanly through the old bunk bed to make two identical single beds. The idea was to give the twins a certain amount of privacy, but the change wasn't all that significant, because they still talked through the partition every night before falling asleep. They inhabited different hemispheres now, but it was a small planet.\n\nWhen the twins were twelve they entered the National Institute, and that was their first real separation. Since the 720 incoming seventh-graders were distributed randomly, the twins were placed in different classes for the first time ever. They felt pretty lost in that school, which was so huge and impersonal, but they were strong and determined to persevere in their new lives. Despite the relentless barrage of looks and stupid jokes from their classmates (\"I think I'm seeing double!\"), they always met at lunch to eat together.\n\nAt the end of seventh grade, they had to choose between fine art and music; they both chose art, in the hope that they'd be placed together, but they were out of luck. At the end of eighth grade, when they had to choose between French and English, they planned to go with French, which, as the minority choice, would practically ensure that they'd be in the same class. But after a sermon from Covarrubias senior about the importance of knowing English in today's savage and competitive world, they gave in. Things went no better for them in their freshman and sophomore years, when students were grouped based on ranking, even though they both had good grades.\n\nFor their junior year, the twins chose a humanities focus, and finally they were placed together, in Class 3-F. Being classmates again after four years apart was fun and strange. Their physical similarity was still extraordinary, although acne had been cruel to Luis's face, and Antonio was showing signs of wanting to stand out: his hair was long, or what passed for long back then, and the layer of gel that plastered it back gave him a less conventional appearance than his brother's. Luis kept the classic cut, military style, his hair two fingers above his shirt collar as the regulations stipulated. Antonio also wore baggier pants and, defying the rules, often went to school in black sneakers instead of dress shoes.\n\nThe twins sat together during the first months of the school year. They protected and helped each other, though when they fought they seemed to hate each other, which, of course, is the most natural thing in the world: there are moments when we hate ourselves, and if we have someone in front of us who is almost exactly like us our hate is inevitably directed toward that person. But around the middle of the year, for no obvious reason, their fights became harsher, and at the same time, Antonio lost all interest in his studies. Luis's life, on the other hand, continued along its orderly path. He kept his record spotless, and his grades were very good; in fact, he was first in his class that year. Incredibly, his brother was last and would have to repeat the grade, and that was how the twins' paths diverged again.\n\nThere was only one school counselor for more than four thousand students, but he took an interest in the twins' case and called their parents in for a meeting. He offered the theory, not necessarily true, that Antonio had been driven by an unconscious desire (the counselor explained to them, quickly and accurately, exactly what the unconscious was) not to be in the same class as his brother.\n\nLuis sailed through his senior year with excellent grades, and got outstanding scores on all the university entrance exams, especially History of Chile and Social Studies, on which he got nearly the highest scores in the nation. He entered the University of Chile to study law, on a full scholarship.\n\n__________\n\nThe twins were never as distant from each other as they were during Luis's first months in college. Antonio was jealous when he saw his brother leaving for the university, free now of his uniform, while he was still stuck in high school. Some mornings their schedules coincided, but thanks to a tacit and elegant agreement\u2014some version, perhaps, of the famous twin telepathy\u2014they never boarded the same bus.\n\nThey avoided each other, barely greeting one another, though they knew that their estrangement couldn't last forever. One night, when Luis was already in his second semester of law, Antonio started talking to him again through the partition. \"How's college?\" he asked.\n\n\"In what sense?\"\n\n\"The girls,\" Antonio clarified.\n\n\"Oh, there are some really hot girls,\" Luis replied, trying not to sound boastful.\n\n\"Yeah, I know there are girls, but how do you do it?\"\n\n\"How do we do what?\" said Luis, who, deep down, knew exactly what his brother was asking.\n\n\"How do you fart with girls around?\"\n\n\"Well, you just have to hold it in,\" Luis answered.\n\nThey spent that night, as they had when they were children, talking and laughing while they competed with their farts and burps, and from then on they were once again inseparable. They kept up the illusion of independence, especially from Monday to Friday, but on weekends they always went out together, matched each other drink for drink, and played tricks switching places, taking advantage of the fact that, thanks to Luis's newly long hair and now-clear skin, their physical resemblance was once again almost absolute.\n\nAntonio's academic performance had improved a great deal, but he still wasn't a model student, and toward the end of his senior year he began to get anxious. Though he felt prepared for the aptitude test, he wasn't sure that he would be able to score high enough to study law at the University of Chile like his brother. The idea was Antonio's, naturally, but Luis accepted right away, with no blackmail or stipulations, and without an ounce of fear, since at no point did he consider it possible that they would be found out. In December of that year, Luis Covarrubias registered, presenting his brother Antonio's ID card, to take the test for the second time, and he gave it his all. He tried so hard that he got even better scores than he had the year before: in fact, he received the nation's highest score on the Social Studies test.\n\n__________\n\n\"But none of us have twin brothers,\" Cordero said that afternoon, when Segovia finished his story. It may have been drizzling or raining, I don't remember, but I know that the teacher was wearing a blue raincoat. He got up to buy cigarettes, and when he came back to our table he stayed on his feet, maybe to reestablish a protocol that had been lost: the teacher stands, the students sit. \"You'll still come out ahead,\" he told us. \"You don't know how privileged you are.\"\n\n\"Because we go to the National Institute?\" I asked.\n\nHe puffed anxiously on his cigarette, perhaps already somewhat drunk, and he was silent for so long that it was no longer necessary to answer, but then an answer came. \"The National Institute is rotten, but the world is rotten,\" he said. \"They prepared you for this, for a world where everyone fucks everyone over. You'll do well on the test, very well, don't worry\u2014you weren't educated, you were trained.\" It sounded aggressive, but there was no contempt in his tone, or, at least, none directed at us.\n\nWe were quiet; it was late by then, almost nighttime. He sat down looking absorbed, thoughtful. \"I didn't get a high score,\" he said, when it seemed there wouldn't be any more words. \"I was the best in my class, in my whole school. I never cheated on an exam, but I bombed the aptitude test, so I had to major in religious education. I didn't even believe in God.\"\n\nI asked him if now, as a Metro conductor, he earned more money. \"Twice as much,\" he replied. I asked him if he believed in God now, and he answered that yes, now more than ever, he believed in God. I'll never forget his gesture then: with a lit cigarette between his index and middle fingers, he looked at the back of his hand as if searching for his veins, and then he turned it over, as if to make sure that his life, head, and heart lines were still there.\n\nWe said good-bye as if we were or had once been friends. He went into the cinema, and we headed down Bulnes toward Parque Almagro to smoke a few joints.\n\n__________\n\nI never heard anything more about Segovia. Sometimes on the Metro, when I get into the first car, I look toward the conductor's booth and imagine that our teacher is in there, pressing buttons and yawning. As for the Covarrubias twins, they've gained a certain amount of fame, and as I understand it, they never separated again. They became identical lawyers; I hear it's hard to tell which is the more brilliant and which the more corrupt. They have a firm in Vitacura, and they charge the same rate. They charge what such good service is worth: a lot.\n\n### Exercises:\n\n67. According to the text, the Covarrubias twins' experience in their new school:\n\n(A) Marked their final break with the values their parents had instilled in them.\n\n(B) Was traumatic, because it forced them to make rash decisions and separated them for good.\n\n(C) Gradually shaped them into productive individuals who contributed to Chilean society.\n\n(D) Transformed two good and supportive brothers into unscrupulous sons of bitches.\n\n(E) Marked the start of a difficult period, from which they emerged stronger and ready to compete in this ruthless and materialistic world.\n\n68. The best title for this story would be:\n\n(A) \"How to Train Your Twin\"\n\n(B) \"To Sir, with Love\"\n\n(C) \"Me and My Shadow\"\n\n(D) \"Against Lawyers\"\n\n(E) \"Against Twin Lawyers\"\n\n69. Regarding multiple-choice tests, the author affirms that:\n\nI. They were regularly used at that particular school in order to prepare students for the university entrance exams.\n\nII. It was easier to cheat on those tests, any way you looked at it.\n\nIII. They did not require you to develop your own thinking.\n\nIV. With multiple-choice tests, the teachers didn't have to make themselves sick in the head by grading all weekend long.\n\nV. The correct choice is almost always D.\n\n(A) I and II\n\n(B) I, III, and V\n\n(C) II and V\n\n(D) I, II, and III\n\n(E) I, II, and IV\n\n70. The fact that Mr. Luis Antonio Covarrubias divided his name between his twin sons indicates that he was:\n\n(A) Innovative\n\n(B) Ingenious\n\n(C) Unbiased\n\n(D) Masonic\n\n(E) Moronic\n\n71. One can infer from the text that the teachers at the school:\n\n(A) Were mediocre and cruel, because they adhered unquestioningly to a rotten educational model.\n\n(B) Were cruel and severe: they liked to torture the students by overloading them with homework.\n\n(C) Were deadened by sadness, because they got paid shit.\n\n(D) Were cruel and severe, because they were sad. Everyone was sad back then.\n\n(E) The kid next to me marked C, so I'm going to mark C as well.\n\n72. From this text, one infers that:\n\n(A) The students cheated on tests because they lived under a dictatorship, and that justified everything.\n\n(B) Cheating on tests isn't so bad as long as you're smart about it.\n\n(C) Cheating on tests is part of the learning process for any human being.\n\n(D) The students with the worst scores on the university entrance exams often become religion teachers.\n\n(E) Religion teachers are fun, but they don't necessarily believe in God.\n\n73. The purpose of this story is:\n\n(A) To suggest a possible work opportunity for Chilean students who perform well academically but are poor (there aren't many, but they do exist): they could take tests for students who are lazy and rich.\n\n(B) To expose security problems in the administration of the university entrance exams, and to promote a business venture related to biometric readings, or some other system for definitively verifying the identities of students\n\n(C) To promote an expensive law firm. And to entertain.\n\n(D) To legitimate the experience of a generation that could be summed up as \"a bunch of cheaters.\" And to entertain.\n\n(E) To erase the wounds of the past.\n\n74. Which of Mr. Segovia's following statements is, in your opinion, true?\n\n(A) You weren't educated, you were trained.\n\n(B) You weren't educated, you were trained.\n\n(C) You weren't educated, you were trained.\n\n(D) You weren't educated, you were trained.\n\n(E) You weren't educated, you were trained.\n\n## TEXT #2\n\nI suppose we were happy on my wedding day, though it's hard for me to imagine it now; I can't fathom how during such a bitter time any sort of happiness was possible. This was September 2000, fourteen years ago, which is a lot of time: 168 months, more than five thousand days.\n\nThe party was memorable, that's for sure, especially after that soulless, torturous ceremony in our apartment. We'd done a thorough cleaning the night before, but I think our relatives still whispered about us as they left, because there's no denying that those threadbare armchairs and the wine-stained walls and carpeting didn't give the impression of a place that was fit for a wedding.\n\nThe bride\u2014of course I remember her name, though I think eventually I'll forget it, someday I will even forget her name\u2014looked lovely, but my parents just couldn't understand why she would wear a black dress. I wore a gray suit so shiny and shabby that an uncle of the bride's said I looked more like an office gofer than a groom. It was a classist and stupid comment, but it was also true, because that was precisely the suit I'd worn when I worked as an office gofer. I still associate it, more than with the wedding, with those endless days I spent walking around downtown or waiting in line at some bank, with humiliatingly short hair and a cornflower blue tie that could never be loosened enough.\n\nLuckily, the official from the civil registrar left straightaway, and after the champagne and modest hors d'oeuvres\u2014I remember with shame that the potato chips were all crushed\u2014we had a long lunch, and we even had time to take a nap and change clothes before our friends began to arrive, bringing, as we'd requested, generous alcoholic contributions instead of gifts. There was so much booze that pretty soon we were sure we wouldn't be able to drink it all, and because we were high that seemed like a problem. We debated the issue for a long time, although (since we were high) maybe it wasn't really that long.\n\nThen Farra carried in an enormous, empty twenty-five-liter drum he had in his house for some reason, and we started to fill it up, dumping bottles in haphazardly while we half-danced, half-shouted. It was a risky bet, but the concoction\u2014that's what we called it, we thought the word was funny\u2014turned out to be delectable. How I would love to go back to the year 2000 and record the exact combination that led to that unexpected and delicious drink. I'd like to know exactly how many bottles or boxes of red and how many of white went in, what was the dosage of pisco, of vodka, of whiskey, tequila, gin, whatever. I remember there was also Campari, and anise, mint, and gold liqueurs, some scoops of ice cream, and even some powdered juice in that unrepeatable jug.\n\nThe next thing I remember is that we woke up sprawled in the living room, not just the bride and me but a ton of other people, some of whom I'd never even met, though I don't know if they were crashing the party or were distant cousins of the bride, who had\u2014I discovered then\u2014an astonishing number of distant cousins. It was maybe ten in the morning. We were all having trouble stringing words together, but I wanted to try out the ultramodern coffeemaker my sister had given us, so I brewed several liters of coffee and little by little we shook off our sleep. I went to the big bathroom\u2014the small one was covered in vomit\u2014and I saw my friend Maite sleeping in the tub, lolling in an unlikely position, though she looked pretty comfortable, her right cheek pressed against the ceramic as if it were an enviable feather pillow. I woke her up and offered her a cup of coffee, but she opted for a beer instead to keep the hangover at bay.\n\nLater, at around one in the afternoon, Farra switched on a camera he'd brought with him to film the party but had only just remembered. I was flopped in a corner of the room, drinking my zillionth coffee while the bride dozed against my chest. \"Tell me, how does it feel?\" Farra questioned me, in the tone of an overenthusiastic small-town reporter.\n\n\"To be married?\" I asked him.\n\n\"No\u2014to be married in a country where you can't get divorced.\" I told him not to be an ass, but he kept going. He told me his interest was genuine. I didn't want to look at him, but he went right on filming me. \"Why all the celebration,\" he insisted, not letting up, \"when you're just going to separate in a couple of years? You'll call me yourself. You'll come see me in my office, begging me to process your annulment.\"\n\n\"No,\" I answered, uncomfortable.\n\nThen the bride sat up and rubbed her immense green eyes, caressed my hair, smiled at Farra, and said lightly, as if she'd spent some time thinking about the matter, that as long as divorce wasn't legal in Chile, we wouldn't separate. And then I added, looking defiantly into the camera: \"We will stay married in protest, even if we hate each other.\" She hugged me, we kissed, and she said that we wanted to go down in the nation's history as the first Chilean couple to get divorced. \"It's a stupendous law. We recommend that everyone get divorced now,\" I said, playing along, and she, looking at the camera too, now with unanimous laughter in the background, seconded the opinion: \"Yes, it's an absolutely commendable law.\"\n\n\"Chile is one of the few countries in the world where divorce isn't legal,\" someone said.\n\n\"It's the only one,\" someone else clarified.\n\n\"No, there are still a few left,\" said another.\n\n\"In Chile,\" Farra continued, \"the divorce law will never pass. They've been arguing over it for years and nothing's happened, especially with the whole rotten Catholic lobby against it. They even said they'd excommunicate any representatives on the right who voted for it. So the world will just go right on laughing at us.\" Then someone said that the divorce law was not the most urgent thing to be fixed in the country, and then that sluggish conversation turned into a collective debate. As if we were filling up another drum, this time with our complaints or our wishes, almost all of us had something to contribute: the urgent thing is for Pinochet to go to jail, to go to trial, to go to hell, the urgent thing is to find the bodies of the disappeared, the urgent thing is education. The really urgent thing, said one guy, is to teach Mapudung\u00fan in schools, and someone asked him if he was, by chance, Mapuche (\"more or less,\" he replied). The urgent thing is health care, said someone else, and then came another, then others: the urgent thing is to fight capitalism, the urgent thing is for Colo-Colo to win the Copa Libertadores again, the urgent thing is to fuck Opus Dei up, the urgent thing is to kick Iv\u00e1n Moreira's ass. The urgent thing is the war on drugs, added one of the bride's distant cousins, getting everyone's attention, but right away he clarified that it was a joke.\n\n\"We live in the country of waiting,\" the poet said then. There were several poets at the party, but he was the only one who deserved the title, because he tended to talk like a poet. More precisely, he spoke in the unmistakable tone of a drunk poet, of a drunk Chilean poet, of a young, drunk, Chilean poet: \"We live in the country of waiting; we live in wait for something. Chile is one giant waiting room, and we will all die waiting for our number to be called.\"\n\n\"What number?\" someone asked.\n\n\"The number they give you in waiting rooms, dumb-ass,\" someone said. Then there was complete silence, and I took the opportunity to close my eyes, but I opened them again right away because everything was spinning.\n\n\"Goddamn, you talk nice,\" Maite told the poet then. \"I could really be into you. The only problem is how small your dick is.\"\n\n\"And how do you know that?\" asked the poet, and she confessed she had spent hours hiding in the bathtub, looking at the penises of the men who went to piss. Then the poet said, with a slight but convincing scientific intonation, that the size of the penis when pissing was not representative of the penis in an erect state, and there was a general murmur of approval.\n\n\"Let's see, then\u2014show it to me erect,\" said Maite, all in.\n\n\"I can't,\" said the poet. \"I'm too drunk to get it up. You can try going down on me if you want, but I'm sure I won't get hard.\" They went to the bathroom or to the poet's house, I don't remember.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" Farra said to us later, I suppose regretfully, the camera now turned off. \"I don't want you two to separate. But if one day you do, you know you can count on me, both of you: I'll handle the separation for free.\" I don't know if we smiled at him\u2014now I think we did, but it must have been a bitter smile. The guests left one by one, and it was night by the time we were alone. We collapsed into bed and slept for about twelve hours straight, our arms around each other. We always slept in an embrace. We loved each other, of course we did. We loved each other.\n\nTwo years later, just as Farra had foretold, we went to see him in his office. The divorce law was still stalled in Congress; it was said that its approval was imminent, but Farra told us that in no way was it worth waiting for. He even thought that afterward, once it passed, divorce would be more expensive than annulment. He explained the process to us. We'd already known that the judgment of nullity was ridiculous, but when we learned the details, it also struck us as immoral. We had to declare that neither she nor I had lived at the addresses that appeared on our marriage contract, and we had to find some witnesses who would attest to it.\n\n\"How idiotic,\" I told the bride that afternoon, at a caf\u00e9 on Agustinas. \"How pathetic, how shameful to be a judge who listens to someone lie and pretends not to know they're lying.\"\n\n\"Chile is idiotic,\" she said, and I think that was the last time the two of us were in total agreement on something. We didn't want to get an annulment, but it was fitting, in some sense. Now that I think about it, the best way to summarize our story together would be that I gradually annulled her and she me, until finally we were both entirely annulled.\n\n__________\n\nIn May 2004, Chile became the penultimate country in the world to legalize divorce, but the bride and I had already gotten our annulment. Maite and the poet, who were a couple by then, were going to be our witnesses, but at the last minute the poet backed out and I had to ask the favor of the woman whom, a few years later, I married. I'm not going to tell that story here; it's enough to say that with her, things were completely different. With her, things worked out: she and I were able, finally, to divorce.\n\n### Exercises:\n\n75. The general tone of this story is:\n\nA) Melancholic\n\nB) Comic\n\nC) Parodic\n\nD) Sarcastic\n\nE) Nostalgic\n\n76. What is the worst title for this story\u2014the one that would reach the widest possible audience?\n\nA) \"Five Thousand and One Nights\"\n\nB) \"Two Years of Solitude\"\n\nC) \"Fourteen Years of Solitude\"\n\nD) \"Two Weddings and No Funeral\"\n\nE) \"The Labyrinth of Nullity\"\n\n77. In your opinion, who is the victim and who is the victimizer, respectively, in this story?\n\nA) The bride \/ the groom\n\nB) The poet \/ Maite\n\nC) Chile \/ Chile\n\nD) Liver \/ concoction\n\nE) Liquor \/ beer\n\n78. According to the text, at the beginning of the twenty-first century the nation of Chile was:\n\nA) Conservative in its morality and liberal in its economy.\n\nB) Conservative in its inebriety and artificial in all things holy.\n\nC) Innovative in its levity and literal in its tragedy.\n\nD) Aggressive in its religiosity and conjugal in its wizardry.\n\nE) Exhaustive in its chicanery and indecisive in its celerity.\n\n79. The narrator doesn't mention the bride's name because:\n\nA) He wants to protect her. Moreover, he knows that he doesn't have the right to name her, to expose her. That fear of naming her, in any case, is so 1990s.\n\nB) He wants to protect the woman's identity because he's afraid she might sue him.\n\nC) He says he'll eventually forget the woman's name, but maybe he's already forgotten it. Or maybe he's still in love with her. There's someone I'm trying so hard to forget. Don't you want to forget someone too?\n\nD) He's a misogynist. And a sexist. He's so vain, he probably thinks the story is about him. Doesn't he? Doesn't he?\n\nE) If you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with.\n\n80. According to the text, the divorce law wasn't passed sooner in Chile because:\n\nA) The Catholic Church lobbied intensely against it, even threatening to excommunicate the congresspeople who supported the bill.\n\nB) There were other priorities in the areas of health, education, and justice.\n\nC) The priority was to indefinitely put off any reform that might put the country's stability at risk.\n\nD) The priority was to put off indefinitely any reform that might put at risk the interests of corporations and the impunity of those responsible for crimes during the dictatorship, including, of course, Pinochet. In this context, the divorce law was hardly a question of values, and even the right-wing leaders\u2014many of whom \"annulled\" and remarried\u2014knew it was disgraceful that Chile still hadn't legalized divorce, but they put the matter off until they needed a powerful distraction that would neutralize the public outcry for justice and radical reforms.\n\nE) A much better system existed: annulment. Because when a couple separates, what we really want is to believe that we were never married, that the person with whom we wanted to share our lives never existed. Nullity was the best way to erase the unerasable.\n\n81. Which of the following famous phrases best reflects the meaning of the text?\n\nA) \"Marriage is the chief cause of divorce.\" (Groucho Marx)\n\nB) \"A marriage is no amusement but a solemn act, and generally a sad one.\" (Queen Victoria)\n\nC) \"A second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.\" (Samuel Johnson)\n\nD) \"Unable to suppress love, the Church wanted at least to disinfect it, and it created marriage.\" (Charles Baudelaire)\n\nE) \"Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.\" (Voltaire)\n\n82. The end of this story is, without a doubt:\n\nI. Sad\n\nII. Heavy\n\nIII. Ironic\n\nIV. Abrupt\n\nV. Immoral\n\nVI. Realistic\n\nVII. Funny\n\nVIII. Absurd\n\nIX. Implausible\n\nX. Legalistic\n\nXI. Bad\n\nXII. It's a happy ending, in its own way.\n\nA) I, II, and IV\n\nB) X\n\nC) All of the above\n\nD) VIII and XI\n\nE) XII\n\n## TEXT #3\n\nPay no mind, my son, to what I tell you; pay me no mind at all. I hope that time, in your memory, will mitigate my shouting, my inappropriate remarks, and my stupid jokes. I hope that time will erase almost all of my words, and preserve only the warm, still murmur of love. I hope that very soon they invent a remote control that lets you lower my volume, pause me, fast-forward through unpleasant scenes, or rewind very quickly to happy days. So you can experience whenever you want the freedom of acting without my vigilance, the immense pleasure of trying out a life without me. And you could even decide, for example, if it were necessary, to erase me. I don't mean erase these words, which in and of themselves are liquid, perishable. Rather, erase me completely, as if I'd never existed.\n\nI know that is impossible.\n\n__________\n\nThat's what life consists of, I'm afraid: erasing and being erased. We were on the verge of erasing you, as you may already know or suspect. We didn't want to have a child. The thing is, we were still someone's children then. So much so that the possibility of being parents ourselves seemed terribly distant. We also knew in advance that we were going to separate. For us love was an incident, an accident, a practice\u2014best-case scenano, a high-risk sport.\n\nA little before we found out about the pregnancy, we had considered breaking up. Maybe it will come as a shock to learn that the reason for our fights had been the dilemma of whether or not to have a dog. At first she wanted one, but I thought it was too much responsibility. Then I was the one who wanted it and she argued we were fine as we were, that we had to establish ourselves as a couple before getting a dog. In the end we agreed: we weren't sure we'd be able to take good care of it, or would have the patience and discipline necessary to take it for walks every day, be sure its dish was always full of food, apply flea repellent every month.\n\nWe thought we were too young to take on the responsibility of a dog, but we weren't really so young: I was twenty-four, same as your mother. At that age, my father already had two children. The younger one, four years old, was me. But in my generation\u2014I know you hate that word\u2014having children was something we only began to think about at thirty or thirty-five, if we ever started thinking about it. Anyway, I don't know if it's any consolation, but when we found out about the pregnancy we never considered the possibility of an abortion. I mean, we thought about it, we asked about prices at clandestine clinics, we even went to one of them, but we didn't seriously consider it. It would be inexact to say that we changed our minds, because, as I've said, it was one idea among many, but it wasn't the primary one.\n\nThe day you were born was the happiest day of my life, but I was so nervous I don't know if _happiness_ is really the best word to describe what I felt. I think it is my obligation to tell you, in spite of the absolute love I have always felt for you, in spite of how much you have brightened my life, and I assume your mother's as well\u2014I haven't seen her in around ten years now, but I'm sure that for her as well, you have been a constant source of happiness\u2014in spite of all that, I have to tell you that during the eighteen years you've now been alive, I've never stopped wondering what my life would have been like if you had never been born.\n\nIt's an overwhelming thought, an exit that leads to the darkest of nights, to the most complete blackness, but also to shadow and sometimes, slowly, toward something like a clearing in the woods. These fantasies are normal, but it's not so common for parents to confess them. For example, over the years I have thought thousands of times that if you hadn't been born I would have needed less money, or could have disappeared for weeks on end without worrying about anyone. I could have prolonged my youth for several more years. I could have even killed myself. I mean, the first consequence of your birth was that from then on, I could never kill myself. When some friend of mine who doesn't have kids talks to me about his little wounds where, after languidly digging around in them, he's found infinite desperation and anguish, I don't say what I really think, which is this: Why don't you just kill yourself?\n\nI don't know if my life would make sense without you. I don't think my life has any meaning other than to be with you.\n\n__________\n\nEveryone gets erased\u2014life consists of meeting people whom first you love and then you erase\u2014but you can't erase children, you can't erase parents. I know you've tried to erase me, and you couldn't. I know I have existed, for you, in excess. That I have also existed in absence. When I wasn't there, when I went weeks without seeing you that year I spent out of Chile, for example: even then I existed too much, because I wasn't there but my absence was. That's why I think it is only fair to tell you that I have also tried to erase you. All parents fantasize about those irresponsible lives, about eternal youth, sudden heroism. It's the distortion of something we used to say, trying to imbue the words with a certain philosophical density: why bring children into a shitty world?\n\nOur parents didn't think that, they believed in love automatically, they married very young and they were unhappy, but not so much more than we were. They worked a ton and they didn't even try to associate work with any kind of happiness, so their suffering was more concrete. Plus, they believed in God and they made us believe in God. That's why we ate our food, that's why we did our homework, that's why it was hard for us, at night, to fall asleep: because God was watching us.\n\nBut we soon forgot God. We dismissed him as one more character from the stories of our childhood. We didn't want to be like our parents. We wanted, at most, to have puppies, kittens, and tortoises, even parrots, although the wish to have something as nasty as a parrot has always been incomprehensible to me. We wanted to be children without children, which was the way to remain children forever and thus to blame our parents for everything. What we received when you were born was a little animal that was too alive, and also an excuse, the perfect alibi, a mantra, a multipurpose sentence: _I have a son._ I was never so motivated as in those first years to ask for raises, to avoid unnecessary commitments, to stop smoking and drinking so much or to smoke and drink like crazy, because in our language the phrase _I have a son_ meant, in a not-so-tacit way, _I have a problem_. I must admit I knew perfectly well how to add seductive nuances to that phrase: _I have a son_ meant, in some cases, _I'm a serious man, I have lived, I'm responsible, I have a history, so go to bed with me_. And the next morning, if I didn't want to stay, or want her to stay for breakfast: _Sorry, I have to go, you have to go, I have a son_.\n\nExcept for those videos your mother got it into her head to show you\u2014I don't know whether for better or worse\u2014I understand you don't have any memory of our life when the three of us were together. When you were seven years old you told me that some of your classmates lived with their father and mother and you thought that was boring, because they only had one house. At the time I laughed, I wanted to interpret it literally, but I know there was pain there, a recrimination, though maybe an unconscious one. But in the end, almost all of your classmates had divorced parents. And even so I feel that the abyss separating you and me is deeper and more irrevocable than the abyss that always separates children from their parents.\n\n__________\n\nWe never told you why we separated. I'm going to tell you now. The reason for our separation was Cosmo. Yes, Cosmo. It's a sad story. You have to understand that we were going to separate anyway; for years we'd been looking for reasons, and of course if you hadn't been born we would have separated much earlier. That afternoon I was furious with you but also unsure: you were barely three years old but you were very self-determined, and when you saw that poor abandoned puppy in the garbage bin on the corner, you picked him up and went right on walking. I told you we couldn't keep him, but there was no way to make you understand. I was amazed that there was no crying\u2014you were a crier but you didn't cry then, which in some way revealed to me that you existed, that I couldn't fool you anymore. You stroked the dog and named him Cosmo, and as we walked home I felt overpowered. I can think of no other word: overpowered. I understood while we were walking that right then a struggle was beginning, and it was one I would lose a thousand times: the struggle that perhaps now, with these words, I'm definitively losing.\n\nI opened the door convinced, willing to respect your decision, and at first your mother agreed. But that night, after some hours of false harmony, the escalation of mutual accusations began, until finally she said: _We already have one_. I asked how she could possibly talk about you as a pet. She went quiet, and I think I felt the fanfare of triumph, but then, after arguing about many other things that I don't remember, when we'd already accepted that we would keep Cosmo, I was the one who said exactly the same words, meaning the same thing: _we already have one_.\n\nNeither your mother nor I were talking about you. We were talking about you, but only to hurt each other through you. We competed for the scepter of who loved you more. For years we had agreed that we did not agree. And that night I left the house. And not long afterward your mother brought Cosmo to my apartment, which ended up being good because, like all children, some weekends you didn't want to be with your dad, but your mother reminded you that you had to take care of Cosmo. You didn't come to see me, you came to see Cosmo.\n\n__________\n\nSometimes I think your mother and I should get together and ask your forgiveness. Or take ayahuasca and ask your forgiveness. But it would be better if they would invent, once and for all, that remote control, so you can fast-forward and rewind, so you can pause, so you can erase some scenes of the life we have given you. You can't erase us, but maybe there are some erasable people: your sporadic stepmothers, most of your stepfathers, and your teachers. So you can erase all of the bad ones, you can erase everyone who has hurt you. And you can manipulate and distort and freeze the images of us, the ones who have hurt you but whom you can't erase. So you can watch us in slow motion, or normal or sped up. Or maybe you won't see us at all, but you'll know we are there, dragging out ever longer the absurd film of life.\n\n### Exercises:\n\n83. The comparison between having a child and having a pet aims to show:\n\nI. The contradictions of a generation that, under the pretext of a pessimistic view of the world, chose to have pets rather than children.\n\nII. The importance of passing laws regarding responsible pet ownership.\n\nIII. The importance of passing laws regarding responsible child ownership.\n\nA) I and III\n\nB) I and II\n\nC) I\n\nD) II\n\nE) III\n\n84. A more or less good title for the text you have just read is:\n\nA) \"My Generation\" (The Who)\n\nB) \"Generaci\u00f3n de Mierda\" (Los Prisioneros)\n\nC) \"I Wanna Be Your Dog\" (the Stooges)\n\nD) \"Father and Son\" (the Cat Stevens song that at one point says, \"Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy,\" but it doesn't sound like he's happy; in fact it's the saddest moment of the whole song)\n\nE) \"They Fuck You Up, Your Mum and Dad\" (Philip Larkin). Really, almost any line from that poem would work.\n\n85. Ayahuasca is mentioned in the text to:\n\nA) Give the narrative an ethnic touch.\n\nB) There is no concrete reason to talk about ayahuasca. It's a whim of the author.\n\nC) Encourage drug abuse.\n\nD) Empathize with young people who have maybe already tried marijuana, cocaine, and\/or crack and are now debating between going the natural, organic route or turning to chemical shortcuts. At this crossroads, the text intends, wisely, to promote ayahuasca, which is the doorway to self-knowledge.\n\nE) Ayahuasca is considered useful in the field of psychiatry, especially in the treatment of depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia. We can't rule out that the author of this text could be suffering from one or more of these illnesses.\n\n86. Which of the following characters in the story do you relate to?\n\nA) None of them.\n\nB) The son, obviously.\n\nC) The father.\n\nD) The father's parents and the mother. But also the father a little, and the son. And that poor little puppy, Cosmo.\n\nE) The mother, because I also got pregnant at that age, but I had an abortion. I regretted it so many times, and every time I think of it I get depressed. But after reading this story I think it may not have been such a bad decision.\n\n87. Which of the following options is the best characterization of the father?\n\nA) He is an honest and brave man, or maybe someone who, after making many mistakes, understands that it is necessary to be completely honest. He tries to tell his son the truth, and damn if it isn't hard to tell the truth.\n\nB) He is a pathetic man waiting to die.\n\nC) He is a sensitive man, willing to give everything for his son, but he's just a hair unbalanced. You can tell he's trying to do something. It's unclear what, but he's definitely trying to do something.\n\nD) He is an unreasonable old man who seems to be worried about his son, but who doesn't consider his words. He seems to regret the education he has given his son, and he thinks he can solve everything by sending him a letter.\n\nE) He is a demented guy and an exhibitionist guy who crosses the line that should always exist between fathers and sons on the pretext of asking forgiveness. I'm not sure if his cruelty is voluntary, but I am sure that it is unnecessary.\n\n88. In your opinion, which e-mail folder would be the most appropriate for a text like this one?\n\nA) Sent messages\n\nB) Drafts\n\nC) Inbox\n\nD) Spam\n\nE) Unsent messages\n\n89. After reading this text, you would rather:\n\nA) Not have read it.\n\nB) Not have children.\n\nC) Have many children.\n\nD) Not have a father.\n\nE) Have a parrot.\n\n90. If you were the addressee of this letter, your reaction would be:\n\nA) I'm not really sure. As I was reading, I thought that this father could perfectly well be mine. If my old man wrote me something like this, I think I would feel sorry for him, which is what sometimes, maybe too often, I do feel. That pity would get mixed in with other, indeterminate feelings, which I would have to analyze in detail, preferably in therapy, but with a good therapist, not a quack like that clown I went to last year, who, when I told him I was desperate, recommended that I cry, and when I replied that yes, when I was desperate I cried, told me I shouldn't be worried then. In our last session he recommended that I try to face life with a little more \"positivism.\"\n\nB) I would hug him and thank him sincerely. I would take the chance to tell him that last week, Marce and I went to a clandestine clinic and we were really nervous, but everything worked out. It would be the perfect moment to tell him that we paid for the abortion by selling some of my mother's necklaces, and also the big-screen TV, the juicer, and the microwave, so I had to pretend we'd been robbed, and for a minute I was scared to death, because the cops came and I thought they were going to realize the robbery was fake. I'd also tell him that I got the rest of the money by selling his first editions of Chilean poetry in an antique bookstore on Manuel Montt, so he shouldn't keep looking for them :-)\n\nC) If only my father were still alive. Maybe if he were alive and he told me all that, I'd be happy. I would think: He's an asshole, but he's alive. But my father wasn't an asshole and he never would have told me something like that; he never would have written me a letter like that. Another thing, while I have the chance, about dogs and cats: parents want their children to be dogs, but children are always cats. Parents want to domesticate their children, but children are like cats: you can't domesticate them.\n\nD) I don't know how I would react. What kind of father says those things to his son? It'd be better if I punched him. Better to beat the shit out of him. Was there really no other way to let out his frustrations than to attack his son? Was it really necessary to tell him he wasn't wanted? I'm pretty sure my parents didn't want me either, but I'd rather not know. Why do we have to know so many things about our parents? Why can't parents just keep their mouths shut?\n\nE) I would give my father a parrot, but first I would teach it to say: _fucking asshole, fucking asshole, fucking asshole._\n\nVisit http:\/\/bit.ly\/28MD8OK to view a larger, printable version of this bubble sheet.\n\n# A NOTE ON THE TEXT\n\nThe structure of this book is based on the Chilean Academic Aptitude Test, which students took in December each year from 1967 through 2003 in order to apply to Chilean universities. Today, students take a test with a different name (University Selection Exam) that follows a similar structure. This book specifically takes the form of the Verbal Aptitude test as it was given in 1993, the year the author took the exam. At that time it consisted of ninety multiple-choice exercises presented in five sections.\n**Looking for more?**\n\nVisit Penguin.com for more about this author and a complete list of their books.\n\n**Discover your next great read!**\n\n## Contents\n\n  1. Cover\n  2. ACCLAIM FOR ALEJANDRO ZAMBRA\n  3. ABOUT THE AUTHOR\n  4. ALSO BY ALEJANDRO ZAMBRA\n  5. TITLE PAGE\n  6. COPYRIGHT\n  7. DEDICATION\n  8. CONTENTS\n  9. I. EXCLUDED TERM\n  10. II. SENTENCE ORDER\n  11. III. SENTENCE COMPLETION\n  12. IV. SENTENCE ELIMINATION\n  13. V. READING COMPREHENSION\n    1. TEXT #1\n    2. TEXT #2\n    3. TEXT #3\n  14. A NOTE ON THE TEXT\n\n  1. Cover\n  2. Table of Contents\n  3. Start\n\n  1. i\n  2. ii\n  3. iii\n  4. iv\n  5. v\n  6. vi\n  7. vii\n  8. viii\n  9. x\n  10. xi\n  11. xii\n  12. xiii\n  13. xiv\n  14. \n  15. \n  16. \n  17. \n  18. \n  19. \n  20. \n  21. \n  22. \n  23. \n  24. \n  25. \n  26. \n  27. \n  28. \n  29. \n  30. \n  31. \n  32. \n  33. \n  34. \n  35. \n  36. \n  37. \n  38. \n  39. \n  40. \n  41. \n  42. \n  43. \n  44. \n  45. \n  46. \n  47. \n  48. \n  49. \n  50. \n  51. \n  52. \n  53. \n  54. \n  55. \n  56. \n  57. \n  58. \n  59. \n  60. \n  61. \n  62. \n  63. \n  64. \n  65. \n  66. \n  67. \n  68. \n  69. \n  70. \n  71. \n  72. \n  73. \n  74. \n  75. \n  76. \n  77. \n  78. \n  79. \n  80. \n  81. \n  82. \n  83. \n  84. \n  85. \n  86. \n  87. \n  88. \n  89. \n  90. \n  91. \n  92. \n  93. \n  94. \n  95. \n  96. \n  97. \n  98. \n  99. \n  100. \n  101. \n  102. \n  103. \n  104. \n  105. \n  106. \n  107. \n  108. \n  109. \n  110. \n  111. \n  112. \n  113. \n  114. \n  115. \n  116.\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":" \nPARANORMAL\n\nMy Life in Pursuit of the Afterlife\n\nRAYMOND MOODY, MD\n\nwith Paul Perry\n\nDedication\n\nWith love to my family\n\n\u2014Raymond Moody\nContents\n\nCover\n\nTitle Page\n\nDedication\n\nIntroduction\n\nChapter One\n\nChapter Two\n\nChapter Three\n\nChapter Four\n\nChapter Five\n\nChapter Six\n\nChapter Seven\n\nChapter Eight\n\nChapter Nine\n\nChapter Ten\n\nChapter Eleven\n\nChapter Twelve\n\nChapter Thirteen\n\nChapter Fourteen\n\nChapter Fifteen\n\nChapter Sixteen\n\nChapter Seventeen\n\nChapter Eighteen\n\nChapter Nineteen\n\nChapter Twenty\n\nChapter Twenty-One\n\nChapter Twenty-Two\n\nChapter Twenty-Three\n\nConclusion\n\nAbout the Authors\n\nAlso by Raymond Moody\n\nCredits\n\nCopyright\n\nAbout the Publisher\nIntroduction\n\nI have stumbled onto many things in my life, and through this brief loss of stride I have found the world that I live in. It was through a student in my philosophy class who began to question me deeply about his own experience of almost dying that I studied and named the phenomenon known as the near-death experience. Had I not allowed the student to dominate my time with his story, I might have never examined near-death experiences, a path of discovery that led me to write Life After Life and led to my lifelong exploration of matters related to the afterlife.\n\nHad I not, literally, stumbled into a bookshelf and been hit on the head by an old book of research by Northcote Thomas, I would not have begun researching the fascinating world of facilitated visions. It is through this line of research that I have been able to re-create many aspects of the near-death experience in patients without them having to almost die. Better yet, I have been able to ease the grief of losing a loved one by helping people to see and otherwise interact with their dead relatives.\n\nAnd then there are past-life regressions. I tripped into that field of endeavor after listening to a patient who'd gone back in time while engaging in an ordinary session of hypnotherapy.\n\nThese are all fields of endeavor that I have gratefully stumbled into. And yes, I believe Mark Twain when he said, \"Accident is the name of the greatest of all inventors.\"\n\nSometimes, though, I have just stumbled. And the worst of these stumbles have been the result of a disease that clouded everything for me, from my physical senses to my sense of humor to my sense of the world around me. From my late twenties until now, I have lived with a disease called myxedema. This is a difficult affliction to diagnose. Simply stated, with this disease the thyroid gland does not produce enough thyroxine, a hormone that acts in our body something like the volume dial on a radio. The result of this disease is a variety of peculiar symptoms that can lead to myxedema madness, in which the afflicted person gradually loses his mind.\n\nAlthough myxedema seems as though it should be an easy disease to diagnose, it isn't. Residual thyroid in the bloodstream can trick test instruments into \"false positive\" readings, which make thyroid levels seem normal when they are not. As a result, my thyroid levels have been erratic over the years, and at times nonexistent. These have been the times when I stumbled the most. At times when my thyroid levels have been low, I have made major mistakes in judgment: given control of my financial life to people I shouldn't have; found myself in mental hospitals; worn thick woolen coats in the middle of a Georgia summer because I was terribly cold; locked myself in my house and refused to come out because I thought the world was against me. I could go on and on.\n\nOver the years I have kept this condition quiet\u2014or as quiet as I possibly could\u2014thinking that it might affect the perception of me or my work. But now I have become wiser about my illness and its effects on my persona. Instead of working against me, it has made me more empathic and understanding of those who are faced with end-of-life issues. It has also made me look at illness as an altered state that changes our perceptions of ourselves and the world around us as much as, say, an out-of-body experience or even a near-death experience. Like those and other altered states, illness can make us feel both weak and powerful at the same time, depending upon our level of acceptance of the way things are and our ability to dig deep and find new sources of strength. When one man said to me\u2014as others have said\u2014that his near-death experience drained him of strength yet filled him with hope, I understood completely how that could take place. I also understand that to accept such a contradiction, one often has to experience an altered state as powerful as illness.\n\nThat's why I feel it's important to begin this book by recounting the battle of my own life. Without such a near-fatal illness, I wouldn't have the empathy for others necessary to continue my research in the field of the afterlife. And without it, I wouldn't have had my own near-death experience, an event that taught me more in a few minutes than years of research and lecturing.\n\nSo what I am trying to say, dear reader, is that if the presentation of my attempted suicide makes you doubt my work or the value of its lessons, you should stop reading now. Let me just say that I think this experience has made me more honest about myself and my work; without it, I would lack that dimension that is not present in many doctors, the one that goes beyond knowledge and into the realm of actually being a patient. To paraphrase William Osler, the father of modern surgery, a man who has been a patient becomes a much better physician.\n\nThat has certainly been the case with me.\n\nMy switch from physician to patient came in January 1991. This was before my myxedema had been properly diagnosed. My thyroid level had dipped off the charts, although I didn't know it. I just knew that I had not felt well for months, but somehow I had convinced myself that it was world events combined with the impact of those events on my personal situation that was making me ill.\n\nThis was the year that Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein decided to attack Kuwait for stealing his country's oil. It was also the time when a new book of mine was being published. Coming Back was a study of past-life regressions that I had worked on for years. I had made some astounding discoveries in this work. I had found ways in which modern medicine could use these hypnotic transitions into the past to help patients overcome long-standing psychiatric problems. I had also discovered that a large number of patients seemed truly to go back in time to past lives. Not only did they say they had, but many of them provided proof through their hypnotic regressions that they had indeed lived in an earlier era. I had collected this proof from the patients during my sessions with them. I had established to my satisfaction that if they hadn't actually lived in the past, they had somehow been channeled very vivid information linking them with the past.\n\nI was very excited about this book. Not only could it change the lives of many patients with long-standing psychiatric problems, but it would open another door into my continuing study of life after death.\n\nBut as the summer progressed, it became more and more obvious that the publication of my book and world events were about to collide. Saddam Hussein was preparing his attack on Kuwait, and our president was lining up international support for an attack on Saddam. These events couldn't have converged at a worse time for me. My marriage had fallen apart, I had been defrauded out of a fortune and had little money left, and I was exhausted from an imbalance of thyroid in my system, a condition that wasn't diagnosed yet. I begged my publisher to delay the book tour until the coming \"mother of all battles\" (as Saddam called it) was over. \"If I go out on tour now, I'll be canceled in every state,\" I told the publisher. \"I don't think people want to hear about my work when a war is starting.\"\n\nSurprisingly, no one at the publishing house seemed to understand what I was talking about. Instead, they launched the press tour two days before Saddam's troops rolled into Kuwait.\n\nMy first stop was New York City. I was ill by the time I reached the Big Apple from Georgia, but still ready to tell the world about the findings in my new book. But there was no need to be ready. All of my media appearances were canceled as Iraqi tanks rolled into Kuwait. \"Of course,\" I said as a TV producer told me she didn't have an extra reporter to do an interview with me. \"Why would you? For once, present life is more exciting than past lives.\"\n\nI visited each of several media outlets on my schedule and got the same comment from each of them: Operation Desert Storm was the biggest thing going. They couldn't waste a minute on any other coverage. \"We're hardly covering the Yankees,\" said one distressed producer.\n\nI left New York the next day for Boston, where no one would interview me either. \"Go home,\" said a blunt-spoken producer. \"Saddam's getting everything we've got.\" After a day in old Beantown I was interviewed by exactly no one. I was zero for eight: no press interviews and eight studio visits.\n\nI pressed on. By the time I left Canada I was zero for twelve. Well, sort of. One Canadian station found a few minutes to interview me and said they would run the interview at a later date. I don't know if the interview ever ran. I didn't care. I was getting sicker.\n\nBy the time I reached Denver I knew I should see a doctor about my rapidly declining thyroid level. There I could get a blood test and be prescribed an appropriate amount of thyroid medication to get my blood level back where it should have been. But I didn't see a doctor. The lack of thyroid had clouded my cognition so much that I thought the haze I was living in was due to severe depression I felt from being on the road and pushing a dead book, one that had been killed by world events.\n\nAnd so I pressed on, one for eighteen by the time I left Denver.\n\nCalifornia was next. By the time I landed in Los Angeles I was seeing the world in black and white, a danger sign for me of very severe thyroid deficiency. I was accustomed to the routine by now. A public relations person would pick me up at the airport and then tell me how many of the planned interviews for that day had been canceled. Then we would drive to the ones that hadn't been canceled, only to find that they had been too busy the past week to remember to cancel by phone. A couple of the stations did hurried interviews out of courtesy, and by the end of the day I was on another airplane headed for San Diego.\n\nIt was in San Diego that the idea to kill myself took hold. I sat in my hotel room, looking down at the street below, and considered prying the window open and taking a final leap. Every day it was feeling as though tomorrow would be the day everything came apart. Being a psychiatrist, I knew that presque vu was the name for that feeling. It means a constant state of frustration. Now, alone in this San Diego hotel room at the end of a failed press tour, I was ready to end the despair once and for all.\n\nI called Paul Perry, my co-author, in Arizona. We had been talking daily as my tour progressed across the country, and he knew how down and depressed I had become. But the conversation we had from San Diego alarmed him. I shared with him my latest plan. I was going to figure out a way to open the window\u2014hotel windows rarely open all the way just for this reason\u2014and throw myself into the alley below.\n\nPaul had a different plan. \"We can always do another press tour,\" he said.\n\nIt was worse than that, I said. I had been watching my life unravel for some time, and now it was finally happening. I could see it coming apart right before me, like springs and screws coming out of the back of a wristwatch. That was it. My life was broken. I wanted out.\n\nI spoke to Paul for more than an hour and then, exhausted, fell asleep. In the morning I left for Atlanta.\n\nI hoped things might improve when I returned to the comfort of home, but they didn't. I could hear tension in my own voice as I explained to my friends what a failure the lengthy press tour had been. I am exhausted, I said to my friends, who looked genuinely concerned. I made an appointment to see my doctor on Monday, but by Sunday I was completely over the edge, deep in the grip of myxedema madness. With a large bottle of the painkiller Darvon in my possession, I got in my car and drove to my office at the university. There, I reasoned, I would lock the door and take an overdose of painkillers sufficient to kill me.\n\nIn my office I opened the bottle of Darvon and poured them out onto my desk. Then I began to take them several at a time with gulps from a can of Coca-Cola. I took about two dozen of the pills and then sat down at the desk. For some reason I called my co-author Paul.\n\n\"I've done it,\" I said with a note of finality.\n\n\"Done what?\" he asked.\n\n\"I've taken pills and I'm dying,\" I said.\n\nI could hear the controlled panic in Paul's voice as he started to ask a series of questions: \"What did you take? How many did you take? Where are you?\"\n\nI became somewhat angry at the line of questioning. I could tell that he wanted to get enough information to somehow intervene from Arizona. But I didn't want an intervention. What I wanted was good conversation in the final moments of my life.\n\n\"Look, Paul, I have researched death and I know it's nothing to be afraid of. I will be better off dead.\"\n\nAnd that was genuinely how I felt. Myxedema madness had put me in the throes of a paranoia and despair so great that I felt everyone would be better off if I was no longer around. No amount of talk could convince me otherwise. Paul suggested a number of possible solutions to my problems, including an agent and CPA to straighten out my money problems and a new press tour to arouse interest in the book. I would hear none of it. I was ready to die.\n\n\"You know, Paul, being alive holds more fear for me than being dead. I have talked to hundreds of people who have crossed into death, and they all tell me that it's great over there,\" I said. \"Every day I wake up afraid of the day. I don't want that anymore.\"\n\n\"What about your children?\" Paul asked.\n\n\"They'll all understand,\" I said resolutely. \"They know I'm not happy here. They'll be sad, but they'll understand. It's time for me to leave.\"\n\nI could hear someone jiggling the office door knob as we spoke. Then there was a pounding on the heavy wooden door, a couple of raps at first and then a persistent drumbeat. Then a loud voice. \"Campus police, open the door.\"\n\nI ignored the demand and kept talking to Paul, taking a few more pills as we spoke. Within seconds a key was slipped into the door lock and the door sprang open. Policemen rushed in, and before I could say much of anything they had put my hands behind me and sat me on the floor.\n\nOne of the policemen picked up the phone and began talking to Paul. Apparently Paul asked about the presence of pills, because the policeman began to count the pills on the desk. When he was done, he dropped the phone on the desk and from his police radio dialed 911.\n\nAn overdose of Darvon has little effect on a person until it reaches a certain blood level. Then the painkiller overwhelms the heart's beating mechanism and quickly stops it cold. A dentist friend who had seen someone overdose on Darvon said it was like falling off a table. The person was going along fine until they just dropped. I knew that the same thing would happen to me shortly. All I had to do was wait. I sat patiently on the floor as emergency medical technicians charged up the stairs with their gurney and equipment.\n\n\"Are you okay?\" asked one of the EMTs.\n\n\"Sure,\" I said, and I was. Never better, actually. I was not afraid of death, but I had obviously become very afraid of life.\n\nThings began to happen very fast after that. My chest felt very heavy, and I had the feeling of slipping into a dark blue place. They hoisted me onto the gurney and strapped me in and rolled me quickly down the passageway to the waiting ambulance.\n\nAs they loaded me into the ambulance the world around me began to fade. The concerned EMT was in my face, trying to keep me awake. Another EMT was drawing something into a very large syringe, probably adrenaline, to inject into my heart. \"Better get going,\" shouted one of the policemen as he slammed the rear doors. I could feel the ambulance accelerate, hitting speed bumps hard as we headed for the hospital. An elephant was sitting on my chest. My eyes were closed, or at least I think they were. Either way, I could see nothing.\n\nAfter decades of studying the process of death, I knew what was most likely coming next. I would have the feeling of moving rapidly through a tunnel; maybe I would see my grandmothers and grandfathers. Certainly I would have a life review before it was all over. I hoped that would happen. As far as I was concerned, my best years were behind me. If anything excited me it was the past.\n\nNow I could relive it again....\nChapter One\n\nI was born on June 30, 1944, the very day my father shipped out for World War II. I don't know what my mother thought as she labored to give birth to me that summer day. Given the way her life had gone up to that point, she probably thought that her husband would be killed in the war and would never see his newborn son. Already in her young life, eight of her fifteen brothers and sisters had died in childhood, and one more would be lost in the war. Death had been a constant companion for Mom, and it would be safe to say that she didn't expect a better future.\n\nI know mine was a difficult birth. Mom was young, I was large, and negative thoughts about Raymond Sr.'s likelihood of returning from war were on her mind as she struggled with my childbirth.\n\nChildbirth, dark memories, and fear of the future all added up to a tremendous case of depression that my young mother would only talk about with her parents. In those days people didn't talk freely about their emotions, as they do now. Americans were almost devoutly stoic, expected to show endurance in the face of adversity rather than let anyone know how they truly felt. The result for my mother was a worsening case of depression, which she had to hold inside rather than express.\n\nI think the town of Porterdale, Georgia, was filled with women coping with the same level of depression as my mother. World War II had emptied the town of all its young men, and the women of Porterdale lived with a daily uncertainty about whether their sons, husbands, and lovers would come home alive.\n\nThe war also left them childless. Few children had been born since the war started in 1941. And now, with my birth in 1944, an event of some importance had occurred in the town of Porterdale. The town had a baby.\n\nThat was good for my mother. When she needed a rest or just some time alone to deal with her depression, Grandmother and Grandfather Waddleton would take over the role of parenting. They doted over me like I was the only child they had ever seen, passing me constantly from one to the other in an effort to give my mother breathing space. It was through them that I was \"shared out\" to the rest of the community, an arrangement that gave me a large and caring family.\n\nAll of the women in the neighborhood who were about the age of my grandmother unofficially adopted me as a grandchild of their own. Two doors down was Mrs. Crowell. She became one of the most important figures in my life. I remember her as being a sweet but very strong woman, the kind I would eventually be the most happy with in marriage. I would go to see her all the time\u2014as an infant and later as a preteen. She allowed me to come in without even knocking, which I did frequently. Once inside, I would curl up on her sofa and dream. She was among the most encouraging people in my life. Her son told me at her funeral years later that she would hold me on her lap and repeat over and over to me, \"Raymond, you are going to be a very special person someday.\"\n\nNext to us was the home of Mrs. Day, who baked and cooked all the time and let me sample with impunity anything that came out of the oven. Best of all were her chocolate chip cookies, followed by puffy home-baked white bread.\n\nThen there was Grandmother Moody, my father's mother. She lived about a mile away. I spent many hours there, smothered with kisses and given great praise for looking just like my father, who was at that time struggling with the daily dangers of combat in the Pacific Theater. I don't think she expected to see him alive again, and sometimes she hugged me just a little too hard.\n\nMrs. Gileaf, Mrs. Martin, Mrs. Ally\u2014to all of these women I was a novelty because I was a baby. I remember well being held, rolled around in a stroller, or rocked by each of these beautiful people. They were the ones who made my childhood such a big and bright place in my mind.\n\nPorterdale was on the wide and fast-flowing Yellow River, which powered a sawmill. The streets were tree-lined, the sidewalks were clean and new, and the atmosphere was bucolic. Porterdale was the perfect little town. The most memorable place of all, though, was the front porch. Believe me, in Porterdale in the forties there was nothing to do but sit on the porch and talk. That is what people did. Town folks would stroll the streets at night, going from one porch to the next, trading stories of the war or local news.\n\nIt was on the porch one night that I was first introduced to the concept of the return from death. It was in a story that my uncle Fairley told about his dog Friskie. One day, as the story went, little Friskie got hit and killed by a passing truck. Uncle Fairley was heartbroken as he loaded Friskie into his truck and took the poor little dog to the dump. (Sorry, readers, but that is what we did with dead dogs in Porterdale.) Several days later, an unnerving thing happened: Friskie trotted up the street and showed up on the porch, his tail wagging and his face a vision of happiness. Everyone was moved deeply by the return of Friskie, as was I. Friskie was my protector, and to have him back was a great delight.\n\nI was very young when this event happened, but members of my family spoke about it constantly over the years, especially my aunt May, who found in it powerful religious overtones and alluded to Friskie and the resurrection of Christ all in the same breath. It was this memory of Friskie's return from the dead\u2014implanted by my own family's lore\u2014that led me to be fascinated by near-death experiences later in my life.\n\nIf I was the town's baby, I was also the apple of my Grandfather Waddleton's eye. Frankly, no one expected my father to return from fighting the Japanese in the Pacific. Everyone had seen the newsreel footage at the Porterdale Cinema and been shocked at the savagery and brutality happening on islands they had never heard of. Because as far as anyone knew I might already be fatherless, Grandfather Waddleton insisted that I call him \"Daddy.\" That is what my mother told me. She said that it would keep me from feeling fatherless in case my real father didn't return. I knew no difference. I didn't really understand the concept of fatherhood at that point, and Grandfather Waddleton would certainly have been my choice of a father if I'd had such a choice.\n\nI can still see his deep blue eyes and bright smile as he held me close and read to me. Sometimes he would drive me around town in his Model T car, the wind blowing through my wispy hair. I can remember the feeling of the wind and know from photos that I was squinting from the glare of the sun. It feels good to look at those photos now, which is why I think I was feeling good at the time, riding in a jet-black Model T with the man I thought was my father.\n\nYears later my real father told the story of being on a remote island air base in the Pacific when all the men were told to come to the flight line. They stood there until a silver B-24 touched down with a squeal and revved its way to the hangar where they all waited.\n\nThe name of the plane was Enola Gay, and the pilot, a small slim man with a puzzled look, had the name tag \"Tibbetts\" sewn to his flight-suit pocket. A number of civilians and high-level military officers were standing by, and when Tibbetts approached them, a brief speech was made and he was immediately awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.\n\nMy real father's vocabulary expanded that day. He heard the words \"atomic bomb\" and went away wondering just what such a device was and why the military was making such a big deal out of dropping only one.\n\nBack home, the people of Porterdale were also figuring out what an atomic bomb was. Pictures in the paper showed a mushroom cloud and cities fried right off the map by this new invention. Whatever the atomic bomb was, they welcomed it because it brought the end to a brutal war.\n\nI am told that there was jubilation in the streets and tears of joy. Everyone had expected that an end to the war would come only after a costly invasion of Japan. By some estimates, 500,000 American lives would have been lost in such an invasion, along with the deaths of millions of Japanese, truly the mother of all battles. But this atomic bomb had stopped the war in its tracks. The people of Porterdale were elated.\n\nMy mother started reading the newspaper avidly now. Soldiers didn't know when they were coming home, but they did know the number of the ship they would be on. My father sent that number in a letter to my mother, and now she would scan columns of type looking for the ship that would carry my father to California, where he would be transferred to a train to Georgia.\n\nI remember vividly the day we went to Atlanta to pick up my father. We all piled into Grandfather Waddleton's Model T and drove the sixty miles to the train station. The place was chaotic, with families milling around nervously waiting for the trains to arrive. Finally a long troop train pulled into the station, and the crowd pressed in, nearly spilling over the platform.\n\nMy mother searched frantically for her husband, and when she saw him she pushed her way through the crowd and flung herself on his chest. I was right behind her, held in the arms of my grandfather. I remember to this day a panicked feeling as my grandfather handed me off to my rightful dad. He pressed me into my father's scratchy woolen coat, and my dad held me tight and close until I began to cry and push away. Dad held me tighter, and as he did the woolen coat felt even rougher on my infant skin. I squirmed and cried, and as I pushed away harder my father held me tighter until I could barely catch my breath.\n\nWith my free arm, I reached to my grandfather, and when he didn't reach back I twisted around and held my arms out to my mother, who snatched me away from this intimate stranger.\n\n\"It's going to take him a while to get used to you,\" she said to her husband. \"He doesn't quite know what's going on yet.\"\n\nAnd she was right. Even at such a truly tender age, I knew a lot was going to change.\n\nLooking back, I can visualize this entire scene from my father's perspective. As a medic in the Army, he had seen some of the most god-awful injuries that modern warfare could dish up. All the while, in what little spare time he had, Dad was dreaming of a homecoming in which he would be reunited with a loving family in Georgia and be able to get on with his life.\n\nAnd what was the first thing to greet him? A child who was spoiled by the entire town and didn't want to be hugged by a father he had never seen.\n\nNow I can look back and cringe at my behavior. At the time, though, I felt very displaced. I had been the center of my family's universe. Now I was being supplanted by a man I was suppose to call \"Dad.\"\n\nFrankly I had difficulty with this new dad. The man I had been raised to call Daddy, my Grandfather Waddleton, was a smiling and kindhearted gentleman who paid careful attention to me. My new dad proved to be very difficult. He had been a military officer and as a result had developed a sort of crew-cut military bearing that would become his trademark for his entire life. Plus, he would eventually become a surgeon, a personality type that is usually rigid, uptight, and wanting to be in charge of almost every situation. I frequently heard stories in my teenage years about my father yelling in the operating room at nurses or other support staff. I wasn't embarrassed when I heard nurses swear about my father. Rather, I could sympathize with them because I too was frequently on the receiving end of such anger.\n\nOne example that sticks in my mind came only months after my father had returned from the war. He was outside my grandparents' house planting some peach trees when I ran into one of the tiny trees with a tricycle and snapped the trunk. It was an accident, and no big deal since there were plenty more saplings where that one came from. Still, my father flew into a rage, yelling at me with such vehemence that I began to cry at the anger that boiled over. And then the yelling continued, until my grandmother came outside and rescued me from the unwarranted tirade.\n\nThese angry outbursts took place frequently and were disturbing for everyone who witnessed them. My mother tried to dismiss them by laughing them off, but nobody found them forgivable. I remember after one of his outbursts, my Grandfather Waddleton became very pensive. After a consultation with my grandmother, he went outside and with great animation began to talk to my father. I couldn't see my grandfather's face because his back was to me, but I could see my father's and knew he was hearing something that he didn't like. His jaw was clenching and his face was turning red as his eyes narrowed their gaze on my grandfather.\n\nI couldn't hear what the two men were saying, and it probably would have meant little to me if I had. For me the tone of their voices told the tale of dueling styles, a sharp battle between a gentle man supporting his grandson and a gruff, newly returned veteran who would never admit he knew little about dealing with children.\n\nWhen the two men stopped talking, with no clear agreement, my grandfather turned and walked back toward the porch. That was when I could see how much the conversation about \"tough\" versus \"love\" had taken out of my grandfather. He looked withered as he crossed the lawn, and when he reached the porch he scooped me up and took me inside, his arms trembling as he set me down in the living room and then fell onto the sofa. Grandmother brought him a drink of water, and we sat in silence for a long time.\n\nThat was the first of many confrontations between my father and grandfather, and the fact that we all lived together in one house didn't make things easier. My father's years of military training prevented him from backing down. His way of getting what he wanted was yelling and intimidation, attributes that might have worked well in combat but weren't very effective with a two-year-old child. And Grandfather Waddleton wouldn't back down either. He had always been a gentle man, and he wouldn't allow quick anger or gruffness to become the new environment in his home. Since we lived with my grandparents until my father could get into medical school, we all had to live by their rules. But the standoff between my father and grandfather created a lot of unhealthy tension in the family.\n\nI remember once when my father was studying in the living room and I was playing with some toy soldiers not far away. I was standing them up in a line and knocking them over one by one with my index finger. Suddenly, with no warning, my father began to swear loudly. I thought he had slammed his finger in a book, but when I looked at him I could see that the swearing was directed at me.\n\n\"Can someone get this kid out of here!\" he barked. \"I don't need the noise. I'm trying to study!\"\n\nHe slammed his book down on the wooden floor and stood up. Without saying a word, my grandmother swept through the room, picked me up, and took me outside to be with my grandfather.\n\nI am sure my father and grandfather had words about the incident later, because I saw them talking in the kitchen and could tell that both of them were uncomfortable with the conversation. Still, it was a conversation between them that was repeated many times before I was four years old. And it was the type of conversation that wore heavily on my grandfather, who never anticipated that the return of my father from the war would bring such tension and anger into his household.\n\nGradually, my grandparents began to shield me from my father, acting as a protective wall from his anger. They were sympathetic in knowing that he had been changed by the horrible traumas of the war. But they were also afraid that he would traumatize me. Because of that, they made a conscious decision to become the buffer between the two of us.\n\nThis buffer wasn't a bad thing, at least not in the beginning. I heard and saw a lot that I wouldn't have experienced had they not taken such a great interest in me. Even though I was so young, they truly fueled the fires of thought for me.\n\nOne day, for example, an elderly man died across the street from my aunt's house. Rather than conceal death from me (as so many people do with children), my grandmother walked me down the street and into the house, where she paid her respects to the man's wife. As she did so, I wandered into the family room and discovered the deceased man laid out on a couch.\n\nThe sallow look of his skin and the angle of repose of his head showed me the distinct difference between the appearance of death and the appearance of sleep. Even at the age of four, I could tell that this man was dead, although I touched his cold chest with my hands just to make certain.\n\n\"Dead people look different, don't they,\" said my grandmother, coming up behind me. \"It's like something has left them and gone somewhere else. Must be the soul.\"\n\nThis may have been the first time I ever heard the word \"soul,\" and it was certainly the first time I thought of anything \"leaving the body\" upon death. I didn't think of the concept of \"soul survival\" as being religious in nature, since we never went to church anyway. But I do remember that the idea conflicted with what I assumed happened at death\u2014a complete wipeout of consciousness.\nChapter Two\n\nI know it sounds ridiculous to think that a four-year-old might have a philosophy about death, but I did. It was a philosophy that was originally formed by all the talk of death that revolved around World War II. Most of the soldiers who died in that horrible war didn't come home. They were either buried in foreign graveyards or totally decimated. The ones who did come home were sealed in a box and were never seen again.\n\nThe notion that something might survive bodily death was not something I even thought about. The dead were simply gone.\n\nThis was not such a pleasant thought to me as a child, because I always felt that I was going to die. That belief was also a holdover from World War II, where a sense of doom pervaded each and every day. It seemed as though death was always around the corner, and I would stumble into his hooded presence at any time.\n\nOn one devilishly cold night I did get a glimpse of death. I was sitting on the floor by the fireplace in my grandparents' home, intently reading a comic book while trying to stay warm. Next to me in chairs sat my mother and grandmother, chatting away about my father, who had just been accepted into medical school in Augusta. It was an exciting time for all of us because it meant that my father would begin that long journey through medical education that would lead to him becoming a doctor.\n\nThe two women were so deeply engaged in conversation that they hardly noticed my grandfather as he opened the front door and shivered his way to a spot close to the fireplace. He was wearing his turtle green wool coat and a cap, but it didn't seem to be doing the job of keeping him warm. He just stood there and shivered, standing as close to the fire as he could.\n\n\"What's wrong, hon?\" asked my grandmother.\n\n\"I don't know,\" said my grandfather. \"I've never felt colder in my life than tonight.\"\n\nThe two women continued to talk, and my grandfather continued to shiver. Finally, at my grandmother's suggestion, he went to bed, where he could bury himself beneath piles of blankets.\n\nWhen I awoke the next day I could hear my mother and grandmother talking very loud downstairs and crying. I peeked out of my room and could see both of them going in and out of my grandparents' room. Shortly thereafter, the front door opened, and my father came in, leading two ambulance attendants with a stretcher.\n\nMy father embraced my mother for comfort and looked at me as I started to come out of my room.\n\n\"Stay there a minute, Raymond,\" he said to me. I stayed at the top of the stairs until my grandfather was wheeled out of the house, and then I ran down.\n\n\"I think your grandfather has had a stroke,\" said my grandmother.\n\nStroke. The word meant nothing to me, but I began to cry. Soon we were all weeping and holding one another. Then my father said that he and Grandmother would follow the ambulance to the hospital and Mother and I should stay home.\n\nStroke, I repeated to myself. Stroke. I had no idea what it was, but I was certain that I was never going to see my grandfather again. I went into a kind of shock that erased my memory of the next few days. Even now I can't remember if I went to the hospital to see him; nor can I remember the day he returned from the hospital. Strangely enough, I do remember reliving my short life with the man who was most important to me.\n\nFor instance, I remember looking at a blue marble on my bedroom dresser and being able to recall the day my grandfather gave it to me. I had been with my aunt May, who picked us up every Saturday in a cab and took me downtown to buy me a toy. On this particular day we got out of the cab right next to a pipe that was standing up about two inches from the edge of the sidewalk. While my aunt paid the cab, I looked down into the pipe and saw a blue cat's-eye marble sitting at the bottom. I tried and tried to get that marble, but my short fingers couldn't quite reach it.\n\nWhen my aunt took my hand and walked me into the toy store, I thought I would never see that marble again. But when we came out of the store, there was my grandfather with the marble in his hand and a smile on his face. Now with him in the hospital with a stroke, all I could think of was his face beaming down at me as he held the marble that was as bright and friendly as his jovial blue eyes and wonderful smile.\n\nStroke. Was my grandfather being punished for having me call him Daddy when my father was away at war? Was he being punished for being so totally devoted to me? At times I wondered if the stroke was my fault for thinking of my grandfather as my dad.\n\nStroke. Or maybe it was my father's fault? Maybe the way my father treated me\u2014a great source of distress for my grandfather\u2014had caused the stroke. Did their bad relationship somehow cause this calamity? I know it made me feel confused, guilty, and sick to my stomach. Was a stroke the same kind of sickness? I was totally confused.\n\nMy grandfather's stroke was so distressing to me that I can't remember how long it was before he returned. Thinking back, I do remember coming down the stairs one morning and having my grandmother take my hand and lead me into their bedroom. There, propped up with pillows, was Granddad. He couldn't speak, although he tried, and when he smiled only half of his mouth curled up; the other half remained immobile. His left hand didn't work, and neither did his left leg. Rather, those two limbs just lay there like they were dead.\n\nWhen I realized that half of my grandfather didn't work, I began to fidget nervously and cry. It was horrifying to see the man I thought so highly of in such a condition. A dozen questions popped into my mind. Was my grandfather still in there, just trapped inside a nonfunctioning body? Was this just temporary? Would he ever be okay again? And what is a stroke anyway?\n\nAs these questions ran through my mind I began to cry very hard. Then I noticed that my grandfather's working eye was becoming damp with tears that ran down his cheek. I wanted to touch him, but I was afraid that I might hurt him. Mercifully, my grandmother intervened.\n\n\"Come on, Raymond,\" she said, putting her arm around me and walking me out of the room. \"Grandpa needs a lot of rest.\"\n\nThe experience of seeing my grandfather was so traumatizing that I remember very little of my grandfather after the stroke. Most of the time he stayed in bed, looking at the ceiling, at the wall, or out the window, depending upon which way he was turned in bed. Sometimes Uncle Fairley would come over, and he and my grandmother would lift Grandfather into an old-fashioned wheelchair and take him out to the porch, where he sat slumped and silent. It seemed as though those were the only places I saw my grandfather for the next eight years. And since he was paralyzed, my interactions with him were very limited.\n\nMy grief is apparent to me now, looking back. I had lost my best friend, a man who had insulated me from what was bad about the world and introduced me to what was good. Now that he was essentially gone, there was little for me to do. My father spent all of his time studying for his medical school tests, my mother focused her attentions on his needs, Grandmother was taking care of Grandfather, and no one talked about how they felt about the loss of the family patriarch.\n\nNowadays the phrase \"family dysfunction\" would come up in discussing this situation, but in 1948 the concept was not yet defined and the phrase was not yet in the medical lexicon. In retrospect, I see that our family was truly dysfunctional, but oddly normal for the times.\n\nWith the loss of my grandfather, my curiosity veered in other directions. I spent a lot of time with the few other children in town my age, but soon became bored with children's games. I was more curious than these other children and had little interest in activities that didn't have creative elements to them.\n\nI remember standing at the mouth of the caves on the outskirts of Porterdale and having an uncanny feeling, like I was about to step into the mouth of the world. Even at such an early age, I felt that these earth openings provided access to something deep inside of us. When I expressed this feeling to the other children, they gave me a blank look, clearly not understanding what I was talking about.\n\nMy playmates complained to their parents that I was boring, and to them I definitely was. But as our neighbor Mrs. Crowell said to her son Billy, \"Raymond Jr. is going to be somebody very special. He's the smart kid, and maybe you should learn from him.\"\n\nWith my mind in creative turmoil, I began to turn inward. I saw words as the key to the intellectual world and began to work on my reading ability. At breakfast I would look at the backs of cereal boxes and ask whoever was at the table with me how to pronounce words and what they meant. Before long, I was reading cereal boxes with little effort and decided to advance to more difficult reading material, namely, comic books. I had looked at Donald Duck comics in the past, but now I was making an effort to actually read them. And I did. Before the end of my fourth birthday I was reading several Donald Duck comics per week, fully engrossed in the genius of the creator, Carl Barks.\n\nIn many ways, Barks replaced my grandfather. I can honestly say that he became one of the biggest figures in my life. I knew the exact day each month when the next Donald Duck comic would come out. To this day I can remember the excitement of buying them and the fresh smell of the ink as I opened them and began to read the stories.\n\nI know it seems odd to hear an adult admit that comic book figures helped shape his life. But in recent years I have read that both Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, two of my generation's greatest film directors, had their sense of adventure shaped by the works of Carl Barks. I am sure they can point to specific comic books that were seminal in their lives. I know I certainly can.\n\nIt was to Carl Barks and my father that I owe my eventual career path. I was reading a comic book in the same room where my father sat reading his anatomy book. Suddenly I came across the word \"philosopher.\" I believe Donald was pretending to be a philosopher, and for the life of me I didn't know what that word meant. I am sure I mutilated the word the first time I said it, but I looked up at my dad and asked, \"What is a philosopher?\"\n\nMy dad didn't look up from his book, but his answer was clear and to the point.\n\n\"Philosophers are very wise men who talk about very big and important questions,\" he said.\n\n\"Then that's what I want to be,\" I said. At the age of four, I knew clearly that I wanted to answer the world's big questions, no matter what those questions might be. I wanted to become a philosopher.\n\nHaving begun this chapter with my grandfather's stroke, I will end it with his death. Although he didn't die for another eight years, he was essentially gone from my life after that stroke. He couldn't chase me in the yard anymore or take long walks with me and talk about the people he knew or the places he had been. And although he tried to read to me a few times, he gave up on that too, since he couldn't form the words that he was looking at on the pages of books that I turned for him.\n\nGrandmother, trying to make the best of the situation, would say that he was only half-broken, since the stroke had affected half of his body. But even at the age of four I could see that Grandpa was less than half there. The change in him was so fast and so definite that I often likened it to turning off a light switch. Turn it on and the room goes bright, turn it off and the room is dark. His light had been turned off and nothing\u2014not Grandma, not modern medicine, not prayer, and not my dad\u2014could turn it on again. My grandfather had become a dark room.\n\nFor the next eight years, my grandmother was totally devoted to her husband. She bathed him, helped him with the bedpan, turned him over frequently to prevent bed sores, and sat with him on the porch. When Fairley or my father helped her get him seated in the antique wheelchair, she would wheel him through the house, out the front door, and down the street for a \"roll.\"\n\nConversation after the stroke became one-sided between them. Grandmother would read him newspapers or magazines or talk about events in Porterdale, and he would sit silent and listen. Sometimes he would just fall asleep and she would keep talking as though he were as attentive as ever. When he smiled, half of his face worked. When he tried to speak, half of his tongue worked, as did\u2014it seemed\u2014half of his mental functions. It was the ultimate horror for all of us.\n\nWhen Grandfather died in 1956, my grandmother seemed to expect it. She called the Porterdale Funeral Home and the owner, Mr. Davis, drove the home's vehicle over himself, loaded my grandfather's body on a stretcher, and returned to the home to prepare the body for burial.\n\nWe returned for the funeral from Macon, where we were living. When we went to the funeral home, Mr. Davis took my mother's arm in his and with tears in his eyes told her that her father had no bed sores on his body\u2014\"not one\"\u2014until the day he died.\n\n\"We were astounded,\" he said, looking deeply into my mother's eyes. \"Can you imagine? He couldn't turn over or take care of himself in any way for eight years, and still he had no bed sores. Your mother's a saint.\"\nChapter Three\n\nI wouldn't say that I focused excessively on death as a child, but when the subject came up I could rarely keep my questions to myself. For example, there was the first time I truly pondered the notion that death may be survivable.\n\nIt was the summer of 1956 in Macon, Georgia, and I was twelve years old. I was standing at the corner of our house by the garage waiting for my father to come home. It wasn't unusual for him to be late. He was a surgeon, and even at my young age I knew that there was no nine-to-five in that profession. Nevertheless, I was waiting anxiously by the garage for him because we were planning a weekend in the woods at a cabin my mother had rented.\n\nFinally I could see his big Oldsmobile come around the corner and lumber down the street. He pulled the car onto the carport and steered the front end within a foot or so of my legs. It always made me nervous when he did this, but I didn't move, even though getting tapped by the massive car's bumper would be painful. I held my ground.\n\nDad got out of the car and took a deep breath, like it was the first he'd had all day. Then he smiled, which made me think he was feeling guilty for being late, and shut his car door. I noticed that he was wearing no tie or jacket, and his longish crew cut looked slightly mussed, as though he had been running his hands through it.\n\n\"Sorry I'm late,\" he said. \"But right before I was about to leave a patient's heart stopped and I had to start it again.\"\n\nMy father was a natural surgeon who loved what he did and talked about it at every opportunity. Typical dinner conversations included how to stop a spurting aneurysm or the many different and fascinating ways to set a badly broken leg. That evening, he began to explain the process of restarting a heart, which was vastly different in those days before chest compression became the norm or the defibrillator was invented.\n\n\"By the time I got to the man he was dead,\" said my father, who described the next step of cutting open the man's chest by drawing his finger across the chest of an imaginary patient in front of him. \"I cut open his chest just below his breastbone and was able to get my hand in there and squeeze his heart until it started beating again.\"\n\nThe discussion of such an act could easily have been traumatizing to a twelve-year-old, but I was used to hearing the physical details of medical emergencies. That day, however, my father's words hit me in a slightly different way. My mind stuck on one thing my father said: \"The man was dead.\"\n\nAt that age, the idea of an afterlife would not have occurred to me. I had made up my mind even earlier in my life that when you die your body goes to nothing and your consciousness simply vanishes.\n\nBut now, as Dad told me about reviving this man's heart that had stopped beating, I remember saying, \"Do you mean that he was dead?\"\n\nMy father seemed taken aback by the way I had formulated the situation. I seriously doubt that he had considered what it was like for the patient, who had been resurrected from certain death by my father's deft handiwork. I could see my father thinking for a moment about my question, and then he shook it off. \"Yeah, the man was dead, but I brought him back to life.\"\n\nI didn't hear any more of what my father said. All I could think about was what this experience must have been like for the patient. I remember thinking that this man must have been in the darkest, deepest, most unfathomable and utter blackness\u2014and then he had come back from that. Did he know he was dead when he was dead? Would he be able to tell us what that other place was like? Or was there another place at all? This man had been in a place of total obliteration, yet he returned. Was there anything we could learn from that?\n\n\"Dad, did you talk to the patient when he came back?\" I asked. \"Where did he go when he died?\"\n\n\"Well, I did talk to him,\" my father said, somewhat defensively. \"But not about that. I asked him if he knew his name and if he could count the number of fingers I was holding up. That seemed more important at the time.\"\n\nI was only twelve years old at the time, so I was puzzled as to why my questions about the look and location of the afterlife disturbed my father so much. It didn't become clear until much later, when I was a student in one of Professor Marshall's philosophy classes at the University of Virginia, just exactly why my father didn't consider the discussion of the afterlife to be a \"live option.\" William James, the nineteenth-century psychologist and philosopher who coined this phrase in Varieties of Religious Experience, his great book on the origin and purpose of religion from the psychological point of view, defined a live option as religious belief that we can relate to, usually because it has been with us from childhood. So, for example, Hinduism was not a live option for James because it was not a part of his childhood experience and he had no familiarity with it. Christianity, on the other hand, was a live option for James because he had been exposed to Christian ideas as a young person.\n\nMy father had been raised an atheist and was dubious about religion, to say the least. The notion of an afterlife was not a live option for him. In fact, he would become agitated at the mere discussion of religion, calling it institutionalized superstition, or worse. Just mentioning something like the afterlife to him, if he was in the wrong mood, could dampen the discussion with a truckload of invective. So concerned was I about his ridicule that it took me years to realize that notions of the afterlife can exist independent of religion. In fact, I can now say with assurance that \"religion\" and \"afterlife\" are two entirely different concepts linked together only by religious dogma.\n\nTo be fair to my father, survival of bodily death didn't seem like a live option to me at the time either. It never entered my mind that this man who died had stepped into some kind of an afterlife dimension. What I was fascinated by was that he had been in a state of total obliteration and then come back. The idea that something had been going on while he was dead, that perhaps he was out of his body watching my father perform this desperate procedure to save his life, did not cross my mind. Now I realize that he may have been having the peak experience of his lifetime. He may even have confided later to his wife that he left the room via a tunnel of light and met dead relatives who convinced him that a spiritual life awaited his passage from the physical realm.\n\nYears later, when I began to hear about near-death experiences for the first time, I thought of the man my father had saved by plunging his experienced hands into his patient's chest. I remember thinking, Would my father have heard a story like this if he had thought to ask the patient whose heart he had revived?\n\nAbout this time my parents enrolled me in Stratford Academy, a private school started for gifted children. The school was in an antebellum mansion overlooking Macon from the top of a hill. The facility was beautiful, with a Victorian house as the main building and a large brick carriage house that held classrooms and a library.\n\nThe headmaster was Joe Hill, who became one of the most influential people in my life. He was a historian who demanded much from his students. On the first day of school he came to class with a stack of thirteen books and assigned one to each of us in the class. I was lucky enough to be assigned Thucydides' work on the Peloponnesian War. I was in the eleventh grade.\n\nMrs. Hill was just as amazing as her husband. We studied literature under her, and every week the thirteen members of the class had to write a lengthy paper about what they had read. With the close personal attention we received from the Hills and other staff members at Stratford Academy, none of this work was difficult, even though we were so young.\n\nAll of a sudden I was getting straight As on my report card. I was no longer derogatorily labeled \"the smart kid,\" as I had been by the other students at the public high school. Now, at Stratford, I was among the smart kids in an environment that truly respected intellect. I had finally found the place where I belonged, and I was thriving. My depression left me, and my parents noted that I rarely retreated to the basement for long periods of time anymore, something I had done frequently when I was in public school.\n\nMy parents made a lot of my \"return to normal,\" and I can now understand why. After all, how many sixteen-year-olds are interested in constant, self-guided study? Not many. Was it abnormal? Perhaps so to an outside observer, but from my point of view I was not abnormal. I liked to learn the way most boys like to play baseball.\n\nThere was something going on that was definitely abnormal, however, and that was my body temperature. Despite the heat of the Georgia summers and the hot furnaces and thick coats of the winters, I always felt constantly and memorably chilled to the bone and had a \"funny feeling\" in my throat, a tingling that was difficult to describe. I also had other feelings that are easier to sum up. I felt as though everything around me was a dream, and that I was watching someone else's reality. It was like there was glass between me and the rest of the world and a feeling of de-realization. This was an annoying feeling, one that I always knew was wrong but that I could not shake.\n\nI think these feelings were the first signs of the thyroid deficiency\u2014myxedema\u2014that plagues me to this day. Most people have never heard of this disease. Myxedema is caused by an underactive thyroid gland, one that does not produce enough thyroxine. This hormone controls much of a person's metabolism. If one has too much thyroxine\u2014hyperthyroidism\u2014then the body's metabolism burns at a high rate. People with hyperthyroidism have unpleasant symptoms such as weight loss, fast heart rate, increased bowel movements, heat intolerance, and insomnia.\n\nOn the other end of the spectrum, people with too little thyroxine\u2014hypothyroidism, which is what I have\u2014are plagued by low metabolism, cold intolerance, fatigue, hair loss, depression, and irritability. If hypothyroidism continues, then myxedema madness can occur, a condition that leads progressively to dementia and delirium and eventually to hallucinations or psychosis.\n\nAt this point in my young life, I was far from suffering myxedema madness, but I was certainly at the beginning stages of hypothyroidism. The problem was that nobody knew it. To most people I just came across as an aloof and physically heavy young man who was mainly concerned with books and much less concerned with the world around him. In reality, though, I was a person with a developing thyroid problem that left me with little physical energy and a diminished ability to push back against the world.\n\nOddly enough, my thyroid problem may have been diagnosed at this time by my uncle Carter. I remember the moment well. My father and I were with Carter, standing outside a Walgreen's drugstore in downtown Macon, when Carter put his hand on my arm and then put the back of his hand against my face. A frown came over his face as he tapped my father on the arm.\n\n\"I think Ray has thyroid problems,\" he said. \"He should be sweating like the rest of us, but he's as cool as a cucumber.\"\n\nMy dad reached over and put his hand on my face. I noticed that he was perspiring just as heavily as one would expect on a hot and humid summer afternoon in the Deep South. Uncle Carter was pouring sweat too, his shirt soaked like he had walked past a sprinkler.\n\nAs my father's hand touched my face, the front door of the Walgreen's drugstore opened and the cool air from the air-conditioned store blew out the door and across my dry and cold body.\n\n\"I think it's just the air conditioning from the store,\" he said.\n\nThe two doctors engaged in a brief conversation about my case. My uncle asked me if I ever had a \"funny feeling\" in my throat. When I said yes, he started feeling my throat and asked if I had gained weight or ever felt cold when I thought I should be hot.\n\nAs I started answering his questions he became more interested. Then the Walgreen's door swung open and out came my mother and aunt.\n\n\"Come on, let's go,\" said my aunt. \"It's hot out here.\"\n\nNow, when I think of the attitude I adopted in those days toward knowledge, I think of the philosopher Kant, who said, \"There are always two things that fill me with wonder\u2014the starry heavens above me and the conscious self within me.\" That is how it was for me as I found myself engrossed in the worlds of astronomy and human psychology.\n\nMy interest in the starry heavens came one day in 1952 when I was perusing the racks at a newsstand in a downtown hotel. I frequently became lost in the world of magazine covers and current news, but on this day a headline on the cover of Collier's magazine caught my eye: \"Man Will Fly in Space Soon.\" That article, which would change my life, was written by a man with the unpronounceable name of Werner von Braun. Working for Hitler during World War II, he had developed the V-2 rocket, which at the time was an advanced weapon that was launched from sites in Europe at his great nemesis, Great Britain. These deadly winged \"buzz bombs,\" as the British called them, would fall from the sky with their explosive payload. They killed very few people, but their presence was unnerving to the British, who hated not only the bombs but the men like von Braun who had created them.\n\nWhen the war ended, the United States scooped von Braun and other scientists out of Germany and brought them here to start our own rocket program. Von Braun was our greatest scientific catch from the war. A genius and a natural leader, von Braun was in charge of the American rocket program that eventually put a man on the moon and sent spacecrafts far beyond it. One NASA source called von Braun, \"without a doubt, the greatest rocket scientist in history.\"\n\nThe article I found at the newsstand that day presented a brief history of rockets. Over the next several issues the magazine covered such enticing subjects as the satellites that had already been launched, the creation of three-stage rockets that would blast men into outer space, the creation of giant space stations, flights to the moon, and the eventual creation of winged airplanes that would fly into outer space.\n\nI was already hooked on astronomy at this time. But this series of magazine articles made me realize that we were close to being able to leave the earth and study firsthand many of the things we had only seen with telescopes or speculated about. As I read these articles I was in complete ecstasy.\n\nAfter the second part of this space travel series came out, I showed my father what I was reading. I remember the event very well, because it was the beginning of another rift between us. He was sitting in his easy chair, reading the newspapers, when I proudly opened the magazines and showed him the articles. I expected to have a conversation with him about the eventual exploration of outer space, so I was surprised to hear him chuckle as he scanned the magazine pages.\n\n\"This is completely ridiculous,\" he said, tossing the magazines at my feet. \"Man will never go to the moon!\"\n\nFor the next fifteen years my father tormented me with his belief that man would never go to the moon. He made fun of my belief until the day Neil Armstrong took his first step on the moon, and then he never mentioned it again.\n\nLooking back, I think that my father either thought I was mentally ill to believe \"such nonsense\" or perhaps believed that I would waste my life studying the heavens when there was so much here on earth that deserved our focus. Beyond making it clear that he was completely against any interest I had in space travel, he never really told me what his issue was with it.\n\nAfraid that my father would throw out the magazines, I kept them hidden under my mattress, like many boys who hide Playboy. Late at night I would bring them out and read them by flashlight, using them to prime myself for dreams of weightlessness or a deep space view of our own world.\n\nI kept the magazines for years. Finally they deteriorated so much from constant reading that I had to tape their covers to keep them together. I eventually lost them when I went to college.\n\nI couldn't get enough of astronomy. The vastness of space and the fact that there might be other worlds out there, the pictures of Mars with the lacework of canals covering its red surface, the pictures of Saturn and the notion that in my lifetime we could fly to these distant planets\u2014all of these things became my primary source of daydreams. I would sit at my desk during school and imagine flying in space. By the end of the day my notebook would be filled with different designs for spacecraft. I would imagine sitting in the pilot's seat, feeling the g-forces as the rocket blasted off. Then I would be weightless as the spacecraft shot across the universe. Sometimes I would take a short trip to the moon. But if time allowed, I would imagine going all the way to Mars, where a soft landing would allow me to see up close the canals that I had only seen in photographs. Sometimes, in my mind, living beings came out of those canals to greet me and I would be treated to a visit with people from another planet.\n\nWhen this outer space obsession began, I was afraid that the teacher might call on me and I would be brought back into the gravity of the classroom. After a while, though, I didn't care if the teacher called on me, no matter how embarrassed I might be not to know what she had been talking about. I was an astronaut\u2014an astronaut of inner space at this point, but an explorer nonetheless.\n\nOther thoughts came to my mind too. I realized that we were one of perhaps thousands or tens of thousands of planets. Thinking about the vastness of space expanded my consciousness. It became obvious to me that among these uncountable galaxies, we could not be the only living beings. Somewhere out in space, there were more of us. I began to draw the types of people we might encounter on other planets. The ones on larger planets might have a squat appearance from the increased pull of gravity, while those on smaller planets would be spindly and tall because they would not need very much muscle. These basic illustrations were of great interest to my teachers, who always paused to look as they walked past my desk.\n\nI was also drawn to science fiction movies, all of which had aliens who disembarked from spaceships and either wreaked havoc on earth or came in peace.\n\nFor some reason, my father would become very upset when I chose to go to a science fiction film. When I asked him for my allowance to go to a movie, I could see his face start to flush red and his teeth clench.\n\n\"You're wasting your money on that garbage,\" he said. \"There's more to do here that you should focus on. Outer space is just an excuse to daydream. You should think about things that are here on earth!\"\n\nThe psyches of other kids might have been damaged by this kind of treatment from their father. It had little effect on me, however. That my father couldn't see the great future in space exploration just made me feel sorry for him. I equate his attitude with that of many parents nowadays who can't see the infinite possibilities for their children in playing video games and cruising the Internet. Sometimes the future is in daydreaming or play.\n\nBy now I had developed male role models. At this point in my life most of them were scientists, and the man at the top of the list was Werner von Braun. So I was beside myself in March 1958 when I picked up the Macon newspaper and read the headline, \"Famed Dr. von Braun to Speak in Macon.\"\n\nOn the night of his lecture I dressed in my nicest clothing and went to the college auditorium to hear my idol. The spacecraft Explorer 1, the first earth satellite to be launched by the United States, had just been sent into space a month earlier, so I expected a big crowd. But when I arrived, the auditorium was only about half full. I sat up front as von Braun talked about the space program, his enthusiasm and accent making him difficult to comprehend.\n\nI approached von Braun when the lecture was over and engaged him in a conversation about the difficulties of space travel. We spoke for maybe half an hour, and then one of his handlers broke in and told him his car was waiting. Von Braun reached out and shook my hand. \"What is your name again?\" he asked, repeating it when I told him.\n\nSix years later he returned to Macon, this time to Mercer College, where the auditorium was filled to capacity. The Mercury space program was in full swing at that point, and there were few things more interesting to Americans than rockets, astronauts, and von Braun.\n\nAfter his talk, I approached the podium to thank him for an excellent presentation. There were dozens of students around him, but when he saw me approaching he waded through them and stuck out his big hand.\n\n\"Raymond Moody,\" he said. \"How are you?\"\n\nI beamed for weeks when that happened. I had made an impression on a great genius. I must have been on the right track.\nChapter Four\n\nBy the time I left high school, my focus in life had become the unfathomable universe. My passion since age seven had been astronomy. The formation of the universe through (possibly) a \"big bang\" and the notion that the clockwork of planets and stars and asteroids, comets, black holes, and whatever else was governed by powerful and invisible physical laws provided enough for my mind to ponder for the rest of my life. As the late Carl Sagan said, \"What makes the universe so hard to comprehend is that there's nothing to compare it with.\"\n\nI genuinely felt that way about astronomy when I graduated from high school, and I searched hard for the best school for astronomy before finally settling on the University of Virginia. Founded by Thomas Jefferson, who felt that the South needed a first-class school, UVA represents a living memorial to the great intellect of our third president. Jefferson's home, Monticello, is located about five miles from the campus, and the ghost of this great president has been seen there many times.\n\nJefferson founded the university in 1819 in part because he wanted to establish an institution for the study of astronomy, which he considered to be as important a discipline as architecture. Coming from Jefferson, this is saying something, given that he designed several buildings, including Monticello, which is surely one of the most beautiful personal residences in the United States.\n\nAstronomy was practiced almost as a hobby at the university while Jefferson and then his successors struggled to find and fund the right professors. It wasn't until 1870, forty-four years after Jefferson's death, that Leander McCormick arrived at UVA to launch a truly first-rate \"school of the heavens.\" The astronomy program has been a jewel in UVA's crown ever since.\n\nI enrolled in the UVA Department of Astronomy in the hope of becoming an astronomer. But within weeks it became clear to me that I would not be spending my time at the eyepiece of a telescope. Instead, I discovered philosophy and logic, which introduced me to a level of thought I had not known existed.\n\nThe first class to do this was a liberal arts seminar. I was in the scholars' program, so I was allowed to be in this elite program that involved reading the classics and dissecting them in class with the professors. Our first semester was a veritable festival of reading: we read The Iliad, The Odyssey, several plays by Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, and Aristophanes, Plato's Ion, Apology of Socrates, Crito, and Phaedo, the Histories of Herodotus, Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War, and Aristotle's Poetics.\n\nIf that course allowed me to set sail on a sea of thought, a philosophy class pulled me into truly deep water. Our goal in this class was to read two books: Plato's Republic and The Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith. I found Galbraith's book to be a fascinating exploration of affluence in post\u2013World War II America, but it was Plato's Republic that swept me away. I remember where I was when that life-changing event took place, and even the time of day. It was 12:30 at the UVA library. Sitting alone at a big wooden table, I broke out The Republic and began reading.\n\nIn the first few pages, Socrates is talking to Cephalus, an older businessman who has finished his career and is now searching for spiritual enlightenment. Now, at the end of his life, Cephalus can see death coming, and thoughts and questions about the afterlife are filling his head. To paraphrase the dialogue between Cephalus and Socrates:\n\n\"I've done well in my life,\" he tells Socrates. \"But now I am closer to dying and my mind goes back to all of the things I've heard about the afterlife [or the \"underworld,\" which is where the Greeks assumed the afterlife takes place] and I am agonizing about this. Is there an afterlife?\"\n\nSocrates thinks a moment and then steers the conversation in another direction. He lauds Cephalus for his long life and then asks him what he thinks is the meaning of justice. Cephalus considers this question and then says, with confidence, \"Justice is returning to someone what you owe to them.\" I remember reading that and thinking that such a definition seemed plausible.\n\nSocrates thinks so too, for a few minutes at least. He once again speaks in laudatory terms about the wisdom displayed by Cephalus, only this time he adds a twist.\n\n\"What if a friend of yours comes to you and gives you a knife,\" says Socrates. \"And that friend asks you to keep this knife for him and to return it when he comes back from his voyage to another town. When he returns, the friend is not the same person. His hair is mussed up, his eyes are blazing, and he is babbling, talking out of his head and making no sense. Very clearly, he asks you to return his knife. Cephalus, my friend, would it be justice to return that knife to him? Under those circumstances, do you owe that knife to him?\"\n\nFor a moment I closed the book. I looked up at the sunlight streaming into the library from one of the side windows and felt its warmth\u2014and yes, its enlightenment. It may sound vain, but the first thing that appealed to me in Plato's Republic was the way Socrates could take apart anybody's argument. What became obvious to me immediately was that Socrates dealt not only with truth and untruth but also with that vast gray area in between. I began a simple list of questions that occupied that gray area between right and wrong, between truth and lies: Is it justice to return the knife to this man? . . . Is war ever justified? . . . Is it ever okay to let a patient take his own life? The longer that list got, the clearer it became to me that I needed to know and follow the reasoning of Socrates in order to take the rigidity out my own thought processes.\n\nI felt it was important to be able to think like Socrates. After all, when people start philosophizing, they often work themselves into a corner from which they cannot escape. For instance, if you hold to a definition of justice as returning to someone what you owe him or her, you will quickly encounter questions like the one posed to Cephalus.\n\nA philosopher's job is to provide course correction to an argument that doesn't make sense\u2014not out of spite or a sense of superiority, but in the spirit of helpfulness. Of course, as Socrates realized, not everyone is amenable to a philosopher's help. Some people get hostile or no longer view the philosopher as a friend. After all, once that person points out that nonsense is just a few reasoning steps away from a \"solid\" argument, he or she is likely to offend those who are dogmatic or thin-skinned. But losing such friends is the risk of being a philosopher.\n\nThere was another thing that drew me to Socrates, and that was the fearless way in which he wrestled with mankind's most important question: What happens when we die?\n\nAt this point in my young life, my interest in the question of an afterlife was like my interest in studying black holes in astronomy: though many astronomers believed that black holes exist somewhere out there in the vast universe, they had been unable to prove that black holes exist or describe how they work. I felt that the question of the afterlife was the black hole of the personal universe: something for which substantial proof of existence had been offered but which had not yet been explored in the proper way by scientists and philosophers.\n\nSocrates was doing that very thing in The Republic. Everybody knows that The Republic is about justice. But at its heart it is really about justice and what justice is in relation to life after death. At the very beginning, Cephalus brings up the notion of life after death, which frames the entire work in the notion that justice is related to the afterlife.\n\nBut it was the story told about the soldier Ur by Socrates at the end of Plato's Republic that truly kindled my interest in answering questions about the afterlife. Ur was a warrior who was believed to be dead on the battlefield. Soldiers cleaning up the battlefield threw him on a stack of his dead comrades for disposal. Several days later, as friends were preparing the funeral pyre, Ur suddenly sat up and announced that he had been to the other world.\n\n\"He said that when his soul left the body he went on a journey with a great company,\" says Socrates,\n\nand that they came to a mysterious place at which there were two openings in the earth; they were near together, and over against them were two other openings in the heaven above. In the intermediate space there were judges seated.... He drew near, and they told him that he was to be the messenger who would carry the report of the otherworld to men, and they bade him hear and see all that was to be heard and seen in that place. Then he beheld and saw on one side the souls departing at either opening of heaven and earth when sentence had been given on them; and at the two other openings other souls, some ascending out of the earth dusty and worn with travel, some descending out of heaven clean and bright. And arriving ever and anon they seemed to have come from a long journey, and they went forth with gladness into the meadow, where they encamped as at a festival; and those who knew one another embraced and conversed, the souls which came from earth curiously enquiring about the things above, and the souls which came from heaven about the things beneath. And they told one another of what had happened by the way, those from below weeping and sorrowing at the remembrance of the things which they had endured and seen in their journey beneath the earth . . . while those from above were describing heavenly delights and visions of inconceivable beauty.\n\nBy the time I finished Plato's Republic, I was truly hooked on philosophy. I left the library that day realizing that destiny had turned me into an astronaut of inner space, one who would now explore the inner universe of thought instead of the universe outside of our earth.\n\nMy readings for the liberal arts seminar carried on into the second semester, when we read the classics of science: Paracelsus's The Treasure of Treasures for the Alchemist, Boyle's The Skeptical Chemist, Lavoisier's Elements of Chemistry, the periodic table of the elements, Lucretius's On Nature, Galileo's dialogues about his experiments, Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Einstein's treatment of the theory of relativity, Euclid's Elements, Bernard's Experimental Medicine, Mendel's original paper on heredity, and Darwin's Descent of Man.\n\nI was constantly reading. And as my classmates and I read all of this work and discussed it in Dr. Marcus Mallett's excellent class, the information about the universe that I had spent years absorbing was now coming back into my own consciousness through philosophy. I remember realizing that I was little more than a spot of consciousness in an immense universe of nonsense. As French dramatist Georges Battaille said, \"Nonsense is the end result of all sense.\"\n\nDuring this period, thoughts of studying the afterlife were always in my head. In Clouds, Aristophanes mentions that Socrates was adept at calling up the dead. In The Odyssey, there is the very powerful scene where Odysseus visits the underworld. All of this came together with a reading of Herodotus, who writes about the Oracle of the Dead in Acheron, which is where Socrates was calling up the dead, according to Aristophanes. For the Greeks, the direction of the afterlife was down, toward somewhere in the underworld. It was plausible, they believed, to go down into a labyrinth of caves known as Oracles of the Dead and see one's dead relatives. The Greeks felt that there were a number of ways in which the underworld could be visited. One was happenstance: A man could be walking through the woods when suddenly the ground beneath his feet would crumble and he would find himself deep in a cave. If he made it back alive, he could tell of what he had seen in the afterlife. Another way to enter the next life was to visit one of these caves or Oracles, where a priest would take the initiate on a sort of tour of the afterlife. Another way was to be like the soldier Ur\u2014to die and return. Of these three methods\u2014happenstance, the guided tour, and the near-death of Ur\u2014the one Socrates truly believed was the story of Ur, which he described as \"but the tale of a warrior bold.\"\n\nAll three of these methods of visiting the afterlife are dealt with in The Republic. I began to wonder with great excitement: Did the ancient Greeks have a way of venturing into the afterlife and connecting with departed loved ones? Did they have actual techniques to make these connections? I filed these questions away for further consideration.\n\nWhat happens when we die?\n\nThat was clearly the most important question for Socrates, and therefore it became the most important question for me. Even as a freshman in college, I was certain that I was embarking on some kind of quest to find the answer.\nChapter Five\n\nAt the end of my second year as a philosophy student, I was called into Professor David Yalden-Thompson's office. Ever since the first time I was called to the principal's office, it has made me nervous to be summoned by a person in a superior position. But on this day I had little to be concerned about. Professor Yalden-Thompson was all smiles as he offered a chair for me to sit in and then sat down himself in his creaky wooden office chair. He got right to the point.\n\n\"Raymond, we want you to join the honors program in philosophy.\"\n\nI didn't know what to say. Of course I had heard of the honors program, but like receiving a Nobel Prize or winning the lottery, it was something that happened to other people.\n\nBeing asked to join the honors program was an amazing experience, especially to someone like me who had spent so much of his childhood down in the basement reading. What it meant was that I would spend the last two years of my college career with only one duty: I would do nothing but read.\n\nProfessor Yalden-Thompson gave me the particulars. For three of those four semesters I would be with a different philosophy professor. I would meet with the professor once a week for a tutorial to discuss one of three philosophical disciplines: epistemology (the study of the nature of knowledge), metaphysics (the study of the nature of being and beings), and ethics (the study of moral standards). Finally, I would have an entire semester in which to write my honors thesis.\n\nTo someone whose two favorite activities are reading and thinking, this sounded like a dream assignment. And it was. But it wasn't easy.\n\nAll of the reading assignments were accompanied by writing assignments. On a weekly basis, honors students had to write a long paper on what sometimes seemed to be an unfathomable philosophical concept. When we finished the paper, we had to sit with our professor for that semester and read the paper out loud to him. It was excruciating. Every few words the professor would stop the reading and ask for specifics about what we had written: What do you mean by \"improbable but likely\"? Did you really mean to use the word \"absolute\"?\n\nI would go into these one-on-one sessions with a deep feeling of fear in my stomach. Within a few of these sessions, however, I began to go in with a feeling of excitement as I realized that the professors were there to help me and that their questions weren't antagonistic but rather were aimed at challenging me and keeping me on an intellectual path. And although I jokingly referred to them as \"intellectual thrashings,\" I didn't truly believe that was what these one-on-one sessions were about. I came to feel that these meetings with my professors gave me the best education I could have.\n\nOn top of all this, there was another benefit to being in the honors program: We could audit any class on campus at any time. We could walk into an ancient history class, an evolutionary biology class, or an American government class, introduce ourselves to the professor, and be allowed to sit down and listen to what he had to say. We didn't have to read for the course or take tests. In an honors class you are considered a self-learner, and that is how all the professors on campus treated us.\n\nI began auditing graduate philosophy courses. One of those courses was the philosophical topics course taught by Professors John Marshall and Peter Heath. The topic in one of these evening classes was the question of the afterlife. To explore this question the class had read two works: Plato's Phaedo, possibly the best book ever written on the afterlife from a rational point of view, and David Hume's essay on immortality.\n\nOn one of the nights I was in the class, Dr. Marshall read Hume's thesis statement, noting that this powerful commentary on the provability of the afterlife could be used to argue either side of the life-after-death argument:\n\nBy the mere light of reason it seems impossible to prove the immortality of the soul. Some new species of logic is required for that purpose and some new faculties of the mind that they may enable us to comprehend that logic.\n\nWhen Dr. Marshall asked what we thought of this, I raised my hand. Given that Hume was an ironist, he obviously thought that proving life after death was not possible. There was even a chance that he considered this new \"species of logic\" to be delusion, I said to the class. And I felt that Hume was right in light of the type of logic that we have. Nevertheless, I had always suspected that he was wrong in that he most likely believed that we could not come up with a new form of logic, that it was equally unlikely that we would come up with some new faculty of the mind, and that after all, Aristotle had done pretty well for 2,300 years.\n\n\"However,\" I said boldly, \"both of these are imminently doable. It's just that people get this mental block and they think it can't be done.\"\n\nThere was silence in the class when I finished, and I expected some kind of counterargument from Dr. Marshall. That didn't happen. Instead, he took a moment to ponder what I had said and then\u2014slowly at first\u2014began to talk about a person who would become a formidable force in my life.\n\n\"Right there in the medical school is a man who might just agree with you,\" he said. \"There's a man named Dr. George Ritchie, a psychiatrist, who was pronounced dead. He had this experience of seeing this light when he died, and then he left his body and the real adventure began.\"\n\nDr. Marshall continued to talk, but I didn't really hear what he had to say. My mind stopped at the mention of Dr. Ritchie's great adventure at what could have been the end of his life. I wanted to meet this man.\n\nAt this point I have to say that I was intrigued by Dr. Marshall's mention of \"the light\" in Dr. Ritchie's experience. I had read William James's Varieties of Religious Experience, in which he discusses the role of mystical light in religious experiences. Here is one thing James has to say about the mystical light:\n\nHe sees, but cannot define the light which bathes him and by means of which he sees the objects which excite his wonder. If we cannot explain physical light, how can we explain the light which is the truth itself? . . . But do you wish, that I should enclose in poor and barren words sentiments which the heart alone can understand?\n\nInterested in these experiences of light, James began to study, among others, those who had nearly died. It is important to collect and study these experiences, James says, because \"they represent the closest thing to a microscope of the mind, that is, they show us in drastically enlarged form the normal processes of things.\"\n\nOne such case study came from a patient who was overdosed by anesthetic. After blacking out from an overly generous administration of chloroform, this woman began to see a strong yet different type of light. Here are her own words describing the event:\n\nAfter the choking and stifling had passed away, I seemed at first in a state of utter blankness; then came flashes of intense light, alternating with blackness, and with a keen vision of what was going on in the room around me, but no sensation of touch. I thought that I was near death; when, suddenly, my soul became aware of God, who was manifestly dealing with me, handling me, so to speak, in an intense personal present reality. I felt him streaming in like light upon me.... I cannot describe the ecstasy I felt. Then, as I gradually awoke from the influence of the anesthetics, the old sense of my relation to the world began to return, the new sense of my relation to God began to fade. I suddenly leapt to my feet on the chair where I was sitting, and shrieked out, \"It is too horrible, it is too horrible, it is too horrible,\" meaning that I could not bear this disillusionment. Then I flung myself on the ground, and at last awoke covered with blood, calling to the two surgeons (who were frightened), \"Why did you not kill me? Why would you not let me die?\"\n\nThese case studies included in James's work were intriguing to me. In the events described there, did people actually pass into a nonphysical world? Does this happen to everyone who dies?\n\nThese unstudied experiences were a powerful curiosity to me and made me wonder exactly what is happening as people pass over the threshold of death. With George Ritchie, I hoped I would have the chance to talk to someone who had gone as far as one can go and still return to talk about it.\n\nWhen I went home for Christmas vacation, I had one of those mysterious coincidences that have cropped up frequently in my life. We were all sitting around at dinner when I happened to mention George Ritchie and his return from death.\n\nI knew none of the particulars, so what I had to say was extremely short and devoid of detail. But when I mentioned his name, a strange and distant look came over my father's face.\n\n\"George Ritchie . . . George Ritchie,\" he said, putting his fork down. \"Camp Barkeley, Texas, December 1943. Double lobar pneumonia . . . pronounced dead and then came back.\"\n\nAs it turned out, my father had gone through his corpsman training at Camp Barkeley at the same time as George Ritchie. Needless to say, what happened to Ritchie was big news to the medical staff at this Abilene, Texas, outpost. My father called Ritchie a \"legend\" and said that he was an honest man who \"didn't let religion get in the way of being fun.\" That was quite an endorsement coming from my father.\n\nI could see what my father meant the first time I met Ritchie. He was the student health psychiatrist at UVA and spent a lot of time with the student population. One day I was walking to The Corner, a sandwich shop off campus, and talking to one of my suite-mates about Dr. Ritchie's story. Suddenly Dr. Ritchie himself came around a corner. My suite-mate knew Ritchie and stopped him for a moment to introduce us.\n\nThis was the first time I had seen Ritchie, and I remember thinking that he looked very much like an owl, and a wise one at that. He was on his way to a patient conference and had little time to talk. I got the sense in that brief meeting, though, that Ritchie was kindhearted and interested in the student. He also had that look of someone who had just finished a long session of meditation and didn't have a care in the world.\n\nI liked him immediately.\n\nWithin a few days I heard that Ritchie was going to speak to a group of students at one of the fraternity houses. I remember walking up the stairs of the house and sitting in the back of the room. Ritchie was standing in front, talking to a few students in the front row. After a couple of minutes, he checked his watch and stood tall, stretching out to his full six-foot-two height. Then with a kind and slow drawl he told the story that would forever change my life.\n\nHe began with the part I already knew from my father\u2014that he was in Army basic training when he developed a case of pneumonia that put him in the infirmary. This was a bad time for Ritchie to end up in a hospital bed. Before joining the Army, he had been accepted to medical school in Richmond, Virginia. Encouraged by the Army to attend, Ritchie was supposed to take the weekly train to the medical college on December 24. But now, the day before leaving, he was in a hospital ward feeling sicker than he had ever felt in his life. He was worried, though, that missing the train to Richmond might mean losing his coveted slot in medical school.\n\nLate that night, after hours of bone-racking coughing, Ritchie took his temperature. It was 107 degrees. He panicked and struggled out of bed to get help. The next thing he knew the medical staff was lowering him back into bed and piling blankets on top of his shivering body.\n\nWithin a few hours George Ritchie was pronounced dead. The cause: double lobar pneumonia.\n\n\"There was little left for them to do,\" Ritchie told the assembled students. \"I could hear the doctor give the order to prep me for the morgue, which was puzzling because I had the sensation of still being alive. I mean, I could hear the guy.\n\n\"I knew I had missed the train, and that bothered me immensely. There was nothing more important in my life at that time than going to medical school. I sat up and looked all around in this dark room for my uniform. I couldn't find it and decided that I didn't have any more time to waste.\n\n\"I came out of the room into a long hall and started walking to the end where the stairs were. Coming the other way was a ward man whose job it was to supervise that floor. I walked toward him and then\u2014to my surprise\u2014right through him. I didn't know what to think of that, but I also didn't want to stop to think. I knew I had missed my train to Richmond, and that bothered me more than anything, so I kept going.\n\n\"I went to the door that led to the outside, and I stepped right through it. Suddenly and without warning, I was up in the air about five hundred feet, flying at an incredible rate of speed.\n\n\"I flew for a while and then saw a city on the other side of a wide river. I decided to land there and did so in front of a white corner diner.\n\n\"I stood there for a minute or so until one of the patrons came out of the diner and passed by me. 'What city is this?' I asked, to make certain I was headed toward Richmond. The man didn't answer. I followed behind him. 'Excuse me, sir. Can you please tell me what city this is?' He still didn't answer. In fact, it was clear that he didn't even hear me.\n\n\"This was the second time that another human being didn't respond to me at all. I was puzzled.\n\n\"I went over by a telephone pole and leaned on the guide wire that holds these poles in place. My hand went through the wire just like it wasn't there.\n\n\"At that point I realized that I had left something I needed back at the infirmary in Barkeley: my body. I decided that I had to go back and get it.\n\n\"I then discovered something very important about not having your body. When you travel out of body, you are not governed by the same laws of time and space. I just thought about being back at Camp Barkeley, and in no time at all I was back, standing in front of the hospital.\n\n\"Now I was lost. I had failed to note which ward I was in when I left, so I had to roam around the wards searching for my body from among the soldiers lying there in the beds. I looked and looked for myself, but I couldn't find me. In fact, I found that, in this state, all of the people looked the same.\n\n\"I slowed down and began to look closely at the soldiers one at a time. There were quite a few who looked the way I thought I looked, but none of them had my black onyx fraternity ring on their finger.\n\n\"I became desperate after a while and for a moment thought that somehow my body had been disposed of and I would never find it again. Did that mean I would roam the earth for years, walking through walls and people and never being able to feel again? I didn't know, but that and many other questions went through my head as I frantically searched for the body with my fraternity ring on a finger.\n\n\"Finally I went into an isolation room where a body lay underneath sheets. The only thing visible was a hand with a black onyx ring on the finger. At that point I realized I had been flying around in a state of denial. I was dead\u2014that was obvious\u2014and I was outside of my body looking in. I began to weep and weep hard. I didn't know what to make of everything, but I did know that my body was no longer alive.\n\n\"As I wept the room became brighter, and then brighter and brighter, until it seemed as though a million welding torches were going off around me.\n\n\"I continued to weep. Then three things happened at the very same time. Something very deep in my spiritual being\u2014not the corpse lying in the bed\u2014said, 'Stand up! You are in the presence of the son of God!' Then, at the same instant, a magnificent being appeared, the most amazing I had ever met. The hospital walls around me disappeared, and I saw every little minute detail in my life, from my own C-section birth to my twentieth year up until the time I was pronounced dead. And I mean that I saw everything, and saw it in seconds.\n\n\"The being began to ask the question: 'What have you done with your life?' Well, I'm an Eagle Scout, I said. 'Yes, but that only glorified you.'\n\n\"I was stunned because I hadn't spoken, which means the being had read my mind. To me that meant there is no hypocrisy because we can all read each other's thoughts, so you can't say one thing and mean another.\n\n\"At this point that meant there was no misunderstanding what he meant when he said I had only glorified myself. But despite that, he totally loved and accepted me.\n\n\"The next thing that happened was that Christ told me to come over and sit next to him. For a few moments he opened the heavenly realm to me so I could see it. But rather than let me be drawn into it, he pulled me back into this little room where I returned to my body.\"\n\nWhen Ritchie finished talking, a number of hands went up and the questions began to flow. As they did, Ritchie passed around a death certificate from Camp Barkeley that was signed by Donald G. Francie, the doctor in charge when Ritchie died for the first time in his life.\n\nTo say I was hooked on death was an understatement. To deal with the great mind-body questions in a classroom was interesting but purely intellectual when compared to actually meeting someone who could prove he had left his body and traveled hundreds of miles.\n\nDid I say \"prove\"? Yes, I did. As we looked at Ritchie's death certificate, the man for whom it had been made out told us that a year later he retraced the route of his out-of-body flight to find the diner in the small town where he had landed.\n\nOn this trip he was with some friends who all knew that Ritchie had never been to Vicksburg, Mississippi. As they drove through town, Ritchie made the announcement that if they turned at the next street and went down a block or two, they would come to a white diner on the corner of the street.\n\n\"You've never been here, George,\" said the friend who was driving.\n\n\"Not in my body,\" said Ritchie.\n\nThe driver turned quickly, and in two blocks they pulled up next to a white diner, the one Ritchie said he had visited during the out-of-body experience he had when he died.\n\nSome of the medical staff at UVA once tried to hypnotize Ritchie to see if they could make him remember the experience of being almost dead. They got more than they asked for. As the doctors began to put him under, Ritchie went into heart failure, complete with distended neck veins and pain in his left arm. The doctor performing the hypnosis immediately terminated the treatment.\n\nRitchie at times had a direct line to God, he said. He felt the experience of returning from the dead had given that to him.\n\nRitchie said that one night an elderly patient called him and asked him to come to her house because her husband had died. Ritchie got to the house and found that the woman's husband was indeed lying in bed lifeless, without a heartbeat.\n\nAs he began to cover the man's face Ritchie heard a voice in his head say, \"Tell him to get up!\" Not one to argue with God, Ritchie stepped back and said loudly, \"Get up!\" The man's eyes opened and he stood up, said Ritchie. He lived several months longer and then expired for good.\n\nAnother time Ritchie and his wife Margarite were lost in their car in Washington, D.C. Ritchie pulled over to look at a map and happened to look up as a young man on the sidewalk passed the car. Once again a voice went off in Ritchie's head, telling him, \"That young man is going to commit a murder!\"\n\nRitchie told his wife what he had heard and then jumped out of the car to chase the young man down. \"Excuse me,\" Ritchie said to the surprised pedestrian.\n\nUnabashedly, Ritchie recounted the story for the puzzled man. \"So are you on your way to murder someone?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said the young man, who felt he had been wronged by an acquaintance and was on his way to settle the score. The two talked for several minutes until Ritchie felt that it was safe for the man to go.\n\nRitchie said that he didn't feel that he was in any danger chasing down a stranger with such an unlikely message. \"I had no doubt it was the voice of God, and he wouldn't steer me wrong.\"\n\nHearing Ritchie's story of death and rebirth had a major impact on me. I associated his story with those told by Socrates. To me, Ritchie was a modern-day soldier of Ur. As far as I knew, George Ritchie was the only living person to have gone through such an experience. I didn't make the inference that there must be more people like Ritchie\u2014indeed, many more people like him. Not until a few years later would I find out how wrong I was to think of this experience as unique.\n\nAfter the room cleared out, I approached Ritchie. Because my father had frequent bouts of anger for seemingly no reason, I often had difficulty talking to adult males. But Ritchie's voice was kind and his demeanor so easy that I immediately felt at ease with him. I told him that his story clearly answered the mind-body question of interest to anyone who had ever studied philosophy.\n\n\"For you, there is no question about whether the mind and body coexist,\" I said.\n\n\"None whatsoever,\" he said. \"For me, the brain is like a receiver and is not the cause of consciousness. It's just receiving consciousness from somewhere else.\"\n\nRitchie and I became fast friends. I think he determined early on that he had met his intellectual match in me. I was well read, and he, though not as well read, was \"well lived.\" He shared his life experiences freely and took me under his wing, talking to me about the diseases and disorders he dealt with as the student body psychiatrist.\n\nI remember one time asking him if any of his student patients had ever related an experience like his own. He thought a moment. \"When I speak to large groups, several people always come up afterward and tell me about similar experiences,\" he declared.\n\nUnfortunately, Ritchie never wrote down those experiences that were shared with him. Nor did he save them when they arrived in the mail. One time he wrote an article for Guideposts magazine and received \"a batch\" of letters from people who had had the same sort of experience. They were writing for help, said Ritchie, and there were so many of them that there was no way he could reasonably be expected to respond to them.\n\nEventually his wife threw them in the trash when she was cleaning the house.\n\nWhen my research garnered so much attention years later that I received a book contract, Ritchie shook his head over the loss of all that great data. \"I could have been you,\" he said.\n\nI had many great official professors at UVA, but the best of the unofficial ones was George Ritchie. We met at least once a week for coffee (although I drank Coca-Cola) and talked extensively about the human mind. It was as a result of these sessions that I became more and more interested in psychiatry as a profession. I began to see psychiatry as a practical application of philosophy, given that so many of the issues brought to the psychiatrist's couch stem from the same \"meaning of life\" questions posed by philosophers.\n\nRitchie agreed with me on that.\n\n\"It doesn't matter if you are Albert Einstein or a day laborer in Egypt,\" said Ritchie. \"All people have the same questions about life and death, and so far no one has answered them in a satisfactory way. So as we go along, century after century, mankind still wants to know why we are here and what happens when we're not.\"\n\nI began to talk to my professors and family about psychiatry and the possibility of practicing it as a profession. Most everyone I spoke to was encouraging, including my father, who confessed to me that he had considered psychiatry himself before deciding instead on general surgery.\n\nI have to say, I was surprised by that announcement. My father was perfectly suited to be a general surgeon and, to my way of thinking, didn't have the patience to be in the \"talking arts.\" The age-old description of a surgeon was written for my father: \"To be great, a surgeon must have a fierce determination to be the leader in his field. He must have a driving ego, a hunger beyond money. He must have a passion for perfectionism.\"\n\nFor my father to believe as Ritchie did that \"the best medical book you'll ever read is the patients themselves\" was in no way possible.\n\nRaymond Moody Sr. was in no way a people person.\nChapter Six\n\nI graduated from UVA four years later with a doctorate in philosophy. These years were a blur of studying, reading, frequent meetings with professors, and student teaching. By the time I graduated I was married to Louise Lamback, a beautiful girl who looked at me and saw her future.\n\nI had been deep in study for years, but the death experience of George Ritchie continuously came up in my readings, especially those that related to ancient Greece. In fact, the Greeks were so comfortable with the subject that they actually wrote satires about it. Lucian of Samsota wrote a parody of a dinner party where people are talking about their supernatural experiences. One of the guests speaks about being so sick at the party that he actually gets out of his body, a feat that stuns the assembled diners.\n\nStill, for some reason I thought that George Ritchie was the only living person who had gone through such an interesting experience at death and that all of the others could only be found in ancient Greece. I didn't make the inference that there could be more people out there who were just like Ritchie\u2014but chose to remain silent about their experience.\n\nA couple of things happened during my doctorate program that should have indicated to me that things were not normal in my body. One was that I began to have the sensation that color was disappearing from my vision. This first happened when we were going to paint the living room of our rental house and Louise brought home an entire can of bright red paint. She asked what I thought of the color, and I said that it looked fine, but in truth I couldn't tell what color it was. The entire can just looked sort of gray to me.\n\nAnother thing I should have taken notice of was my body temperature. Over the years at UVA I had begun to feel colder and colder. In the winter, when the classrooms were baking from the school's overly efficient heaters, I kept on the woolen clothing I wore outdoors. I wore a jacket even when summer came around and then sometimes found myself shivering in class.\n\nThe most obvious warning sign occurred on graduation day in June 1969. It was a sweltering day, and the graduation ceremony was being held outside. The combination of heat, humidity, and sizzling sun was causing the lightly dressed people around us to collapse from heat prostration. I, on the other hand, was wearing a heavy tweed jacket with a dress shirt and tie and not sweating at all. What's wrong with these people? I thought, never thinking that there was something wrong with me.\n\nBefore graduating from UVA, I was hired by East Carolina University to teach philosophy. I was given a dream job by the head of the small department. My duties were to teach basic philosophy with an emphasis on Plato. That meant that I would deal with a variety of the topics\u2014justice, knowledge, wisdom, ethics, logic, mathematics, rhetoric, the afterlife\u2014that lay the foundations of Western philosophy and science.\n\nI was thrilled to spend my days in a classroom lecturing to a dozen or so students whose assignment was to read the dialogues of Plato and be prepared to discuss them in class. I had a few students who fell asleep in class or who expressed a variety of excuses for not completing their reading assignments, but I accepted the fact that some students were not interested in the origins of Western thought or were just not cut out for the questioning nature it takes to be in a philosophy class, let alone be a philosopher.\n\nSome students, however, were extremely interested in the works of Plato, and some even demanded to go further than I expected to go. One of those students was a young man I'll call Ross.\n\nRoss was such a mess that I could hardly keep my eyes off of him during class. He had been in an automobile accident, and his arms were severely burned and covered with scars. I assumed that he was unable to raise them as high as his head because his dark hair had not been adequately combed for some time and was a mass of cowlicks that stuck out in different directions. In the beginning of the semester he had been fairly enthusiastic about the class, but after a few weeks he fell quiet and at times was somewhat surly. He became exasperated at what we were studying and more than once closed his book and used it as a pillow.\n\nOne day after class he waited until the room cleared and then limped to the teacher's desk where I was sitting. He looked both nervous and agitated when I looked up.\n\n\"Dr. Moody, I wish we could talk about something else in this class,\" he said.\n\n\"What do you have in mind, Ross?\" I asked.\n\n\"How about life after death?\" he said, somewhat sarcastically. \"Isn't that what philosophy is really all about?\"\n\n\"Why do you want to talk about that?\" I asked.\n\n\"Because about a year ago I was in a bad accident, and my doctors said I died. And I had an experience that has totally changed my life, but I haven't had anybody to talk about it with.\"\n\nMy eyes opened wide and my heart began to race. Was this an experience like George Ritchie's? I asked myself. Have I found another one?\n\nI closed my books and invited Ross back to my office. He limped down the hall and into my modest workplace. Next to him on top of a metal file cabinet was a stack of Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comics. Ross looked at me slightly askance and shrugged. \"I'm a big fan,\" I said. The comic books were an icebreaker for Ross. He smiled slightly\u2014the first smile I had seen from him all semester\u2014and began telling me a story that was very similar to those of the soldier of Ur and Dr. Ritchie.\n\n\"I was in a bad car accident on the freeway north of town. I hit a car that was parked on the side of the road and went from going sixty miles per hour to almost zero in a split second. I had my seat belt on, so I stayed in the car, but my arms were broken by the steering wheel, my head hit the window and shattered it, and a flash fire burned my arms terribly.\n\n\"When the ambulance arrived, the emergency team came right over and began checking me. One of them stepped back and said, \"I'm not finding a pulse.\" Then he went back to my body and kept looking.\n\n\"I couldn't tell what was happening because I was over the accident and looking down at my body. I could see the emergency workers trying to untangle me from the steering wheel, and I could still tell that they didn't know if I was alive or dead.\n\n\"All of a sudden I could see a tunnel open that was made of light. It pulled me inside of it, and out of the light came a man made of light that I think was Jesus.\n\n\"He let me see my entire life from the beginning to this moment. This image of my life came right out of a wall of light and looked like a television that I could actually step into if I had wanted.\n\n\"There was an end to the images, and when that happened I went high above the wreck site and could see cities of light. I have no idea what cities they were.\"\n\nRoss told me his story in a very matter-of-fact way. It wasn't until I asked him what the impact on him had been that he became emotional.\n\n\"It was a terrible experience, but at the same time a good one too,\" he said. \"I don't know if I'll ever recover from this accident, but I know that what happened has changed my life forever. I know there's a life after death, and I know that love is very important. But I want to know if there are more people like me who've had this experience. That's why I took your philosophy class, because I want to know what this means.\"\n\nThe emphasis Ross put on the word \"philosophy\" told me that my class had been a disappointment for him up to this point. I vowed to deal with the issue of the afterlife in our next class.\n\nWhen Ross left my office, I was stunned. What are the statistical chances that Raymond Moody would hear the only two cases that exist in the world and hear those within a four-year period? I asked myself. The answer was, of course, no chance at all. I began to wonder just how prevalent these experiences were, and just what they meant. I took out a notebook and began to write questions about these \"death experiences\" that I felt needed answering:\n\nAre people who have these experiences truly dead?\n\nDo the same events happen to everyone?\n\nIf so, do these events happen in the same pattern with everyone, or can they happen in any order?\n\nWhen people leave their body, do they see events that they can recall later that would prove they actually left their body?\n\nDo people on the \"other side\" tell them stories or events related to their own life that they had never heard before then?\n\nDoes having this experience change people's life upon their return?\n\nDoes a person who has this experience bring back any \"special powers\"?\n\nIs it possible that these events change the clinical definition of death?\n\nAre these events proof of life after life?\n\nI immediately shifted gears and changed the way I taught the class. I made Plato interactive by having the students read the Phaedo, a work that deals largely with his views of the afterlife. Then, when we reached the part where Plato talks about being out of body, I would stop and say, \"You know, I'm very interested in what might happen to people between life and death. If anyone has a story about a relative or even themselves actually leaving their body during an illness or accident, I would very much like to hear it.\"\n\nStudents immediately sought me out. It was as though these events had haunted them for years and now they had a chance to talk to someone who would not be judgmental or think they were crazy.\n\nI did not tape-record these early stories, but I remember them nonetheless. One was from a young woman who knocked on my office door and shyly began to tell me about her father, who'd had a heart attack when she was a child. When he returned from the hospital, he told her in secret that he had watched her and her mother stand over his body and not know what to do. When they finally called the hospital and he was loaded into the ambulance, he said he had followed above the vehicle all the way to the hospital, where he was able to see doctors prep him for emergency bypass surgery.\n\n\"He wanted me to know what had happened to him, but he asked me not to tell anyone because they might think he was crazy,\" she told me. \"So I have kept it to myself until now.\"\n\nA young man with a blond crew cut came in to tell me about being run over by a car when he was a little boy. He hadn't been injured, he said, but as the car passed over him he could see every nut and bolt underneath the car so clearly that it was as though the car was barely moving.\n\nAs well as seeing the bottom of the car in detail, the young man witnessed his entire young life passing before him in a way that he said was \"very bizarre.\"\n\n\"Dr. Moody, I not only saw everything that had ever happened to me, I also felt the emotions of everything in my life,\" he said. \"Even though it happened fifteen years ago, it has never left my mind. It is like it happened yesterday.\"\n\nSoon my house became a gathering point for students who wanted to discuss these mysterious experiences. Then many adults came to tell their stories. A dentist in his fifties came to the house one time and said he had heard about the stories I was collecting from a friend of his son's. He told me that he had been in an auto wreck years earlier and had left his body before the ambulance arrived and again later when he was in surgery. It was on the operating table that he'd had a very intense experience with \"this light.\" I turned on the tape recorder as he told the story:\n\n\"I knew I was dying and that there was nothing I could do about it, because no one could hear me.... I was out of my body, there's no doubt about it, because I could see my own body there on the operating room table. My soul was out! All this made me feel very bad at first, but then this really bright light came. It did seem that it was a little dim at first, but then it was this huge beam. It was just a tremendous amount of light, nothing like a big bright flashlight, it was just too much light. And it gave off heat to me: I felt a warm sensation.\n\n\"It was a bright yellowish white\u2014more white. It was tremendously bright; I just can't describe it. It seemed that it covered everything, yet it didn't prevent me from seeing everything around me\u2014the operating room, the doctors and nurses, everything. I could see clearly, and it wasn't blinding.\n\n\"At first, when the light came, I wasn't sure what was happening, but then it asked, it kind of asked me if I was ready to die. It was like talking to a person, but a person wasn't there. The light's what was talking to me, but in a voice.\n\n\"Now I think that the voice that was talking to me actually realized that I wasn't ready to die. You know, it was just kind of testing me more than anything else. Yet, from the moment the light spoke to me, I felt really good\u2014secure and loved. The love that came from it is just unimaginable, indescribable. It was a fun person to be with! And it had a sense of humor too\u2014definitely.\"\n\nIn short order, I tape-recorded eight mysterious experiences that happened at the point of death.\n\nWord about what I was doing got out quickly in the small town of Greenville, South Carolina. A student spoke to a friend of his who was a local newspaper reporter, who did a short article about the philosophy teacher who was asking students for accounts of experiences at the point of death.\n\nAfter the article came out, I expected some problems from the local churches, whose members I thought would see my interest in these experiences as an affront to religion. But I was surprised. The first organization to ask me to speak about my findings was the Jarvis Memorial United Methodist Church. I was invited to its Wednesday night potluck supper by Karl Fazer, the assistant provost of East Carolina University and a former Marine colonel.\n\nI had become a good public speaker, but I was still nervous that night as I faced several dozen people who were, well, religious enough to spend Wednesday night in a church.\n\nI told the congregation about Plato and about Dr. Ritchie and then about the student who wanted to tell me about the accident that seemed to take him to a different world. I wondered out loud if there were some stories in this very room like the ones I was about to play on the tape recorder.\n\nThen I hit the play button.\n\nThe eating in the room stopped as the congregants put down their forks and listened. I could see that Colonel Fazer was getting agitated by what he was hearing, but I couldn't tell if he was aghast or amazed.\n\nHe stood up from his place at the front table and walked to the tape recorder. He bent at the waist and put his ear to the speaker for a long enough time that I began to get nervous. Then he straightened up and said, \"This is real! These people aren't making it up! This is real!\"\n\nI tried to appear unmoved, the way I thought a truly objective researcher should look. But I couldn't. I began to smile and nod my head at the raw emotion that came from Colonel Fazer.\n\nI knew I was on to something big.\nChapter Seven\n\nYou can guide your life to a certain extent, and then, if you are lucky, serendipity takes over. It leads you down a path that you would not have considered an option. Once you've experienced that path, though, you become comfortable with it and know that it is the path you should have chosen all along.\n\nThat is what happened to me in studying these as-of-yet-unnamed experiences. I was constantly approached by people who wanted to tell me their story or the story of a loved one. For example, one day in downtown Greenville I was approached by a woman who had seen me at the church where I spoke and wanted to tell me the story of what had happened to her husband when he had his heart attack.\n\n\"After my husband's heart attack, I knew right away that something was different. I asked him if the medicine was affecting him, and he said that it went way beyond that. He said when his heart stopped, the floor seemed to go out from under him and he was up in the air watching the ambulance attendants take him away, and then later he watched as the doctors put a tube in his arm and tried to get his heart started. He said he saw his mother too. She had died ten years ago but was a great comfort for him while he was up there.\"\n\nOn another occasion a man stopped me on campus and asked if I was that \"Dr. Death\" he had read about. He said he had fallen from a ladder while working on his home and landed on his head.\n\n\"I lay there for several minutes before I was found. At first everything was black, like I was in a closet. Then the roof seemed to open up, and I went up this spiral tunnel and into a bright light. It was great and I didn't want to wake up. But here I am.\"\n\nI was studying for medical school entrance exams at the time, as well as teaching and collecting stories. A pattern was beginning to emerge in these stories, but I felt I needed to see many more before drawing any conclusions. At this point I just called them \"afterlife stories\" because that seemed to encompass the popular perception of what they were. As a result, some of the students, like the man who had told me his story about falling off a ladder, began to call me \"Dr. Death\"\u2014not a particularly endearing nickname to pin on someone who was hoping to make it into medical school.\n\nDespite that moniker, I was accepted into the Medical College of Georgia in 1972. Several of my friends from Macon had gone there and were now upperclassmen. They knew of the research I was doing and told the professors of my work.\n\nHaving it generally known at the medical school that I was studying these afterlife experiences made me cautious. I was concerned that I would face criticism for studying experiences like these in an institution dedicated to medicine, not metaphysics. But that concern disappeared as I discovered that the staff was very interested in what I was studying and what I had to say about it.\n\nThe first member of the medical staff to show interest in my work was Claude Starr Wright, my hematology professor. A few years earlier he had resuscitated a fellow doctor and friend who nearly died of a heart attack. When the man revived, he looked up in anger at Wright and said, \"Next time this happens let me die!\"\n\nThe doctor went on to tell him of an experience that was painless, peaceful, and filled with the promise of a life after life.\n\n\"Life is like imprisonment,\" he told his fellow MD a few days later. \"In this state we just can't understand what prisons these bodies are. Death is a release\u2014like an escape from prison. That's the best thing I can think of to compare it to.\"\n\nWright, who had heard about a few more of these experiences since he saved his doctor friend, said to me, \"I would like to know what these experiences are all about.\" He thought it was good that someone had come into the medical school with a fresh idea about what should be studied.\n\nOther doctors encouraged me too. Russ Moores, another hematology professor, had heard these afterlife stories from a number of patients as well as from other doctors, and he too wanted to see them studied. \"We don't know what the implications of these experiences are, and we need to know that,\" he said. \"This could be a whole new field, and up to now it has been ignored.\"\n\nDuring my first couple of weeks I heard eight afterlife stories from the teaching staff, about half of which were experiences they'd had themselves.\n\nSeven months after starting medical school, I was invited to speak before the Milton Anthony Medical Society about the phenomenology of what I had come to call \"the near-death experience.\" I called it the near-death experience because those who had it were not technically dead but were very close to it. And yes, this definition included those who had suffered cardiac arrest. They were as close as they could be to death, yet were not there yet. \"Death is the cessation of all bodily functions,\" I said to the fifty or so doctors who filled the rotunda. \"At least all bodily functions we know of.\"\n\nMy years of teaching had erased my fear of public speaking, but on this day I had to admit that my hands were perspiring as I addressed the common elements in about twenty of my case studies.\n\nWhen I finished my talk, a polite round of applause was followed by one of the doctors holding up his hand. An Amish doctor who taught anatomy at the medical college, he was a gruff man who liked to challenge students in class, and he was about to challenge me now.\n\n\"Dr. Moody, I have been in medicine for many years now. Why haven't I heard of this before?\"\n\nI was ready to throw his question out to the audience when his wife held up her hand and began speaking.\n\n\"Don't you remember our friend Janet telling us about how this happened to her?\" she asked. \"Janet had an experience just like the one you've described here.\"\n\nA hearty laugh arose from the assembled doctors. The ice was broken, and the secret stories they had never before shared came pouring out. I interviewed at least two of the doctors who told their story that day, adding their commentary to the near-death experience archive I was collecting.\n\nEarly in my second year of medical school I was invited to speak at the Bibb County Medical Association, where a reporter from the Macon News and Telegram was in attendance. Based on what she heard that day, she wrote an article that brought me attention in the community and even more case studies.\n\nThen everything quickly changed for me. A reporter from the Atlanta Constitution came to interview me after reading the article in the Macon paper. By now I had examined several dozen of these experiences and broken them down into their component parts: the out-of-body experience, the sensation of traveling through a tunnel, seeing and\/or communicating with dead relatives, and so on.\n\nThe reporter spent a lot of time with me making sure he got it right. What came out was a long and honest piece about what I was calling the near-death experience.\n\nWhen the article was published, I suddenly became the most famous medical student in Georgia. Even my father was proud. He had been quiet about my research until the Constitution article came out. Now he was showing that article to his colleagues and patients, clearly thrilled that his son had gotten some ink.\n\nIt was during this very heady period that I received a call from John Egle, an editor for Ballantine Books in New York City. Egle said that he had read the newspaper article and felt the subject of near-death experiences would make a very popular book. Would I, he asked, allow him to pay a visit?\n\nI was now in my third year of medical school and as busy as I could ever be. In addition to studying for my degree and collecting what was now an almost steady stream of near-death experience stories from people, Louise was pregnant with our first child, who was due to be born in only a few months. Did I have time to see him?\n\n\"Of course I'll see you, John,\" I said. \"Come on down.\"\n\nA few days later John Egle showed up. A tall thin man with curly brown hair, he was born exactly ten years earlier than I was, on June 30, 1934. He was ebullient about all of his projects, but the prospect of getting a book about the near-death experience into the marketplace had his full attention and enthusiasm.\n\nEgle spent a lot of time reading my lectures and listening to the audiotapes I had made of the individuals as they described their experiences. At the end of the day Egle ran his hands through his hair and said, \"Wow.\"\n\nWe spoke for a while about the material and whether I believed that it represented proof positive of life after death. I told him that I didn't believe it did, but that I did think the near-death experience was at least a gateway experience that took a person right up to the point of no return. What happened after that, no one can know, I said to Egle. That would be the point of true death.\n\nEgle nodded his head somberly. I had already found that people insisted on bringing the same somber demeanor to this subject as they would have while sitting in a funeral parlor waiting for the service to begin. I didn't know whether they thought I somehow required that the subject be treated this way or if they just saw death as a somber subject. Whatever the case, since I saw the results of my research as some of the best news ever for those concerned that death was the end of all consciousness, I tried to put some levity into our conversation.\n\n\"So the message here is to not be so serious about death anymore,\" I said to John. \"At least the ride to the pearly gates is pretty cool.\"\n\nEgle nodded seriously for a moment until he realized I was putting him on. Then he broke a smile.\n\nAssuring me that \"this is going to be a big book,\" Egle asked me what title I had in mind. \"Life After Life,\" I said. Egle left that day promising that he would talk to the top editor, Ian Ballantine, as soon as possible about making an offer. In a couple of days he called back to tell me that Ballantine had agreed to offer a $1,000 advance against royalties. In March I received a contract from Ballantine and a letter congratulating me for developing such a fine concept for a book. The contract gave me only six months to turn in a completed manuscript.\n\nI was thrilled. I was going to be a book author.\nChapter Eight\n\nWhen I started writing about life after death, I had Plato in mind. He was the founder of academia, the man who formed the institution that gave people MDs and PhDs and the like. If the founder of academia thought that life after death was mankind's most important question, surely anybody who comes out of that academic system needs to listen very carefully to what he had to say about it.\n\nPlato set up the argument for the life-after-death question by making the most important statement anybody has ever made about the methodology of studying the afterlife. In the Phaedo he makes two important points:\n\n\u2022 There always has to be a narrative element in studying the afterlife because that is how people connect with concepts of living beyond physical death.\n\n\u2022 There also has to be a conceptual means of reasoning\u2014a logic\u2014that can take the truth-seeker beyond just stories and into the stream of objective truth.\n\nHe emphasizes that when we talk about the afterlife we are not using literal language. Rather, we are speaking words of consolation for people who are afraid of death. Plato also writes that talking about the afterlife is a form of incantation or \"magic words.\"\n\n\"We ought to repeat them to ourselves over and over to arm ourselves against the vicissitudes of life,\" he says.\n\nOddly, these comments inspired me to press on with the book. I was developing a form of logic that would allow sound reasoning about an afterlife. In short, I wanted to go beyond Plato. But that would culminate later, I realized, if ever at all.\n\nI quickly jotted down a note, the essence of which would eventually be included in the beginning of Life After Life: \"I want to assure my fellow philosophers that I'm not under the delusion that I have proven an afterlife.... And furthermore, for reasons I shall much later explain, I don't even think that such a proof is currently possible.\"\n\nBy writing this, I was hoping that the reader would see all of the difficulties in researching this topic and appreciate the brain power that has gone into its examination over the centuries.\n\nLater, those comments were taken out of the book by the editor, who insisted that readers would think I was \"taking it all back\" if it were left in. I fumed about that editorial decision for some time, but in retrospect I believe that removing those sentences was the right thing to do. Had I left them in, I would have been pushing too many contrary thoughts into the book, including ones that needed to be dealt with by those who wanted to study the afterlife more deeply.\n\nI saw this book as a work that could go beyond just telling stories of people who almost died to examine phenomenology, a description of the characteristics of a specific type of experience. By focusing the work on the phenomenology of the near-death experience, I would be breaking these amazing events into their component parts, thereby making them easier to research. The first step in the process was to dissect all of the case studies and outline the different traits present in almost all of these experiences. As I wrote:\n\nDespite the striking similarities among various accounts, no two of them are precisely identical (though a few come remarkably close to it).\n\nI have found no one person who reports every single component of the composite experience. Very many have reported most of them (that is, eight or more of the fifteen or so) and a few have reported up to twelve.\n\nThere is no one element of the composite experience which every single person has reported to me, which crops up in every narrative. Nonetheless, a few of these elements come fairly close to being universal.\n\nHow far into the hypothetical complete experience a dying person gets seems to depend on whether the person actually underwent an apparent clinical death, and if so, on how long he or she was in this state. In general, persons who were \"dead\" seem to report more complex, complete experiences than those who only came close to death, and those who were \"dead\" for a longer time go deeper than those who were \"dead\" for a shorter time.\n\nI have talked to a few people who were pronounced dead, resuscitated, and came back reporting none of these common elements. Indeed, they say they don't remember anything at all about their \"deaths.\" Interestingly enough, I have talked with several persons who were actually adjudged clinically dead on separate occasions years apart, and reported experiencing nothing on one of the occasions, but having had quite involved experiences on the other.\n\nI then presented all of the traits I had found of the phenomenon I called the near-death experience:\n\nIneffability: These experiences are virtually ineffable, or \"inexpressible,\" because there are no words in our community of language to express consciousness at the point of death. That is why many people who've had NDEs [near-death experiences] say things like, \"There are just no words to express what I am trying to say.\" This, of course, presents a problem because if they can't describe what's happened, they can't gain understanding from another person.\n\nHearing the News: Numerous people in the course of my research told of hearing their doctors or others pronounce them dead.\n\nFeelings of Peace and Quiet: Many people described pleasant feelings and sensations during their experience, even after being pronounced dead. One man with a severe head injury and no detectable vital signs said that all pain vanished as he floated in a dark space and realized, \"I must be dead.\"\n\nThe Noise: In many of the cases, people reported unusual auditory sensations, like a loud buzzing noise or a loud ring. Some found this noise to be quite pleasant while others found it to be extremely annoying.\n\nThe Dark Tunnel: People reported the sensation of being pulled very rapidly through a dark space, most often described as being a tunnel. For instance, in one case a man who \"died\" several times during burns and fall injuries said that he escaped into a \"dark void\" in which he floated and tumbled through space.\n\nOut of the Body: During these experiences, usually after the tunnel experience, the people would have the sense of leaving their body and looking at themselves from a physical point outside of it. Some described it as being \"the third person in the room,\" or like being \"on a stage in a play.\" The experiences they had out of body were quite detailed and often involved an understanding that they were dead yet were observing their physical body. Many of the people described medical procedures and activity with such detail that there was little doubt on the part of attending physicians interviewed later that some kind of actual witnessing of events on the part of the comatose patient had occurred.\n\nMeeting Others: Out-of-body experiences usually followed tunnel experiences and were usually followed by the meeting of other \"spiritual beings\" in their vicinity, beings who were there to ease them through their transition and into death, or to tell that that it wasn't their time to die.\n\nThe Being of Light: The most incredible common element that I found and the one that had the greatest effect on the individual is the encounter with a very bright light, one that is most often described as a \"being of light.\" This being first appeared as a dim light and then became rapidly brighter until it reached an unearthly brilliance.\n\nOften described as \"Jesus,\" \"God,\" or an \"angel\" by those with religious training, the light communicates with the individual (sometimes in a language they have never heard) often asking them if they are \"ready to die,\" or what their accomplishments are.\n\nThe being of light does not ask these questions in a judgmental way. Rather it asks Socratic questions, ones aimed at acquiring information that can help the person proceed along a path of truth and self realization.\n\nThe light or being of light is described as \"unimaginable\" or \"indescribable\" as well as \"funny,\" \"pleasant,\" or \"secure.\"\n\nThe Review: The probing questions of the being of light would often lead to a review of one's life, a moment of startling power during which a person's entire life was displayed before them in panoramic intensity. The review is extraordinarily rapid and in chronological order, and is incredibly vivid and real. Sometimes it is even described as \"three-dimensional.\" Others describe it as \"highly-charged\" with emotions and even multi-dimensions in a way that the individual can understand the thoughts of everyone in the review.\n\nThe review is most often described as an educational effort on the part of the being of light, one aimed at individuals understanding themselves better.\n\nThe Border or Limit: In some of these cases, the person describes approaching a \"border\" or \"limit,\" beyond which they will not return. This border is described variously as being water, a gray mist, a door, a fence across a field, or even a line or an imaginary line.\n\nIn one such case, a person was escorted to the line by the being of light and asked if he wanted to die. When he said he knew nothing about death, the being told him, \"Come over this line and you will learn.\" When he did, he experienced \"the most wonderful feeling\" of peace, tranquility, and a vanishing of all worries.\n\nComing Back: Obviously, the individuals I talked with came back to their physical lives. Some resisted their return and wanted to stay in this afterlife state. Some reported return trips through the tunnel and back to their physical bodies. But when they did return, they had moods and feelings that lingered for a long time. Many were transformed and reported becoming \"better\" people.\n\nTelling Others: The people I spoke to were normal people with functioning, well-balanced personalities. Yet because they were afraid of being labeled as delusional or mentally ill, these people often chose to remain silent about their experience or only relate it to someone very close to them. Because there was no common language in which to express their experience, they chose to keep it to themselves so no one would think they had become mentally unbalanced as a result of their brush with death.\n\nIt wasn't until many individuals heard of the research I was doing that they felt comfortable enough to relate their experience to others. I was frequently thanked by these long-silent NDEers, who would say, \"Thank you for your work. Now I know I'm not crazy.\"\n\nEffects on Lives: Despite the desire of most of these individuals to remain quiet about their experience, the effect of these experiences on their lives was profound and noticeable. Many told me their lives had broadened and deepened through these experiences, that they had become more reflective of life and more gentle with those around them. Their vision left them with new goals, new moral principles, and a renewed determination to live in accordance with them.\n\nNew Views of Death: In the end they all reported new views about death. They no longer feared death yet many had the sense that they had a lot of personal growth to attend to before leaving their physical life. They also came to believe that there is no \"reward and punishment\" model of the afterlife. Rather, the being of light made their sinful deeds obvious to them and made it clear that life was a learning process, not a platform for later judgment.\n\nDeveloping these component parts was the most important part of the book. No one had ever studied these experiences, and indeed there wasn't even a name for them\u2014near-death experiences\u2014until I began my studies. But the component parts were most important because they gave doctors and medical researchers a way to communicate with those who had had near-death experiences. Before my work, medical personnel might have dismissed these important events in a person's life as no more than a bad dream or false memory. But now doctors and patients alike would have a reference point from which to begin a discussion about a patient's near-death experience.\n\nGiven that this phenomenon had never been seriously examined by modern medicine, I was careful to include some form of corroboration from the medical community for these experiences. Without that, I feared that Life After Life might be considered the work of a New Ager or a religious zealot, neither of which came close to describing my orientation.\n\nAt the end of the chapter about the traits of the near-death experience, I added a section entitled, simply, \"Corroboration.\" I focused on the most obvious of the traits, the out-of-body experience. \"Many persons report being out of their bodies for extended periods and witnessing many events in the physical world during the interlude,\" I wrote. \"Can any of these reports be checked out with other witnesses who were known to be present, or with later confirming events, and thus be corroborated?\"\n\nTo answer that question, I pointed out that many doctors had told me that they were \"utterly baffled\" at how a patient with no medical knowledge could describe the details of the resuscitation attempts even though the patient was thought to be dead at the time.\n\nSome individuals reported leaving the hospital room where their physical body lay and traveling into the waiting room to be with frightened family members. These patients later surprised their doctors by recalling events and conversations that they could not have possibly been witness to if they had not been present.\n\nI related one story in which a girl left her dying body and found her older sister crying in another room, saying, \"Oh, Kathy, please don't die, please don't die.\" The older sister was baffled when Kathy later told her where she had been and what she was saying.\n\nI then provided two small case studies. In one of them, a patient told his doctor about medical procedures he should not have been able to see during his cardiac arrest:\n\nAfter it was all over, the doctor told me that I had a really bad time, and I said, \"Yeah, I know.\" He said, \"Well, how do you know?\" and I said, \"I can tell you everything that happened.\" He didn't believe me, so I told him the whole story, from the time I stopped breathing until the time I was kind of coming around. He was really shocked to know that I knew everything that had happened. He didn't know quite what to say, but he came in several times to ask me different things about it.\n\nIf there was a weak spot in my research, it was probably in this corroboration section, but I knew that more such evidence would come with time. Still, even addressing the subject with the slim amount of material I had would make it clear that these experiences had some kind of validation with witnesses who were present.\n\nI decided to skip the sensationalist writing that the copious use of adjectives would have afforded me, opting instead to write the book in an almost flat tone. I figured that the material itself was sensational enough to carry the day. Any attempt by me to amp it up would demean not only my credibility but also that of the brave people who had put their trust in me to tell their story in an uncompromising way.\n\nI wrote the book over the summer of 1974. Dr. Moores offered to let me do it as a summer school class for extra credit if I would let him listen to the tape recordings of my interviews. It seemed like a fair trade to me. I settled into a routine of writing, and in about two months Life After Life was complete.\n\n\"Well, you can rest now, you've done it,\" said Egle when I delivered the manuscript.\n\nEgle was now living on Georgia's St. Simons Island, where he had moved as part of a grand experiment concocted by the venerable Ian Ballantine himself, who had decided to open several small branches of his company around the country to make sure they captured any good local books that might otherwise slip through the net. The experiment proved to be a failure, and now Ballantine had decided to either close these branch offices or turn them over to the individual book editors. Egle decided to keep operating his little publishing company, which was called Mockingbird Press.\n\nAll of which does little to explain why my book manuscript sat on a shelf in New York for a full year before Egle called me with the disheartening news that the editor who had taken it over wanted me to \"novelize\" it.\n\n\"That's not going to happen!\" I said to Egle, who adamantly agreed with me.\n\nEgle pointed out to me that a year had passed without publication and therefore the contract with Ballantine had lapsed. That meant, said Egle, that the completed manuscript was mine. I could, he said, take it to another publisher.\n\n\"John, I want you to publish it,\" I said. \"This was your project to begin with, and you obviously have a passion for this. Please do it!\"\n\nA few days later Egle wrote a letter to Ballantine pointing out that the contract on Life After Life had lapsed and that Dr. Moody wanted to make other arrangements for its publication. Ballantine responded quickly, saying that they would gladly relinquish the rights and assuring me that the $1,000 advance did not have to be paid back.\n\nI was delighted to be free of my contract, delighted to be free of pressure to fictionalize the rawest truth I had ever heard, and delighted to be published by John Egle's little company, Mockingbird Press.\n\nEgle was optimistic too.\n\n\"This book is going to be big,\" he said.\n\n\"How big?\" I asked.\n\n\"I'll bet it sells as many as ten thousand copies.\"\n\nI had stars in my eyes at the thought of ten thousand people reading my book.\n\nWhen I received the galley proofs of Life After Life in November 1975, I realized that I had not yet dedicated the book to anyone. I considered dedicating it to my father, but he had not been supportive of my efforts to research this topic any more than he had been supportive of any of my areas of interest.\n\nI decided instead to dedicate it to Dr. George Ritchie, who had been like a mentor to me in studying and discussing the issues of life after life.\n\nI called Ritchie and asked his permission to dedicate the book to him.\n\n\"I appreciate that,\" said Ritchie. \"But I would rather you dedicate it to Jesus Christ because he is the one who gave me this experience.\"\n\nThis presented a true dilemma to me. I didn't want the book to seem aimed at a Christian audience, which a dedication to Christ would certainly have done. I wanted to stay neutral on the question of religion. I felt that the notion of life after life extends to all people, even atheists. I didn't want anyone to think that I came at this subject with a religious bias.\n\nFinally we agreed on a dedication that was acceptable to all:\n\nTo George Ritchie, MD, and through him to the One whom he suggested.\n\nLife After Life went to press.\nChapter Nine\n\nThe first inkling that Life After Life was going to be a huge success came from my friend John Ouzts. He was listening to Europe on his shortwave radio when he heard a long news report coming from Dublin radio that spoke glowingly about the book.\n\n\"I think you're sitting on a rocket,\" said Ouzts. \"This book is getting attention around the world.\"\n\nHe was right. For reasons that can only be explained in retrospect, Life After Life climbed onto every bestseller list in the world, where it stayed for more than three years. Why this took place can be answered in one word: vacuum. Up to this point the subject had been considered one that belonged to the world of religion, and therefore it had received little if any examination by medical science. Hence, there was no real scientific examination of the possibility of life after life.\n\nLife After Life was a book that even an atheist could appreciate. It did not bring God or religion into the discussion\u2014not really. Rather, it defined and explored a series of events that take place\u2014that have always taken place\u2014at the point of death. Suddenly there was research that approached the subject of death in a methodical and measured way. With the publication of this book, the medical establishment was free to talk about the process of death and dying without having to allude to religious beliefs. With Life After Life, doctors and nurses now had talking points to help them discuss death with the terminally ill and their families. Many in the medical field were relieved by the book's appearance. They had heard these stories from their own patients and didn't know that they represented a universal phenomenon. Now they did, and the popularity of the book not only gave them permission to discuss its content but almost demanded it.\n\nOvernight the phrase \"near-death experience\" came into the world's lexicon. In no time at all I was hearing phrases like \"out of body\" and \"tunnel experience\" and \"being of light\" on television and radio. Newspapers, comic strips, and late-night talk shows prominently mentioned near-death experiences, and they even became a punch line for comedians. It was as though I had opened a secret room and everyone wanted what was inside.\n\nMy life changed abruptly. I was still in medical school, my third year, but I was no longer treated strictly as a student. As my book climbed the bestseller list, my status rose. Professors often deferred to me in class. Nurses whispered when I passed.\n\nWhen I finished my surgical rotation, for example, I had to take an oral examination, a particularly nerve-wracking form of testing in which I would have to present all of my surgical cases to a professor who would question me in harsh detail. Or so it was supposed to be.\n\nFor me it was different. I was greeted by a smiling professor who had looked at my cases the day before and selected one to talk about, a woman who had presented with a lipoma. A benign tumor made from fat, a lipoma is more unsightly than dangerous. As I recall, the patient had asked for hers to be removed because it showed as a lump on her back that was visible under her dress.\n\n\"Dr. Moody, tell me about the malignant potentiality of a lipoma,\" the professor asked.\n\nI shrugged. \"Almost nil,\" I said. \"It's just a ball of adipose tissue.\"\n\n\"Excellent,\" he said. \"Dr. Moody, I deal with a lot of terminally ill patients, and I am so grateful for your work. Now I know how to answer their questions. It's a relief for them to feel the hope that I felt after reading your book.\"\n\nThe rest of my oral examination in surgery was spent talking about near-death experiences and the direction I would take next in this new field, which had already become known as \"near-death studies.\"\n\nThe professor's question was a good one: What new direction would I take in near-death studies? The success of the book had set me on a course over which I had little control. Market forces were pushing me deeper into my own field of near-death studies. As a professor once said to me, \"Raymond, you have no choice but to continue with near-death studies. We all follow the path of least resistance, which is the direction in which our work is accepted the most.\"\n\nI knew exactly what he meant. Before I began my near-death studies, I was the death of a party. Literally. When asked at a party what I was working on, eyes would glaze over when I said that I was studying Godel's theorem or some other abstruse philosophical precept. Later, though, when it became known that I was studying near-death experiences, people couldn't get enough of me and my work. They would gather around to hear about the latest case study or to ask questions about these visions of the afterlife.\n\nThis deep interest in my work from all corners of life helped keep me on the path of discovery. But in truth, I didn't need a lot of help to stay focused. By the time I had interviewed thirty or forty of these individuals, I knew that near-death studies would be a lifelong pursuit. I was, yes, hooked on death.\n\nSuggestions about further directions for my work came from all quarters. Some doctors felt that I should interview as many cardiac resuscitation patients as possible. Since a stopped heart is as close to death as one can get, these doctors felt that the cardiology ward would be an almost endless source of stories.\n\nThose inclined toward anthropology suggested cross-cultural studies: seeking out distant and primitive tribes to see whether they too reported near-death experiences. This was an excellent idea, but one for which I had neither funding nor real motivation. Others suggested asking children whether they had near-death experiences and, if so, determining if they were different from those of adults.\n\nThen came the suggestion that I put symbols on the tops of shelves or the backs of surgical lights and then later ask people who had had an out-of-body experience whether they had seen these symbols, thereby proving a separation of consciousness from the body.\n\nOthers\u2014not doctors\u2014suggested that I seek out volunteers who would allow their hearts to be stopped and then restarted in a medical setting. Some even suggested using suffocation. Acquiring near-death experiences in this fashion, they suggested, would allow me to control how long the volunteers actually went without a heartbeat. (On a rather bizarre side note, this suggestion that I stop hearts in volunteers remains popular. The people who present this idea to me usually follow it with an offer to be an experimental subject. I have never taken anyone up on such an offer, and to my knowledge no other researcher has either, although we all have subjects who have suggested such an approach.)\n\nAll of these suggestions\u2014focusing on cardiac arrest patients, pursuing cross-cultural studies, rigging lights and shelves with telltale symbols\u2014have been tried over the years by competent researchers, who deliver a variety of results.\n\nBut none of these approaches has gone very far in answering the question of what happens when we die. For me, the question is a philosophical one that can only be answered with an adequate theory of logic. That is why I wrote in the first draft of my book that, \"for reasons I shall much later explain, I don't think a proof of life after death is presently possible.\"\n\nInstead of acting on any of these suggestions for further study, I set out on my own path: to devise a form of logic that could reason through the thorny questions of life after death. Devising such a logical framework is a vast project. For one thing, the notion of \"life after death\" is a self-contradiction. In Aristotelian thought, self-contradictions are not allowed. Rather, the primary basis of Western thought is \"the law of the excluded middle\": Every statement is either true or false. This means, of course, there is no gray area.\n\nTo answer the question of whether there is life after death, one has to overcome the inherent self-contradiction in the notion. Filled with hubris, I set out to do just that: to develop a logic of nonsense.\n\nI soon realized that developing this new logic was\u2014and is\u2014a long-term project. Plato first worked on the problem in the fourth century BC, and since that time hundreds of other philosophers have worked on similar systems of logic. Yet no one has ever resolved the problem of this self-contradictory question: What happens when we die? I have tried my best to resolve this problem and am still working on it to this day. If I don't resolve it with the discovery of the new logic I have been seeking all this time, the advancements I have made will be passed on to the next generation of logicians to continue the struggle.\n\nIn the meantime, though, I became embroiled in a more immediate problem: the battle between religious people and New Agers over exactly what it was I had discovered in near-death experiences. Both of these groups believed the same thing\u2014that near-death experiences are proof of life after death. And members of each group wanted me to publicly agree with them.\n\nIn part I could understand why. The publisher of the mass market paperback version of Life After Life, in his zeal to sell books, had added this subtitle to the cover: \"Actual Case Histories That Reveal There Is Life After Death.\" I never, however, implied that in the book. Rather, I declared openly\u2014in both the book and my lectures\u2014that these experiences were not proof of an afterlife. I also declared that my work was not scientific.\n\nI wasn't trying to be cantankerous in making such a statement. Rather, I was speaking the truth. If I made a positive statement about the afterlife and later my method was shown to be defective, then those who had taken comfort from that statement would be propelled back into grief and they would be angry with me. As a result, I found myself disappointing many people who wanted me to state positively that I had proven the existence of an afterlife.\n\nBut I couldn't do that. It would be many years before I could cross the line into such certainty.\nChapter Ten\n\nWith the publication of Life After Life, two major forces in my life collided: success and illness.\n\nMy professors, all of whom were proud of me and glad that I had introduced near-death experiences to the world, treated me with great respect. Over the years since Life After Life's publication, people who don't know the facts have assumed that both the medical school and the medical profession ostracized me for introducing this subject to the collective consciousness. That was not true. The book was such a measured\u2014almost restrained\u2014view of a truly sensational subject that the medical profession saw it for the genuine work of discovery it was. Doctor after doctor has liked the matter-of-fact way in which the book was written, which means I carefully avoided any sensationalism. \"Nothing but the facts,\" one doctor told me. \"That is the sign of two things: great material and great scholarship.\"\n\nApparently the public agreed with that assessment because the book was selling at a stupendous rate, and dozens of media outlets wanted to talk to me. The problem was that I rarely wanted to talk to them.\n\nMy undiagnosed thyroid problem\u2014myxedema\u2014had taken a turn for the worse. The disease first hinted at by my uncle Carter when he felt my cold forehead on a hot day outside a Walgreen's drugstore when I was a teenager had become steadily worse. That strange tingling in my throat had intensified into a presence that prickled and called for my attention almost constantly.\n\nOver the past few years various doctors at student health services had looked down my throat and declared that I had nothing to worry about. Some of them believed that I had only swallowed something hot. An ear, nose, and throat man recommended by my father declared that I was only victim to too much schoolwork.\n\nAfter hearing these diagnoses, I tried to ignore the feeling of something being in my throat as well as other changes in my body. Despite running several miles per day, I was gaining weight at an alarming rate. I took my files to another doctor who declared that I was working too hard and eating too much. Before long I became so heavy that running wasn't possible.\n\nThen I developed patches of blotchy skin on my face and hands. My father noticed immediately and diagnosed it as a skin fungus. He had me go to the drugstore and purchase a tube of tinactin. When that didn't help, I went to a dermatologist who gave me a cursory once-over and declared the bleached-looking patches to be \"idiopathic vitiligo,\" meaning that its cause was unknown.\n\nI was given all of these wrong diagnoses before I started medical school. Now that I was almost finished with medical school my symptoms took an even more sinister turn.\n\nI felt totally out of energy\u2014dragging is the word that comes to mind. But when I mentioned my profound fatigue to one of my fellow students, he looked at me with strong disinterest and said, \"Medical students are supposed to work themselves sick and tired.\"\n\nOddly enough, when he said that we were studying hypothyroidism. I remember reading that patients with this disease are always cold and sleepy. I looked up from the book and said to myself: That must be terrible, because I'm always cold and I'm always sleepy and I don't have thyroid deficiency.\n\nI began to lose hair. Once again a doctor said that was normal. Men lose hair as they age, I was told.\n\nI kept going to doctors with myxedema symptoms that were right out of the medical books, and still they were not heeded. One of those symptoms was carpal tunnel syndrome. I went to the rheumatologist with a painful hand affliction and told her about all of my symptoms, from the strange feeling in my throat to the loss of hair. She put her stethoscope on my chest and remarked at how low my heart rate was. She asked, \"Were you an athlete, Ray?\"\n\nSince I used to run ten miles a day, she discounted my slow heart rate as a sign of fitness rather than a sign of thyroid disease. And she discounted my carpal tunnel syndrome as pressure on my hands from picking up big bags of groceries. The lack of energy? \"You're a medical student. You're supposed to be tired.\"\n\nEvery one of my symptoms had an alternative explanation. Yet no one in my profession looked at me as a whole person. Had they done so, they might have diagnosed my thyroid deficiency, which, if left untreated long enough, becomes myxedema madness, a cognitive deficit caused by the lack of thyroid production. At its extreme, myxedema madness mimics schizophrenia with a constellation of psychotic symptoms that includes delusions, visual hallucinations, auditory hallucinations, loose associations, and paranoia.\n\nThrough no fault of my own, I was headed down this dangerous road. My symptoms had been ignored by doctors, misdiagnoses had been made, and now I was slowly going mad.\n\nThe first real sign I had was a sensory one. I began to feel that I was pushing my way through an atmosphere as thick as mud, a gelatinous mass that was virtually impossible at times to move through. I remember once walking to a podium to deliver a lecture and wondering if I could even speak after the walk up the aisle. I was that tired.\n\nAs these feelings intensified I began to feel isolated and depersonalized, as though I were living behind a glass barrier, separated from the world. I'd had those feelings years earlier, but now I was having them in very powerful and meaningful ways. Once while driving in the hills of Georgia, for instance, I felt as though I needed to get out of the car and try to literally shake off this feeling. At other times I would be distant and nonresponsive during important conversations, as though I were watching events on television and didn't have to respond.\n\nSome people thought I had become a snob because I had written a bestseller. That wasn't the case at all. My thyroid level was fluctuating wildly, and I was at the whim of those fluctuations. Sometimes I felt better, sometimes worse, but I was in a gradually diminishing mental state because my overall thyroid level was crashing.\n\nI can't deny that the book's success put the spotlight on me and at times the heat from that light became quite uncomfortable. To tell the truth, success completely freaked me out.\n\nOver and above everything else, what bothered me most were the fundamentalist Christians who began to write hostile letters, some of which contained nothing but raw and unbridled anger. \"I believe in Jesus. How about you!\" wrote one woman, who then proceeded to tell me that I was \"letting the devil out of his box\" by exploring near-death experiences.\n\nThe main complaint from these fundamentalists was that people of all religious beliefs or even none at all would report seeing beings of light and would often describe those beings as \"God.\" This description was highly offensive to the fundamentalists. They said that seeing God wasn't possible for most people. Only those who were godly\u2014like them\u2014could see God, they declared. What these others were seeing was Satan himself, they reasoned, and therefore near-death experiences were the work of the devil.\n\nThat was difficult reasoning for me to wade through. At first I tried to laugh it off, but when I discovered to my dismay that these fundamentalists had little or no sense of humor, I simply tried to ignore them. That proved to be impossible since they were among the first on the line during call-in radio or TV shows.\n\nThese fundamentalists made the media interviews even tougher than they should have been. And those interviews were tough enough on the best of nights. In those days media interviews were long and serious affairs\u2014not like today when I am usually on for just three minutes between the story about the trained chimpanzee act gone bad and the release of green turtles in Miami.\n\nIn those days I had to get on a plane and fly across the country to an airport where a serious young woman would pick me up and then race me to a studio for a lengthy interview.\n\nSince I wasn't familiar with many of the interviewers, I didn't know if I was going to be in the studio with someone who would carry on a rational conversation with me about mankind's most pressing question or an ignoramus whose main task would be to create a sensation or, worse, just start a fight.\n\nI have to say that most of the interviewers were good to excellent. But there were some utter and complete morons who discredited the rest of their profession. Perhaps the worst was Lou Gordon of Detroit, Michigan. Even after all these years of being exposed to the best and worst of the media, I have never encountered a media person more vile than Gordon. Apparently other guests would agree with my assessment. Gordon took great pride in agitating his guests to such a degree that they would frequently stand up in mid-interview and walk out of the studio. If they took a hike at the beginning of the ninety-minute show, Gordon just sat back and talked about whatever was on his mind. He called himself a \"man of conscience, man of truth,\" so you can imagine the high-handed rhetoric that came out of his mouth.\n\nWhen I met Gordon, he was all smiles. He greeted me in the station's lobby and shook my hand. Then we went into the studio, and I sat down for what he promised the audience would be a fascinating hour of conversation about a subject of great concern to us all. It was when we started talking that Gordon revealed his fangs. He immediately accused me of fabricating the case studies in Life After Life. When I denied doing that, he insisted that I had at least stretched the truth about them. He knew I had stretched the truth, he said, because they all had similar elements!\n\nI tried to explain to him that many if not most human responses have similar elements and that this fact alone made near-death experiences fascinating. He would have none of that. He was trying to make a name for himself by tarnishing mine, and there was nothing I could do about it. No matter what I said he belittled it, declaring that I was a fraud and had made up all of my data! I thought about standing up and leaving but didn't because I felt that to do so would imply that I was lying.\n\nIn retrospect, I can see that the subject of near-death experiences punctured his shell of rigidity and somehow represented a threat to his belief system. He was not an open person and could not deal with a discovery that didn't fit into his worldview. Other interviewers occasionally responded this way as well. When they did, this serious area of study I had worked on for years was turned into a circus sideshow. It was disturbing to me at the time because it forced me across the line from being news to being entertainment.\n\nToday, however, it doesn't bother me when I am interviewed by an unpleasant talk show host. I have processed such experiences at a higher level in my mind and now realize that I have to talk to the ill-informed and the ignorant as well as the intellectuals and the curious. But I was young then and had thinner skin. And of course, I was ill.\n\nIf one good thing came of my time in Hades with Lou Gordon it was book sales. The next day the regional sales rep called to tell me that my \"fabulous\" interview with Gordon had pushed sales in Michigan through the roof. He didn't seem to notice that the previous night's interview had been mean-spirited and contentious. His eyes were focused on the numbers, and he liked what he saw.\n\n\"Any chance you can get on Lou's show again?\" he asked naively.\n\nI was young and taking my success as an author very seriously\u2014too seriously perhaps. The same went for criticism, which at times felt withering when it came from those around me.\n\nOne of my greatest critics was a fellow student in graduate school at UVA. He pretended to be a friend, but I began to find out that he was talking about me behind my back. Finally, Dr. George Ritchie, then as now a man whose opinion I respect greatly, took me aside one day and said, \"Watch out for this guy. He's green with envy of you.\"\n\nI didn't know what it was about me that this man envied. He frequently came over in the evening for visits with Louise and me. Initially I spoke freely with him about the near-death experience case studies I was gathering and the nature of the research I planned to do. Soon, however, I had quit talking to him about anything I was doing. He had begun to talk about my research to other people at the university, trying to poke holes in it or using half-truths to debase my work. I heard that he was also talking about me and my work in fundamentalist terms, declaring that God would let only the truly religious see a heavenly light and not some of the heathens I was interviewing. Therefore, he said, near-death experiences were the work of the devil. Which meant, of course, I was working for Satan.\n\nIn a word, I would call him a \"phony.\" Members of my family, including my wife, didn't view him that way at all. They continued to stay in touch with him and listened quite seriously to his assertions that I was involved in something demonic.\n\nEventually, when I became totally fed up with this man's toxic nature, I asked him to stay away from my family and asked them to stay away from him. They insisted that I was taking his affronts too seriously, while I felt that they were being too casual with my reputation.\n\nMy anger at their continued friendship with this man turned to rage when he wrote and printed a booklet\u2014a sort of anti\u2013Life After Life\u2014about the evils of my research. The booklet contained the fundamentalist argument against my work. And worse, it contained personal information about my life that could only have come from members of my family.\n\nThey now understood why I wanted them to pluck him out of their lives. But it was too late. I felt betrayed, even by my wife. We had two children, I had a best-selling book, and I was about to become a full-fledged doctor. But our relationship was shot. No matter how we tried, we both knew that our marriage was doomed.\nChapter Eleven\n\nFor the next four years I put my medical residency on hold and toured the country giving lectures. It's hard for many people to believe that I could do this, but there were few doctors who wanted to be psychiatrists in those days, and the medical school was willing to accommodate me. Plus, it was a badge of honor for a student from the Medical College of Georgia to be in demand on the lecture circuit.\n\nEven though I was no longer in a medical setting, I was dealing with people all over the country who approached me and told me about their near-death experiences. Hence, I still was dealing with human psychology on a very deep and interesting level.\n\nWe had moved back to Virginia by then, and I was frequently called in for consultations with doctors at UVA when a patient had an NDE and the doctors didn't know specifically what to say to the patient about the experience. Talking openly about death and dying was still very difficult for many doctors, especially the older ones who had swept the topic under the rug for so many years.\n\nOf course, that wasn't true of Elisabeth K\u00fcbler-Ross. Presenting research on near-death experiences had been relatively painless for me among my colleagues, but it had been almost disastrous at times for Elisabeth. I think the reason lay in her personal style. Elisabeth was not only outspoken but at times confrontational. And she considered herself a medical intuitive who spoke freely of premonitions, often saw and spoke to ghosts (one even wrote her a note after she handed the spirit a pen and paper), and had a spirit friend named Salem who was a seven-foot-tall Native American.\n\nElisabeth would commonly talk to patients about their pending death. She did not feel comfortable lying to a severely ill cancer patient by telling him or her that a long life still lay ahead, and she did not feel comfortable when other doctors did so. If she heard a doctor tell a dying patient that he or she would be fine, Elisabeth would frequently step in and contradict her colleague right there at the patient's bedside.\n\nShe believed in transparency and felt that both patients and doctors would be better off facing the truth. By doing that, she reasoned, dying patients would get the love and care they deserved and not be sloughed off to a room far from the nursing station where they would be treated as though death were a contagious disease.\n\nElisabeth became interested in death through her compassion. She began to study dying patients and was the first to analyze death so closely that she outlined the five stages of grief and dying: denial (\"I feel fine, this can't be happening to me\"), anger (\"Why me? It's not fair!\"), bargaining (\"Just let me live to see my children graduate\"), depression (\"I'm going to die, so what's the point?\"), and acceptance (\"I can't fight it, so I may as well prepare for it\").\n\nLike me, Elisabeth was willing to take the road not traveled. She explored everything she could in the realm of the supernatural. She did this, she said, because she had learned from her work with schizophrenic patients that sometimes they responded better to talk therapy and loving understanding than to drug therapy. Thinking like this has found a place in twenty-first-century medicine, but in the 1960s it put Elisabeth decidedly outside the box.\n\nThat was okay with Elisabeth. She liked being outside the box. Her mind wandered freely and took her to unexplored places. I once read one of Elisabeth's journal entries about a trip she and her family took to Monument Valley on the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico. She said the landscape had an \"eerie familiarity,\" as though she had been there before. She let her mind ask questions, \"no matter how far-out they seemed,\" and soon she wrote a journal entry:\n\nI know very little about the philosophy of reincarnation. I've always tended to associate reincarnation with the way-out people debating their former lives in incense-filled rooms. That's not been my kind of upbringing. I'm at home in laboratories. But I know now there are mysteries of the mind, the psyche, the spirit that cannot be probed by microscopes or chemical reactions. In time I'll know more. In time I'll understand.\n\nElisabeth's free-exploration of ideas put her\u2014as one of my colleagues so wryly described her\u2014\"in a distant orbit.\" She became involved with a trance channeler near San Diego, California, who had founded the Church of Divinity. The channeler, whom she always called \"Jay B.,\" promised to introduce her to spirit entities that she could talk to and that would respond to her.\n\nThe channeling was done in a building called \"the dark room,\" so named because all the windows had been covered to keep out light. There Elisabeth was joined by as many as twenty-five people who sang a soft rhythmic hum in total darkness while Jay B. gathered the psychic energy necessary to channel the entities.\n\nElisabeth was truly mesmerized by the events of the dark room. During the first weekend she spent there she was introduced to a spirit being named Salem who knew a great deal about her life and became her lifelong friend. She claimed to have even received telephone calls from him.\n\nElisabeth returned to Chicago, where she was living at the time, and told her husband Manny about the strange events in California. His logical mind could not understand what his curious wife was doing. Then one day Salem called the house and Manny answered. After talking to the channeled spirit for several minutes, Manny had an epiphany about his life. A few days later he asked for a divorce.\n\nSaddened but undeterred, Elisabeth moved to California and lived in a trailer home in Escondido. There she built a healing center where she lived with her spirit guide Salem.\n\nShe continued with her death and dying studies there and would frequently lead weeklong workshops for medical students as well as for the terminally ill and their families. Anyone interested in death and dying for any reason was welcome at Elisabeth's seminars.\n\nShe continued to attend dark room sessions with Jay B. and firmly believed in his powers as a channeler. Not everyone did, however. Some thought that his channeling was a hoax and that he was not really at the front of the dark room at all when he was channeling but was actually roaming around the room pretending to be the spirits he \"channeled.\"\n\nIn the midst of this controversy, Jay B. once told a roomful of people that if they turned on the lights during a channeling session, the spirits would be harmed. Apparently the spirits didn't know this. During this session a female spirit named \"Willie\" supposedly turned on the lights to expose a totally naked Jay B., standing before them in a deep trance.\n\nThe room went into a panic as hands groped to turn off the light. Jay B. continued in his trance as though nothing had happened. It was an eye-opening moment for many of the dark-roomers. After that, rumors started about sexually abusive events taking place in the dark room. The Church of Divinity began to crumble.\n\nEventually Elisabeth lost trust in Jay B. Her house next to Jay B. and his wife was nearly destroyed in a mysterious fire in 1983. When she ran to Jay B.'s house to get help, he opened the door only slightly and talked to her but offered no help.\n\nThat was the breaking point for Elisabeth. She sold her California property and moved with Salem to Virginia to start an AIDS orphanage. (She started this beautiful little institution in the Shenandoahs in the house that my wife and I would sell to her during our divorce.)\n\nI had known Elisabeth K\u00fcbler-Ross for several years by then. Shortly before Life After Life was published, Egle sent the galley proof to Elisabeth to get a comment. Like me, she had discovered that there is a similarity in the events that take place among people who are dying. She had broken these events down into four distinct phases that a dying person goes through: the sensation of being out-of-body; the feeling of being made of energy or spirit; being guided by a guardian angel; and having the sensation of being in the presence of God. Since Life After Life appeared to be competing in the same field, we didn't expect much of a comment from her, if anything at all. To our surprise, however, she wrote a wonderful introduction to the book, from which I quote here:\n\nI think we have reached an era of transition in our society. We have the courage to open new doors and admit that our present-day scientific tools are inadequate for many of these new investigations. I think this book will open these new doors for people who can have an open mind, and it will give them hope and courage to evaluate new areas of research.\n\nDr. Moody's findings are true, because they are written by a genuine and honest investigator. Life After Life is also corroborated by my own research and by the findings of others.\n\nIn addition to writing the introduction, she mentioned that she would be speaking at a community college in Georgia and asked if I could come and meet her, which I did willingly.\n\nI listened to her impassioned and sometimes funny lecture and then went backstage to meet her. At the small champagne party after her talk, she seemed to know who I was even before I introduced myself. She approached from across the room and held out her hand.\n\n\"Are you the young man who wrote Life After Life?\" she asked.\n\nWhen I assured her I was, she asked, \"How did you get all of those wonderful case studies?\"\n\n\"Well, I just talked to people,\" I said.\n\nThat night we had a somewhat heated discussion about life after death, one that started with her assumption that my research had proven the survival of bodily death.\n\n\"It doesn't,\" I said to Elisabeth. \"It only proves the appearance that we survive after death. The only way to prove we survive is to communicate with a person who is truly dead.\"\n\nShe looked at me incredulously.\n\n\"How can you hear all of these stories and not believe that we survive death?\" She became so agitated that she lit up a cigarette.\n\nI shared my feeling that proof, not belief, was the goal of my research.\n\n\"If you believe in life after death, then none of this research is necessary,\" I said. \"But if you want to prove life after death, then our research has only begun.\"\n\n\"Nonsense,\" she said. \"You have consistent stories of dozens of people who have died and returned, all telling of similar events. It's like the early explorers who returned after finding a new country. When enough people came back with the same stories, there was no more denial about whether the country existed. You don't have to see something firsthand to know it exists.\"\n\nElisabeth couldn't understand why I wouldn't say that I had proven life after death. Since I'd had the same experience she'd had with dying patients, she thought I would certainly take the same leap of faith she had. In fact, my attitude puzzled her so much\u2014vexed her, really\u2014that we decided to never talk about life after death again.\n\nFrom that point on our relationship was based on humor. I used to make up stories about her as she sat at the table and laughed. One was about one of her chickens dying and how she gathered the chicks around to explain to them that their mother was traveling up a dark tunnel and meeting a large \"chicken of light.\" Elisabeth would sit there and laugh and laugh as I poked fun at her. When I hear people say that they found Elisabeth to be dour, I always think of those times when I made up stories for her and made her laugh.\n\nElisabeth wanted me to go on the road with her and proclaim a belief in life after death. I appeared with her many times, but always disappointed her by stopping well short of declaring that I had discovered proof positive of life after death. I would go so far as to state that the near-death experience is a sort of entrance way to what awaits us after death, but I would also point out that just because one has seen the pearly gates doesn't mean there is permanent residence inside.\n\n\"But at least we've made it to the pearly gates,\" I would tell the audience. \"Perhaps soon we'll be able to take a peek beyond.\"\n\nElisabeth wasn't the only person disappointed by my lack of a stance on the afterlife. Many people in the audience would be stunned to learn that I didn't think I had found proof of life after death. Invariably one of the first questions when the lecture was over would be: \"Did I misunderstand you? You do believe in life after death, correct?\"\n\nThe truth was that I was a skeptic in the ancient Greek sense of that word (\"one who goes on inquiring\"). A skeptic in that fascinating ancient culture was not someone who was a naysayer\u2014as we think of skeptics today\u2014but rather a seeker who had decided not to reach a conclusion.\n\nA skeptical frame of mind is the best one to have in the world of research. Think about it. If everyone else is rushing to draw a conclusion but you are not rushing in the same direction, you are likely to see side-paths of inquiry that nobody else is seeing because they are busy running with the herd.\n\nIndeed, skepticism in the ancient Greek sense of the word is mind-expanding because a skeptic in that sense is trying not to reach a conclusion. As the popular definition of a skeptic has changed over the years to refer to a naysayer, a skeptic has become someone who denies the existence of anything that he or she hasn't personally experienced. A real skeptic is also someone who believes that the only rational means of proving truth is through the scientific method.\n\nSince truth is a moving target, I believe that the only legitimate means of finding the truth is to keep searching for it. As Donald Duck said when he was pretending to be a fortune-teller: \"I will gaze into my crystal ball and the future will pass into the past.\" Or looking at this idea another way\u2014the future is always changing, and the truth changes with it.\n\nMy focus has never been on finding what is true. Rather, my focus is one of constant inquiry. As the medieval alchemist Paracelsus said, \"A man who wants to write a book first creates a heaven in his mind from which the work he desires flows.\" I have avoided making that heaven in my mind and stuck with the hard facts instead, a stance that doesn't seem very popular. Most people prefer living in the hard and fast world of what they consider to be \"true or false.\"\n\nI understand, but I can't take them there.\n\nI delivered lectures almost exclusively for four years and then returned to complete my residency. There is a vast difference between medical school and residency. Where med school requires a great deal mentally, medical residency requires raw physical stamina. It is to medicine what boot camp is to the military.\n\nMy first rotation as a resident was in geriatrics at the State Mental Hospital in Virginia. I loved working in geriatrics. Being raised as much by my grandparents as by my mother made me feel right at home among an elderly population.\n\nAll of the elderly patients committed to this institution were in an advanced state of dementia. There was one man, an insurance agent from Charlottesville, who had occupational delirium, a condition in which he returned to his behavior during all those years as an agent. Every day he would pretend to dress up in a suit and go to work\u2014which was a dinner tray he placed in front of his chair in the recreation room. He would spend hours making pretend telephone calls before going out to make personal visits, which generally had him knocking on the doors of other patients. Sometimes he would stop me and ask, \"Excuse me, sir, can you tell me which of these rooms is my office?\"\n\nAnother patient had been a cleanup man in a barbershop for forty years. He would pretend to sweep around chairs all day. Another man, a former aircraft mechanic, paced the floor with crumpled papers in his hand and shouted orders to phantom employees, demanding that they \"get the engines back on airplane number seven!\"\n\nSometimes new patients knew me from having read my book. Some were wary of me because of my notoriety, thinking they had been assigned to this ward because the staff thought they were going to die. In their lucid moments, after I had convinced them that I was just there for medical training and not as a hospice doctor, we had some wonderful conversations.\n\nThere was much about the unique and intriguing world of the mental patient that I had forgotten during my four years on the road. I was truly fascinated by the various permutations of the human mind, how age or other factors can change personality and perception and lead normal people to become extreme enough that they no longer fit comfortably into society. Others were just as fascinated as I was. One night I was sitting in the staff room reading when a nurse came in. She sat down to read, but we ended up talking instead about some of the patients on the floor.\n\n\"Is it difficult for you to work in a mental hospital?\" I asked.\n\n\"Heavens, no,\" she declared. \"It's the best place I've ever worked.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Because,\" she said in a half-whisper, \"it's like working in an art gallery where the paintings are alive and tell stories!\"\n\nNot all wards at the mental hospital were as pleasant as the geriatric ward. The maximum-security unit for the criminally insane was a darker and scarier version of the human art gallery that so pleased the nurse and me. The Binion Building, as the ward was called, had about 120 patients at any one time, all of them violence-prone people who had committed an extreme crime that classified them as a violent psychotic.\n\nThe law enforcement community was very pleased that I was a doctor at the hospital. My brother Randy was a respected member of the sheriff's department, and they felt that I would be more understanding than most doctors of the demands placed on law enforcement by the criminally minded.\n\nThey also appreciated the fact that I didn't use \"doctor talk\" in discussing these dangerous criminals but spoke to them in plain English, as I did with my brother. And I never made concrete statements about how I thought these patients would behave in a future situation, as other doctors did. On more than one occasion I was backed against a wall and even nearly choked by one of these unpredictable psychotics, and I didn't want a law enforcement officer hurt because I had made an unsafe assumption about a patient's criminal behavior.\n\nI can tell you for certain that the Secret Service never made assumptions about criminal behavior. One night I showed up for work and there were three new files on the desk. When I opened them, I found bright orange cards stapled to the charts emblazoned with the seal of the Secret Service. Written below each seal, in bold black letters, was this admonition:\n\nIf this individual escapes from your institution,\n\ndo not fail to contact the United States Secret Service!\n\nIn the recreation room I discovered three new patients, all of whom had been rounded up by the Secret Service and dropped at our institution for safekeeping. President Ronald Reagan was in town, and the people assigned to protect him came in advance and institutionalized those who were thought to pose a threat during his visit.\n\nThe three men were clearly angry at being arrested and said little over the course of the twenty-four hours they were in our care. But that afternoon, when President Reagan made his speech in Macon, Georgia, all three gathered around the television and watched, silently seething as \"The Great Communicator\" spoke to a gathering of local businessmen.\n\nWorking in a mental hospital was perfect for a doctor like me who wanted to learn about all aspects of the human mind. To this day I can re-create scenes in my mind of patients wandering blissfully around the geriatric ward, talking to people who weren't there or creating scenarios that didn't exist. What world did they live in? What was that world like? I ask these questions to this day.\n\nMy time off was spent finding people who had had near-death experiences and talking to them. As a totally passive activity, collecting case studies in near-death experiences was an ideal pursuit for someone with severe yet undiagnosed myxedema. All I had to do was take my $25 tape recorder and a healthy supply of tapes and go by Greyhound Bus to small southern towns where I sat with people as they told their stories. It was another setting, as the nurse had described, like an art gallery where the paintings talked. Only now I was out of the mental hospital and interacting with a population of normal people who had been blessed by a paranormal event.\n\nI never thought of myself as a particularly energetic person. Yet looking back, I see that I must have been. After all, by the age of thirty-two I had acquired two doctoral degrees, taught philosophy for three years, written one of the all-time bestselling books, and created a new field of medical study\u2014all while I was still in medical school. Then I delivered lectures for four years, sometimes day after day, telling what I knew about this field I called \"near-death studies.\"\n\nDoing all of this required a tremendous amount of energy. I must have had some secret reserves. Or perhaps it was just my natural curiosity that drove me to greater and greater heights.\n\nBut now it was 1985, and things were definitely changing. For the previous three years I had not read a single book. I felt as though vitality and energy had totally left my body, taking my powers of reason with them. I had allowed a money manager to take over my finances, and before long we discovered that he was skimming a large part of my income into his own pocket. Since my wife Louise had suggested him through a friend, I held her responsible. In reality, it wasn't her fault. I had been too passive in the decision to use him, allowing it to be made for me instead of with me.\n\nI became paranoid and depressed, side effects of myxedema. My marriage was not doing well, and my illness prevented me from engaging very well as a father with my two sons, Avery and Samuel.\n\nIn a moment of demented clarity, I saw what my life had become and I decided to wipe the slate clean. I told Louise our marriage was over. We divorced in 1986, and I moved out.\n\nThings didn't get better. I met a woman and we married, but that didn't work. I became both \"too distant\" and \"too dependent\" for this independent young psychology student. I tried not to take the rejection personally. I knew she was right, but I was having a serious problem and didn't know what it was. All I knew was that I felt a deep sense of dread, as though nearly every part of my body was telling me in its own way that I was dying. Strangely enough, that seemed okay with me. I had been studying near-death experiences for at least a decade and from all of my interviews had come to feel that the supernatural warmth of a bright and mystical light was likely to accompany my own death. I began to long for that experience. I was ready to die.\n\nI left my job at the maximum-security mental hospital in Milledgeville, Georgia, and accepted a job at West Georgia State College in Carrollton. It was a life-changer for me. My spirits rose as I found myself back in the classroom with students. I found a roomful of students to be a much more positive environment than a hospital ward filled with the dangerously mentally ill, a place where one always had to be on guard for sudden violence from the people being treated. The problem afflicting me, the disease of myxedema that I didn't know I had, seemed to abate. Had it really been a symptom of overwork, as several doctors had indicated? Life seemed better. I felt as though I was going to live.\nChapter Twelve\n\nIt was now more than a decade after the publication of Life After Life, and the field of near-death studies had blossomed, with literally dozens of medical studies having been conducted by a variety of researchers.\n\nI was proud of the field of medical study I had launched and the researchers who had taken my interest in the near-death experience to new heights. These early researchers had bravely decided to go where no investigators before them had gone.\n\nSome of them, like Michael Sabom, MD, and Kenneth Ring, PhD, did very methodical explorations in order to derive hard medical facts. Sabom, a cardiologist in Georgia, examined the claims of thirty-two patients that they had left their body and watched as doctors performed resuscitation in the emergency room to restart their heart. He compared their descriptions of the resuscitation procedures with the educated guesses of a control group\u2014twenty-five medically savvy patients\u2014about what happens when a doctor tries to restart a heart. Sabom wanted to compare the accounts of those who had had an out-of-body experience to the knowledge of the medically savvy patients.\n\nHe found that most of the patients in the control group\u2014twenty-three out of the twenty-five people\u2014made mistakes in describing the resuscitation procedures. On the other hand, none of the NDE patients made mistakes in describing what went on in their own resuscitation.\n\nThis work was groundbreaking for two reasons: it indicated that people truly do leave their body after a near-death experience, and it also showed that these patients are in a state of hyper-observance in which they can not only see what is going on but remember it too.\n\nRing, a psychology professor in Connecticut, was hooked on the study of near-death experiences from the very first time he heard a patient's description of her experience of almost dying. In 1977 this woman had experienced a very rapid loss of blood pressure while delivering her child. She reported that the room turned black, and when she \"regained consciousness\" she was up in the corner of the delivery room looking down on the doctors as they worked to revive her and deliver the child.\n\nShe didn't travel up a tunnel or see a being of light, but she did hear a spirit speak to her, saying, \"You've had a taste of this. Now you must go back.\" The voice also told her that the child would be born with heart trouble that would be corrected in time. That all proved to be true.\n\nThe woman's story fascinated Ring. The study he devised examined the stories of 102 near-death experiencers and showed that religion is no more a factor in a person having an NDE than age or race. In short, he proved that near-death experiences are equal opportunity events.\n\nIn a way, Dr. Melvin Morse, a pediatrician in Seattle, Washington, did the same thing. After treating a near-drowning victim as a resident physician in Idaho, he was drawn to studying the near-death experiences of children. The young girl, whose name was Crystal, was resuscitated after being found at the bottom of a YMCA swimming pool. Although profoundly comatose for three days and thought to be brain-dead, Crystal made a full recovery.\n\nA few days later Morse asked Crystal what happened in the swimming pool.\n\n\"Do you mean when I sat on the Heavenly Father's lap?\" she asked.\n\nIt was not what he meant at all. Morse wanted to know if she'd had a seizure or perhaps was knocked unconscious by hitting the side of the pool during a dive. Still, he didn't correct her.\n\n\"That's exactly what I mean,\" he said encouragingly.\n\nWhat he heard was an amazing story of angels, a heavenly realm, and an out-of-body experience that allowed her not only to see what was going on at the hospital but to make several visits to her home, her descriptions of which were highly visual.\n\n\"You'll see, Dr. Morse,\" said Crystal. \"Heaven is fun.\"\n\nThe look of sheer confidence in Crystal's eyes led Morse to start a decades-long search for the uses and meanings of near-death experiences. In his first book, Closer to the Light, he hit on a youthful version of Ken Ring's conclusions with his finding that children are just as likely to have near-death experiences as adults; their experiences differ in only one primary and logical way, he discovered: children don't have very extensive life reviews. After publishing his book, Morse went on to research the long-term transformative effects of the near-death experience. In his book Transformed by the Light, he concludes that people who have near-death experiences\u2014especially those that include a vivid experience of light\u2014are blessed with a post-traumatic \"bliss\" syndrome that results in a positive personality transformation.\n\nMany other researchers were examining such topics as the link between NDEs and the great philosophical truths, or NDEs that take place as the result of combat. I was proud of the work I had spawned by writing Life After Life and read carefully the research published in medical journals. I also became very good friends with many of the researchers, so much so that they often wanted me to join them as a research associate. I was honored to be asked, but I always said no. I felt that proof of life after life would come from a breakthrough in logic, not from scientific studies.\n\nAs I told my colleagues, \"You guys have taken my work into the mainstream. Now I have to wade out a little farther.\"\n\nAs had happened in the past, I stepped into that deep water unexpectedly. And there I found myself in a world I never thought I would explore\u2014the world of past lives.\n\nI was lecturing in Florida on near-death experiences when a woman in the audience asked whether I believed in the existence of past lives.\n\nI shrugged. When I lecture, I always get a large number of questions about other extra-normal phenomena that have little or nothing to do with near-death experiences. Most of them involve UFO abductions, spoon bending, psychic healing, and, yes, past-life regressions.\n\nFor some reason these questions irritated me at that time. I had no real explanation for any past-life events, nor did I have any real interest in researching them. I was like William James, who, when asked about the Hindu belief in the rebirth of our spirits into other beings, just shrugged and said that his cultural upbringing didn't make the discussion of that subject a live option for him.\n\nThat is what I said that night in Florida to the poor woman who asked me about past lives. I told her I just wasn't interested in the subject. \"It's not a live option for me either,\" I said. And anyway, \"everyone who gets regressed says they were Cleopatra or Napoleon. How many can there be?\"\n\nThe crowd laughed, and the woman was probably humiliated. I felt comfortable in my ignorance.\n\nThat comfort lasted for approximately twenty-four hours. I went to visit Diana Denholm, a psychologist who used hypnosis in her practice. Denholm had originally used hypnosis to help people stop smoking, lose weight, even find lost objects. Then some strange things started happening. Patients under hypnosis would start talking about events from past lives, usually when she had regressed the patient to recover a lost or traumatic memory. Known as age regression therapy, this technique was designed to find the source of phobias or neuroses that are creating problems by taking a person back through his or her life layer by layer, like an archaeologist digging through layers of time. Sometimes, however, the technique would take patients beyond the layer of their birth date and they would talk about a long-ago era as though they were right there in the here and now.\n\nThese trips through time frightened Denholm at first. She thought she had done something wrong in her hypnotherapy or perhaps had uncovered multiple personalities in her patients. But as these events continued to happen frequently, Denholm discovered how to use them to treat her patients.\n\nAfter she began to use past-life regression therapy with patients, she found it to be very effective in treating their disorders. \"Maybe you should try it instead of condemning it,\" she said to me. Feeling appropriately chastised, I decided to do just that.\n\nThat very afternoon Denholm offered to do a regression. She seated me in an overstuffed recliner and led me, slowly and skillfully, into a deep hypnotic trance. She told me later that I had been under for about an hour. And yes, during that hour I was aware of being Raymond Moody and being under the guidance of a hypnotherapist. But at the same time I found myself going back through nine lives, each in its own distinct incarnation and civilization. None of these lives were like a dream; rather, they were like reality, and visiting them was like watching a movie. The colors were real, and the events unfolded from their own inner logic and not from any manipulation or wishing on my part. I know I was not trying to determine the plot because I could have done better than what happened.\n\nOf the nine lives, only two took place during time periods I could recognize, and both of those were set in ancient Rome. I was unable to date any of the others except to say that they were in prehistoric societies or had no historic context at all. That isn't to say that they didn't all seem familiar. Each dripped with nostalgia for me, so much so that I thought I was remembering actual experiences.\n\nHere, in chronological order, is the series of lives I lived through past-life regression.\n\n1. Proto-Human\n\nIn my first life I was a prehistoric version of a man, a proto-human with no ability to speak. I lived with a group of other beings in nestlike structures high in trees. We had helped one another construct these homes. We lived in groups because we knew there was safety in numbers. I also knew that we valued beauty and had carefully selected the trees we lived in to take advantage of the pink flowers that carpeted the tops of the trees.\n\nI knew we were manlike, although we moved in a bent-over fashion with our center of gravity in our hips. We were fruit-eaters, and I remember eating a fruit that was red and full of seeds, like a pomegranate. Eating it was so completely real that I could feel the juice run down my chin and hear the crunch of the seeds as I chewed.\n\nWe stayed high in the trees, but I had what felt like a fatal attraction to life on the ground. At one point an animal with the appearance of a wild boar ran beneath the tree, and we all began to jump around emotionally. Since we were unable to speak, we could only let our emotions speak for us.\n\nDuring my regression I had no control over when I passed through each lifetime. As a result, I soon left my life in the trees and went on to another life.\n\n2. Primitive Africa?\n\nIn this life I was about twelve years old and living in a tropical forest with a group of people. I guess it was in Africa, but that is only a guess.\n\nWhen this hypnotic adventure began, I was in the woods looking down a slope to a stark white strip of beach on the shore of a calm lake. That was where the houses of my village were located.\n\nThe houses were platform houses set about two feet off the ground on stout poles that had been pounded into the ground. The walls were made of woven straw. Each house had four walls and contained a large single room in which each family lived.\n\nAt one point I was a little boy fishing on the shores of the lake. The men were out on the lake in rough wooden canoes. I wanted to be with them, but I was too young, so I just cast my net from the shallows and caught a small amount of fish.\n\nI jumped forward to a later time in this life and found myself climbing up a rugged blue-and-black mountain with a group of warriors. We were carrying long spears and wooden shields that were brightly painted with images of animals. Each of us was brightly decorated with war paint. I had the feeling we were going into battle because we held our breathing to a minimum during the climb to keep from making too much noise.\n\nI was tired and frightened during the climb and had a deep desire to return to the familiarity and safety of the village by the lake. Then this life faded to the next.\n\n3. Death by Drowning\n\nIn the next episode I was an old and muscular man with long silver hair and blue eyes.\n\nI was building a boat in a large room that was long and entirely open to a river on one side. In the middle of the room, running the length of the building, was a nearly completed boat. On the wall behind me hung primitive boatbuilding tools.\n\nWith me was my three-year-old granddaughter. She watched timidly as I demonstrated the various tools of my craft. I could see her peeking over the tops of the gunwales as I pounded caulking into the boat's joints to make it waterproof.\n\nI launched the boat into the river and then picked up my granddaughter for the first voyage. We were enjoying the boat's maiden voyage, but pleasure turned to terror when a wall of water came up the river and capsized us.\n\nI was thrown one way and my granddaughter the other. I thrashed in the water, trying to reach her, but she was gone in an instant, sucked under by the wave's powerful undertow. When I saw her disappear beneath the waves, I gave up. I remember going underwater and forcing myself to stay down because I was filled with guilt that she had died on my watch.\n\nIn my hypnotic state, the fear was vivid. My heart pounded and my blood pressure rose as I heard the water rushing around my ears. The water gagged me as I went under, and my guilt intensified as I realized all of the life she would miss due to this one poorly-timed journey.\n\nThe guilt changed to ecstasy as I neared death. At that point a bright light engulfed me and I was overcome with total bliss. I knew at that point that everything would be all right for my granddaughter and myself.\n\nI went to the next life.\n\n4. The Mammoth Hunter\n\nI was suddenly plunged into a band of people hunting woolly mammoth.\n\nAs you can imagine, it is not my style to take on something so big. But in my hypnotic state, I could see that we were not well fed and were truly desperate for food.\n\nWe wore animal skins that covered our chests and shoulders and were barely adequate for the frigid climate. Our legs were bare, and our private parts were not adequately covered at all. The primitive clothing wasn't our only concern. The weapons we used were stones and tree branches.\n\nWe had trapped the mammoth in a gully and were trying desperately to beat it to death. The mammoth would not give up easily. He grabbed one of the tribe members and with a clean, efficient move crushed his head. We were horrified at the violent loss of our tribal member.\n\nAs the fight continued I seemed to leave my body and drift above the scene. Then I went on to my next life.\n\n5. A Worker Among Workers\n\nI found myself in the midst of an enormous public works project. I was not the king in this scenario, nor was I even a foreman. I was simply a worker among workers. I had the sense that we were building a road system or perhaps an aqueduct, but I couldn't tell for sure.\n\nMy wife and I lived in one of the apartments that were lined in a row along the road. It had only one room and was dominated by a sleeping platform that we both lay on as soon as my workday was complete.\n\nWe were starving to death. All of the workers were, most likely from a famine. My wife lay on the platform looking very gaunt. I had the idea that she was waiting for her life to just completely flicker out.\n\nI had a great sense of guilt because my wife was dying and I could do nothing to protect her. I think all of the workers were in a similar situation. They were tired from the moment they got up in the morning. I remember struggling up a hill to get to our work site and then looking grimly at the day's task.\n\nBehind me, my wife was dying and there was nothing I could do about it.\n\n6. Lion Food\n\nI faded into the next life and was finally somewhere I recognized, ancient Rome. Once again I was neither emperor nor nobleman, but lion food. I was in a pit and about to be devoured as public amusement.\n\nI had long reddish hair and a mustache. I was thin and wore a leather loin garment. I knew something of my background. I was from the area now known as Germany and had been captured by the Romans during a military campaign.\n\nI had been used to carry booty back to Rome and was now about to be put to death for the amusement of the Roman populace. I could feel the energy of the desperately hungry lion that was caged next to me in the pit. I looked up to the crowd for mercy but felt a sickening tightness in my stomach as I realized there was no mercy.\n\nI saw a man in the crowd with long brown hair that was closely cropped on the top of his head. His left eye was pink and infected, creating a sinister look on his emotionless face. He stared at me and put a snack in his mouth, chewing as he chuckled. My death was clearly nothing more than an amusement for him.\n\nThere was a blur of activity as the lion sprang from the cage and knocked me to the floor of the pit. The last thing I remember was being pinned against the dirt as the lion made for my skull.\n\nMercifully this life faded into the next.\n\n7. Noble Death\n\nI was in a beautiful apartment that glowed with the fading light of early evening and the yellow light of several oil lamps that gave the marble walls of the room a glistening luster.\n\nI was wearing a white toga and lying on a sofa shaped like a modern-day chaise lounge. I think I was in my forties and had the physical softness of a bureaucrat unused to hard labor. I remember a feeling of complete complacency, to the point of sleepiness, as I lay there looking at my son, a dark-haired fifteen-year-old who was becoming increasingly frightened by the scene beneath our balcony.\n\n\"Father, why are those people trying to get in here?\" he asked.\n\nIn my complacency, I felt as though this had happened before and was nothing to be concerned about.\n\n\"Why, son,\" I said, \"that's why we have the soldiers.\"\n\n\"But, father, there are so many of them,\" he said. The fear in his eyes caused me to get up to see what he was talking about. I walked to the balcony and saw a handful of soldiers pushing back a huge mob that was about to become too surly to handle.\n\nAt that point I knew there was good reason to be frightened. I looked at my son, and I could tell from his response that he was alarmed at the look on my face. That was the end of that lifetime, but I have a feeling it ended shortly thereafter at the hands of an angry mob.\n\n8. Murder in the Desert\n\nMy next life took me to a mountainous area in the deserts of the Middle East. I could tell that I was a jewelry merchant who lived up in the hills behind my small but prosperous store.\n\nI spent the day appraising gold and silver and precious stones. I also traded with the caravans that passed by on a trade route.\n\nI made a lot of money and spent it on my home, which was my pride. It was a wonderful reddish-brick place with a porch situated in such a way that the evening breeze swept in and cooled the entire house. The view from the porch was spectacular and took in the entire valley.\n\nThe house was spacious inside, with a forest of pillars that held up the roof and made the interior look very grand. I could remember happily whiling away the time with my wife and three children.\n\nOne day after work I returned to a strangely quiet home. I felt a sense of doom as I walked in because quiet was not common around the house. As I went into the bedroom I found my wife and three young children dead, brutally murdered and left in pools of blood.\n\nFrom the feeling I had while under hypnosis, I could tell that I would never recover from this tragedy. I don't know when I died, but I could certainly tell that my life was over from that day forward.\n\nThankfully, I moved on.\n\n9. The Chinese Artist\n\nIn my final life I found myself to be a Chinese artist. A female Chinese artist.\n\nI moved quickly through childhood and adolescence and could see several scenes in which I was painting. Sometimes I saw my work from the perspective of the canvas and could see my brush strokes laying down dabs of paint.\n\nI had several detailed yet fragmentary memories from this life. At one point I was talking to a friend in the middle of a street when a brilliant light suddenly flashed over us. We were puzzled, so we went to a local wise man and told him what we had seen. He was puzzled too, but told us that we were not the only ones to report such a flash to him. Still, he didn't know what we had seen.\n\nAt another point in this life I went to a large stone house to visit an elderly aunt. She seemed to be in her sixties and was beaming at my arrival because I was her favorite niece. Her gray hair was pulled back in a braid, and she was standing on the porch in cotton pants and a shirt.\n\nThe next scene I remembered was the last day of my life. I lived in impoverished conditions, in a small house with only a bed, a stove, and an area where I could set up my painting equipment. This was not a safe area of town. On this particular night a young man came into the house and strangled me. Taking none of my earthly possessions, he took just the one thing that had no value to him\u2014my life.\n\nAs I died I rose above my body. I felt concern for the young killer who stood above my body, clearly proud of his work. I wanted to know what had made him so unhappy that he wanted to kill an old woman. Although I tried to communicate with him in my out-of-body state, I couldn't reach him. Instead, I just faded away.\n\nIn a few moments I left these past lives where I had found them and returned to full consciousness. Denholm was sitting next to me, coaxing me out of my hypnotic stupor and back into the current world. \"Current world\" was a phrase I had never before thought of, but it came to mind now. Before this session I would have assumed that this is the \"real world\" and those others a dream. But now, lying on a therapist's couch, I realized that \"current world\" described quite well the place I had returned to. I now almost believed I had lived before.\nChapter Thirteen\n\nAmazing, isn't it?\" asked Denholm when I came out of the hypnotic trance.\n\nI nodded my agreement, but didn't say anything. What I had experienced seemed genuine and had nothing to do with wish fulfillment, as I had previously believed. After all, when had I ever wished to fight a wooly mammoth or dreamed of being a financially destitute female artist in China?\n\nI was somewhat embarrassed by what had just taken place. I no longer felt the same about past-life regressions, and Denholm seemed to recognize that. She laughed at me as I pondered what had just happened. I mumbled a few words of doubt, but then admitted with conviction that I had truly ventured into my distant past.\n\n\"It depends upon your point of view,\" she said. \"I have my point of view. What is yours, really?\"\n\nI didn't know. These experiences were not like dreams. At the very least, they represented a unique level of consciousness, one with its own distinct features. They had a feeling of familiarity to them, like remembering last summer's trip to France. They were distinctly memory, not made-up events.\n\nStill, they were somewhat different from memory. While in the regression state I was able to see myself from various perspectives. For instance, when I was in the lion pit I watched part of the action through my own eyes and then from a perspective above, where I could actually see myself in the pit being stalked by the lion. The same was true when I was the boatbuilder and the Chinese artist.\n\nPart of the experience happened as if seen through my own eyes, and part as though I were outside my body, watching myself from a third-person perspective.\n\nI tried to gather my thoughts. I didn't want to jump to conclusions about these experiences. The brain has more depth and creativity than most people give it credit for. It is also a sort of a magnet for memory, collecting bits of random information that stick for seemingly no reason.\n\nYet these experiences were different. They were so vivid that they seemed to be proof of reincarnation. Or at least possible proof. To tell you the truth, I didn't know at the time what these nine lives were or meant. I just knew that I was being guided down a path I had never been down before.\n\nI spent an hour or so in the fading light of the Florida afternoon writing down everything I could remember about the nine lives I had just experienced through Denholm's hypnotherapy.\n\nWhen that task was completed, I did what I had done with near-death experiences: I wrote down questions that would help me think about this new mystery that had come into my life.\n\n\u2022 How can these strange journeys be explained? Especially to those who don't believe in reincarnation? After all, atheists have near-death experiences yet still don't believe in God. How does, say, a staunch Baptist explain a vivid past life experienced during hypnotic regression? Are these merely what happens when the mind creates entertainment at the unconscious level? Jung thought the unconscious mind is far more active than most believe. Are these voyages to a past life merely self-created television programs?\n\n\u2022 Can medical conditions, both mental and physical, be affected by past-life therapy? I was especially interested in the effect this therapy might have on phobias and anxiety disorders. Regression therapy was often effective in treating these problems. Can past-life therapy reveal even more that could relieve these and other medical problems?\n\n\u2022 How can we explain truly mysterious cases?\n\nI had heard about mysterious cases of past lives but had largely ignored them because, as I said before, they were not a live option for me. After this session with Denholm, I became at least a partial believer. I wanted to hear some of the more undeniable cases.\n\nI decided to break down past-life regression into its various traits, just as I had done in defining and naming near-death experiences. It was the eleven common traits of near-death experiences I delineated that gave therapists, doctors, and patients themselves the information necessary to understand these puzzling events. I was surprised to discover that the same kind of work hadn't yet been done with the phenomenon of past-life regressions.\n\nAs I had done before with near-death experiences, I decided to start researching this field with my students. As I've already mentioned, I was teaching psychology at West Georgia State College in Carrollton. Although it is a conservative college in the midst of the Bible Belt (Newt Gingrich taught history there!), the Psychology Department could have come right out of Berkeley. Rather than focusing on mainstream psychology, which involved behaviorism, cognitive therapy, and other types of therapy that can be empirically proven, West Georgia had branched out into paranormal phenomena. When William Roll, director of the Psychical Research Foundation, joined the department in the eighties, he introduced courses on ghosts, near-death experiences, hypnosis (which is now mainstream), and modern-day shamanic psychotherapy.\n\nWhen I mentioned at a staff meeting that I was going to dissect the phenomenon known as past-life regression, the other professors were delighted.\n\nWhen I told the students my plan, they were overwhelmingly delighted at the prospect of being used as pioneering guinea pigs in such a study of successful past-life regression therapy. They knew this could be breakthrough work in understanding reincarnation and its possible therapeutic uses.\n\nI culled my classes and found fifty students who were open to new experience and had flexible hours. Then, not wanting to limit myself to a student population, I put out the word that I needed experimental subjects from the general population.\n\nOverall I formally studied about one hundred subjects.\n\nFirst I did group regressions. Taking about twenty subjects at a time, I performed group hypnosis with them. Thanks to George Ritchie, I knew how to perform hypnosis. A hypnotist himself since the age of twelve, Ritchie enrolled me in a class at the International Association of Clinical Hypnosis after privately teaching the arts of hypnosis to me himself. The protocol was to hypnotize the group to see if the results were better than those from individual regressions. The lives recalled in these group sessions weren't as complete or colorful as those recalled in the individual regressions; most likely, I assumed, because it was more difficult to relax in a group. That result was totally expected.\n\nBut in the course of doing these group regressions I discovered an extrasensory phenomenon that truly puzzled me: on several occasions, subjects on one side of the room would experience virtually the same past life as a person on the other side. This happened frequently. For example, when a woman described herself as a ballet dancer wearing blue tights and dancing in front of a large audience on a brightly lit stage, another woman on the other side of the room was describing almost the same experience. In one session a young man described a crime in which he had been involved in nineteenth-century New York City that led another person in class to gasp. As it turned out, the notebook he was about to read from describing his own regression contained the story of a nearly identical crime, his too in old New York.\n\nThese seemingly psychic connections added another piece to the puzzle but did not help make its form comprehensible. They just made the puzzle bigger.\n\nThe second phase of the studies focused on individual regressions, which involved hypnotizing the individual alone in my office. This usually made it easier on my subjects because they didn't feel the group pressure, nor did they have a fear of revealing their emotions in public. I would have subjects lie on my office couch and then leisurely work them into a deep hypnotic trance.\n\nIndividual sessions rarely failed and were very revelatory.\n\nFor example, a woman I'll call Anne had been afflicted with both high blood pressure and panic attacks for several years. She took hypertension medication and watched her diet carefully, but still experienced high blood pressure and severe anxiety.\n\nAnne volunteered for the regression study because she knew that I was interested in finding out if ailments could be treated successfully with this kind of therapy.\n\nOnce I got her hypnotized, Anne found herself in a small city in Egypt. She came into this life on what was surely its last day. The city as she described it was surrounded by hordes of an unnamed aggressor. Most of the army defending this town had been killed in battle, and now panic was in the air as the invading force moved in for the kill.\n\nAfter the session, she described what she had seen:\n\n\"It finally became horrifying. I could see people running all around me through the streets as attacking soldiers chased us, slashing and stabbing with their weapons.\n\n\"The soldiers were very selective in who they killed first. They would hit the women with their fists to get them out of the way but keep them alive. It was the men they wanted to kill first.\n\n\"They would stab them several times, pouring their blood all over the streets. Then they would trample over their bodies and search for other men. Soon it was clear that only the women would be left.\n\n\"I was a young woman in these scenes, and I felt a very intense pressure to get away. Yet it was no use. Every way I looked was blocked. I found myself running with other women, but there was really no place to run. We just pounded aimlessly through the streets. Everywhere I turned there seemed to be another group of foreign soldiers.\n\n\"Finally they closed in on the women. One by one we were pulled out of this huddled group by soldiers. I was one of the first to be taken. An angry soldier pulled me toward him, and when I resisted he simply drove a knife into my stomach and let me fall.\"\n\nThat was the last thing Anne remembered.\n\nAs Anne described the events in her mind, she was breathing heavily and perspiring. She seemed to choke with fear. Although the fear had been intense and the experience was \"clearly more than a dream,\" Anne was greatly relieved by the release of emotions that it provided. It would prove to be a catharsis for the anxiety in her life.\n\nOver the next few weeks, Anne opened up and confronted her fears. She talked freely with her boss, who caused her much anxiety because he never seemed happy with her work. She also began to talk to her husband about her concerns over their lack of intimacy.\n\nAs she opened up, her blood pressure dropped into a more normal range and her anxiety attacks all but disappeared.\n\nHow did she interpret the events of her past-life regression? She didn't believe that it truly happened. Instead, she felt that it was an experience generated by her mind that was symbolic of the out-of-control feelings she had about life. And what happened to those feelings? \"All other experiences pale in comparison to the fear I felt when I was chased and killed by invaders,\" she told me. The past-life regression served to calm her down while giving her the courage to talk with others about issues that had caused that \"pressure cooker\" feeling inside of her.\n\nThe physical or mental status of many of the subjects in my studies improved as a result of their regressions. And many had theories about why their illness improved or why it had occurred to begin with. A number of them, to my great surprise, took a metaphysical view of their illness. They believed that we might choose our illness just to know what the experience of that illness is like.\n\nOther subjects saw their regression as the ultimate mind-body connection. They believed that a past life can afflict the body with a pathological condition. Once that past life is confronted through regression therapy, the disease is likely to abate.\n\nIn fact, one study showed some promise using this method. Johannes Cladder of the Netherlands treated twenty-five patients with difficult phobias (defined as patients who had already received psychotherapy and in some cases been hospitalized). Of those twenty-five patients, twenty eliminated their phobias through past-life regression therapy.\n\nMany in my study didn't feel that they had plunged backward into a past life, but had very intense experiences nonetheless. And then there were many who had no doubt at all that they had gone back in time. Some of these subjects even felt as though they had proven the existence of past lives.\n\nOne such person who was not in my study was the late Ian Stevenson, a colleague of mine at the University of Virginia. He examined several cases suggestive of reincarnation, mostly in India, where it is easier to talk about past lives because of the large number of Hindus, who believe in reincarnation. Stevenson's research was painstakingly detailed: he checked people's stories with detective work that sometimes took him all over the country and into many living rooms.\n\nTypical of his work was the story of Parmod Sharma, born in 1944 to the family of a professor living in Uttar Pradesh, India. As Stevenson wrote:\n\nWhen he [Sharma] was about two and a half, he began to tell his mother not to cook because he had a wife in Moradabad who could cook. Later, between the ages of three and four, he began to refer to a large soda and biscuit shop which he said he had in Moradabad. He asked to go to Moradabad. He said he was one of the \"Mohan Brothers.\" He claimed to be well-to-do and to have had another shop in Saharanpur. He showed an extraordinary interest in his biscuits and shops.... He related how in the previous life he had become ill after eating too much curd and said he had \"died in a bathtub.\"\n\nStevenson interviewed the child in India. Then he talked to the family and learned that they had no previous knowledge of or friendship with anyone named \"Mohan.\" Stevenson then found that there was a biscuit shop in Moradabad known as the Mohan Brothers. He found that they owned another biscuit shop in Saharanpur. He also discovered the existence of a brother who had died of a gastrointestinal illness. \"Did he die in a bathtub?\" asked Stevenson.\n\nThe witness of the Mehra family stated that Parmanand tried a series of naturopathic bath treatments when he had appendicitis. He had some of these treatments during the days just before his death but did not actually die in a bathtub. In a letter dated September 7, 1949, Sri B. L. Sharma stated that Parmod had said he died of being \"wet with water\" and that he [Sri B. L. Sharma] had learned (presumably from the Mehra family) that Parmanand had been given a bath immediately before his death.\n\nAnd so on. Stevenson researched dozens of reincarnation cases around the world, taking what another researcher called \"the direct approach to the issue\" by researching these stories with as much care as possible. Although his research remained largely anecdotal, it did not rely on the word of the person having the experience. He checked and rechecked and left us with a large body of meticulous work on the subject.\n\nAnd then I found some stories that seemed to almost research themselves.\n\nOne such case was a health professional in California who told me that he was regressed and found himself as a French nobleman who lived on an estate in the South. His wife's name was Sylvie, and they had two children. He was among the most powerful men in a large region. From a chateau he directed hundreds of peasants.\n\n\"The most specific scene in the regression was one in which I was riding horses with my wife through well-manicured woods up to the chateau,\" he recalled. \"She had on a bright red dress made of velvet and was riding sidesaddle.\"\n\nNot only was this man able to recall his name, he also had a date from the 1600s fixed in his head. With date and name in hand, he searched the birth records preserved over the centuries and located that record of this nobleman's birth, as entered by a parish priest.\n\nThis gentleman had no recollection of ever having seen or heard this name before remembering it during regression. Nor was there any reason that this wealthy farmer in 1600s France would have appeared in European history books. This man felt that this experience was proof that he had lived before.\n\nAlthough this man's story would not be adequate proof of reincarnation for the scientific community, it was part of a growing body of past-life stories that certainly went a long way toward changing my mind.\n\nI came to look at these regressions in many ways. Sometimes I thought of past-life experiences as a means of escape from a boring day-to-day existence; at other times I found them to be a fascinating means devised by the brain to avoid mental pain by reframing an issue as something that took place in a past life. Other past-life experiences seemed to be a form of ego inflation or a means of explaining or avoiding depression. And then some past-life stories made me outright believe in reincarnation and our ability to remember past lives.\n\nOne statistic in all the research I read stood out for me. It came from a study done by Dr. Helen Wambach, who found that 90 percent of all people who attempt hypnotic regression are able to recall events from a past life. I asked myself: How can a person's \"past life\" seem as real as their current one? If these are just \"flights of fancy,\" as some claim, why then don't they seem like fantasy? And why does solid historical information pop up in the middle of these experiences, confirming that they may be real?\n\nIn the end I couldn't answer any of these questions, and no one who ever researched this subject has been able to either. Although these stories are interesting, they are just that, stories. There is no empirical way to study past-life regressions. And even though much of what people say they have witnessed during their regressions can be proven to be historically accurate, there is no way for researchers to tell how much of the information in the regression was captured by the unconscious mind through television or books or other sources. That leaves past-life regression studies as simply a collection of interesting and very puzzling stories that can be neither proven nor denied.\nChapter Fourteen\n\nEven though I was unable to determine the reality of reincarnation, I still examined all of the successful past-life regressions in my study as well as many others from regression therapists. I found what I came looking for to begin with: identifiable traits that are present in regression experiences.\n\nTraits in an experience like this are important. They tell researchers, clinicians, and experiencers alike what can be expected during regression, whether one believes they are truly reincarnation experiences or not.\n\nI am not saying that a regression experience that doesn't have all of the dozen traits outlined here is not really a regression experience. I am saying, however, that anyone undergoing a successful past-life regression therapy can expect several of these symptoms to arise.\n\nTrait 1: Past-Life Experiences Are Usually Visual\n\nMost of my subjects have said that their past-life experiences consist largely of sensory images. These images are usually visual, but a few subjects have also described odors and sounds. The subjects say that the images are more vivid or \"real\" than those in ordinary daydreams and usually do not seem distorted in the bizarre ways familiar to us from the dreams we normally have.\n\nThe past-life images are usually described as being in color. Here is one such example from a woman who was regressed and found herself as a farm boy in the late 1800s.\n\nI was an eighteen-year-old boy, sitting on the back of a wagon with my feet dangling down. I was right there. I could see my feet hanging down off the back of the wagon as clearly as if I had done it only five minutes ago.\n\nIn the same life, I was out working on a fence and I could see a snake at my feet just as plain as if it were right here in front of us. I ran to get away from it and fell and hit my forehead on a rock. The pain was so vivid that I had a headache when I came out of the trance. I also thought that blood was dripping down my face even after I came out of hypnosis because I could still feel it from the rock that caused me to bleed in my trance.\n\nThis is just one example of the way the senses are stimulated by past-life regressions.\n\nLess often, a past-life experience takes place in the form of thoughts. However, a lack of sensory images doesn't make a past-life experience any less compelling. Regressions that consist only of thoughts can be as moving and captivating as those composed of vivid and vibrant imagery.\n\nTrait 2: Past-Life Regressions Seem to Have a Life of Their Own\n\nThe scenes and events that take place during a past-life experience seem to unfold of their own accord, as though their outcome and progression are somehow independent of the conscious control of the person undergoing the experience. As a result, subjects usually feel as if they are witnessing events, not making them up, as a daydreamer would. Subjects frequently describe the feeling that they are watching a movie that seems somewhat familiar.\n\nA good example is my own regression. When I found myself as the Chinese lady artist, I was not sitting there making decisions about what would happen next. I had the feeling that I was just sitting there watching a movie. The events unfolded scene by scene. For me it was just like watching the big screen. Everything was in vivid color and detail. All I had to do was sit there and watch.\n\nTrait 3: The Imagery Has an Uncanny Feeling of Familiarity\n\nThe past-life experience is often permeated with a sense of familiarity, even nostalgia. The feelings that subjects describe are very similar to the common experience of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu, the feeling that you have already done or seen whatever you are currently experiencing.\n\nThese feelings of familiarity may range in intensity from a vague sense of remembrance to a sudden and forcefully recaptured memory of long-forgotten events.\n\nOne such example is the regression of a patient I'll call Neal. This Georgian, who was raised Southern Baptist, went to the unlikely lifetime of a monk in Ireland. He had many experiences that were steeped in familiarity, but perhaps the most vivid was watching with another monk from the top of a hill as some elderly farmers were murdered by thieves.\n\nIt was horrifying, but very much like I had seen it before. We had just topped the hill and were looking down at this farm when we noticed a band of horsemen riding toward the farmhouse. The old farmer and his wife came out to see who was coming and these horsemen rode right up to them and hit them with swords and clubs. We then watched as they dismounted and began ransacking the house.\n\nWhen I saw this in my trance, it didn't surprise me. I had this feeling of \"Oh yeah, I remember that.\" It was horrible, but I had been there before.\n\nSometimes the experience awakens a feeling of homesickness for the apparent previous life. The subject may even come away drenched with nostalgia for the lost world.\n\nOne of my patients went back to ancient China in his regression and was able to visit with his mentor, an old sage who had taught him well throughout the years of this previous life. Now he likes to come in for regressions just so he can visit with that old man!\n\nTrait 4: The Subject Identifies with One Character\n\nPeople undergoing a past-life regression identify themselves as one of the individuals in the unfolding drama and maintain this uncanny sense of being that person despite what may be profound differences in physical appearance, life circumstances, occupation, sex, or a host of other factors.\n\nFor example, one of the students in my college class reported with all apparent sincerity and conviction that he was a merchant living in Turkey hundreds of years ago.\n\nIn another regression, a young southern housewife described her sense of having been an African warrior in the dim primeval past.\n\nI suddenly found myself as a black warrior dressed in nothing but some kind of grass skirt to cover my privates! My jet black skin was covered with very elaborate patterns of war paint that zigzagged all over my body and made me look extremely fierce.\n\nI now realize the purpose of the war paint. It may seem silly to us now, but when I was in my regression I found myself looking into the eyes of this man coming up against me in warfare. He had war paint on, and the paint helped strike terror in my heart! The purpose of the paint was to add to the emotional impact of hand-to-hand combat.\n\nThis identity may linger even into the post-hypnotic period. The subject may come away feeling quite sure that he or she actually was that person in a past life. And they might have been.\n\nTrait 5: Past-Life Emotions May Be (Re)Experienced During a Regression\n\nSubjects usually report that they feel the emotions of their character in the regression. Thus, in one of my own regressions I actually felt some (mercifully not all) of the terrible terror as a lion leaped on me in the closing moments of my life in a Roman coliseum.\n\nThis emotional \"reliving\" is also quite apparent to the hypnotist conducting the regression. The subject may scowl with anger upon \"reliving\" an event in the regression that has made the subject furious. Tears may flow copiously as a subject, seemingly \"back in time,\" experiences a particularly touching or sad episode. The entire gamut of human feelings from tender love to fury may come to the surface during a deep past-life regression.\n\nThe emotions may be so powerful that it is sometimes helpful for the hypnotist to reassure the subject that he or she has \"lived through\" the experience in a lifetime long ago and there is no reason to fear or be distressed by the situation anymore.\n\nTrait 6: Past-Life Events May Be Viewed in Two Distinct Perspectives: First and Third Person\n\nThose undergoing a past-life regression may have a bilocality of perspective that enables them to (re)view the events from either a first- or third-person perspective. In the latter perspective, subjects become a \"disembodied\" observer of the action from outside the body of the person with whom they identify.\n\nFor example, a young student of mine described a scene from her regression in which she believed she was a coachman in early nineteenth-century Europe. At one point in the drama she saw the action from the point of view of the coachman himself. She seemed to be in his body, viewing the road in front of him from his perch on top of the coach. She saw the horses racing forward and even felt the wind. Then there was an accident, and the coach overturned. Suddenly she found herself viewing the scene from above, looking at the coachman's twisted body in the wreckage below.\n\nAnother example comes from a snippet of a patient's regression.\n\nI saw a man walking along the road in a blousy outfit like the ones they wore in the Renaissance. I found that I could watch the action from above this man as well as from his perspective. I could switch perspectives at will, almost like a TV station can switch cameras to change points of view.\n\nTrait 7: The Experience Often Mirrors Current Issues in the Subject's Life\n\nIn most of the past-life regressions I have conducted, the events and situations that unfold reflect the dilemmas and conflicts faced by the subject in his or her present life. Usually, these connections are obvious.\n\nFor example, one of my patients was involved in a stressful relationship with a somewhat older woman who was attempting to dominate him. As a result, he was feeling helpless.\n\nWhen he was hypnotized, a past life unfolded in which he had been a slave girl in an ancient Middle Eastern city.\n\nI remember being in a very beautiful palace in a place that seemed to be rows of apartments where slaves were coming in and out, taking care of these beautiful women. I was one of them, the kept flock. We were kept as concubines for someone, a sultan perhaps.\n\nOn the one hand, it was great there because we were completely comfortable with all of our material needs taken care of. On the other hand, it was the worst sort of hell because we had no inner freedom.\n\nThis regression was intriguing to me because in it he was a subjugated woman. Why? I wondered. After further therapy sessions, I was able to conclude that, to him, all women are in a state of subjugation. And since his current girlfriend had subjugated him, he was feeling like a woman.\n\nThe relationship of his past-life experience to his present life's circumstance then became quite clear.\n\nBut while such connections may be plain to an observer, they might not be so clear to the subject. This comes as no surprise to me. We humans routinely blind ourselves to even our most pervasive hang-ups by relegating them to our unconscious minds.\n\nSome subjects don't need to have the similarities between these past lives and their current one pointed out. Many people awaken from the hypnotic trance with the full insight that the past-life experience they just had was very similar to problems in their present life.\n\nThis tendency for past-life memories to echo current circumstances sometimes leads people to wonder whether their present difficulties result from unresolved problems in a past life.\n\nThat the regression experience resonates so closely with one's current issues is part of the rationale for past-life therapy, which gives therapists a window into those issues.\n\nTrait 8: Regression May Be Followed by Genuine Improvement in Mental State\n\nCatharsis is a psychological process in which pent-up feelings are allowed to be expressed, resulting in an enormous feeling of release and relief. This process often permits people to arrive at a new perspective on a sticky conflict or to make a needed change in a stressful or debilitating relationship.\n\nCatharsis of this kind often occurs during a past-life regression, as in the case of a young man who was locked in bitter resentment toward his younger brother. During his past-life regression, this young man, who saw his brother as taking all the resources and attention of his parents, witnessed a previous life in which he had lived in a jungle, apparently in South America, as an old man who was a member of a native tribe.\n\nIn that life, there was an elderly woman whom the subject identified as his present-life brother. The elderly woman didn't look like his present brother. He made the connection through intuition that the person in the regression was his brother.\n\nIn this regression scenario, the old man (the patient) was deformed and relied entirely upon the old woman (his current brother) to take care of him. She had, in essence, sacrificed herself for him.\n\nThe subject emerged from the past-life regression with a new feeling of love for his brother. He now felt the balance was being restored. In a past life his brother had graciously borne the burden of caring for him. Now it was his turn to care for his brother.\n\nAs a result of this past-life regression, the subject told his younger brother of his feelings, and their relationship reached a new and more satisfying equilibrium.\n\nAll of my patients have reached some point in their regression that intersects with one of the problems that plague their life. It might not be very dramatic in some cases, but they all say, \"Since that regression I understand more about....\"\n\nTrait 9: Regressions May Affect Medical Conditions\n\nIn rare instances, subjects may report dramatic improvement in physical symptoms following a past-life regression, and sometimes even spontaneous resolution of those symptoms. For instance, a woman I'll call Lisa had frequent and severe headaches. Although she had no organic problems, like a tumor, and she had long ago stopped drinking anything containing caffeine or alcohol, she was unable to control these insidious headaches without a large daily dose of aspirin.\n\nShe came to me for a hypnotic regression, \"just to see what is there.\" I took her into a hypnotic trance, and there she experienced very bad times in an ancient city made of stone. Here is what she had to say after the regression.\n\nI was living in this city as it was being attacked by invaders from another country. In the hypnotic trance I could see them descending upon the city, ready to rape and pillage.\n\nWe were all terrified. I could see people running all around me as the attacking soldiers chased us, slashing and stabbing with their weapons.\n\nI could see myself. I was a young woman dressed in white clothing. I was trying very hard to get away, but there was little reason to try, since the soldiers were everywhere.\n\nSuddenly I was caught by several of the invaders. One of them held my arms and one of the others hit me on the head with a club. The pain was incredible. They hit me several times and then dropped me. I could feel my brain swelling as I slowly died.\n\nThe pain was apparently overwhelming. As she lay on the couch with her eyes closed, hurt was evident in her face and voice.\n\nDiscussing this terrible death proved to be a cathartic experience for Anne. She experienced a great deal of emotional release while describing the emotions of the past-life moment. As we talked about her hypnotic regression it became clear that there were many sources of stress and panic in Anne's life. By using this powerful regressing experience, we were able to pry into many of the emotions she had kept pent up. Subsequently she was able to take less pain medication for her headaches.\n\nThe occasional cases like Anne's are evidence of the powerful connections between mind and body.\n\nTrait 10: Regressions Develop According to Meanings, Not a Historical Timeline\n\nIf a subject were to be regressed to a dozen distinct \"past lives\" over the course of a year, a series of lives that center on an emotional or relationship theme would most likely emerge, not a series of lives appearing in the chronological sequence in which they would have been lived.\n\nFor example, a male subject might have a couple of experiences that deal with his attitudes toward women, followed by a series of two or three lives that embody various ways of dealing with aggression, followed by a cluster of lives in which issues of dependence on others seem paramount.\n\nThe primary feature revealed in the \"past lives\" of a subject seems not to be that person's role in history but rather his or her psychological and spiritual development. This is yet another feature of these experiences that can make past-life therapy successful.\n\nTrait 11: Past-Life Regressions Become Easier with Repetition\n\nGenerally speaking, the more a person tries, the easier it becomes to enter into a past-life experience.\n\nThat proficiency seems to come with repetition. The subject also feels more and more natural and at home with the regressed state.\n\nThere may be temporary setbacks\u2014resistance to the hypnotic state may reemerge owing to present-life stresses or other distracting factors\u2014but overall the subject will enter the regression state more and more easily.\n\nTrait 12: Most Past Lives Are Mundane\n\nAlthough popular belief has it that almost everyone who has regressed to a past life claims to have been Napoleon or Cleopatra, I have found only a few subjects who identify with a known historical figure. Instead, most of the lives that appear are typical lives of the periods to which the subjects regress.\n\nThis isn't to say that people willing to undergo hypnotic regression wouldn't like to be Joan of Arc or General Ulysses S. Grant in their past life. However, they are usually disappointed to find themselves in a past life as an ordinary French citizen or just a foot soldier in the Civil War.\n\nIn my book Coming Back: A Psychiatrist Explores Past-Life Journeys, in which these traits were originally published, I expressed a lot of doubt about past lives. I am still doubtful. Even after experiencing nine convincing lives of my own during one extraordinary regression session, I don't know to this day whether I believe they truly represented reincarnation. \"Traits are like tire tracks on a dirt road,\" a professor once told me. \"They might let you know that a vehicle has been there, but they don't necessarily tell you what kind of vehicle it was.\" Still, I have softened my viewpoint on reincarnation substantially. As I wrote in Coming Back:\n\nAs a result of my research, I knew I was no longer a skeptic, but I didn't know what I was no longer skeptical about. Isolating the traits or \"symptoms\" of PLRs meant that I knew what to expect from a hypnotically regressed patient. But it didn't mean that what they were perceiving had really happened.\n\nThe mind likes to please and for that reason it is highly suggestible. When given the opportunity, it will fill in gaps with great aplomb. And when given the focused leisure time that hypnotism presents, it will often occupy itself with self-made fantasies....\n\n. . . Skepticism aside, past-life regression analysis clearly offers some important new opportunities for the psychotherapist. After conducting almost one hundred hypnotic regressions for my research, it was obvious to me that this method offers a quick and innovative way to find out, at least partially, what is troubling the subject.\n\nIn almost every hypnotic regression that I had conducted, the subject's \"past life\" memory mirrors a conflict in his or her current life. By hypnotically regressing them, I am able to arrive at the root of the problem quickly. Instead of spending hours of couch time, the patient is able to fully face his problem early in therapy and spend more time learning to cope with it than finding it.\n\nBelievers in reincarnation say that this mirroring occurs because a conflict in a past life must repeat itself life after life until it is resolved. Maybe this is true. Who's to say otherwise? But I do believe that past-life regressions deal with mental conflict in a unique and effective way, one whose value should be realized even by those who don't believe in past lives and reincarnation.\n\nThat is why I continue to examine them.\nChapter Fifteen\n\nWhat happened next in my life was both the worst and best that could have happened at that time.\n\nLet's start with the best, then go to the worst, and finally return to the best for what I would consider to be a happy\u2014although nearly deadly\u2014ending.\n\nMy co-author Paul Perry had been working with me on the past-life regression studies, and we were writing a book. Our agent, Nat Sobel, had sold the idea of doing this book to publishers in several countries, and now we were fully funded and writing to a deadline of the summer of 1990.\n\nI was relieved to have a large book advance. Despite my professor's salary and speaking fees as a frequent lecturer, I was in financial straits. Not only was I paying for my boys' schooling, but I had also made a terrible financial decision in hiring a business manager who was taking as much as 50 percent of my income.\n\nIf you ask how I could do such a thing, I can only shrug and blame it on my myxedema. As my thyroid levels had dropped over the previous couple of years, I found myself making more and more critical errors in judgment. There are many examples, but by far the worst were the ones I made that led to the heavy hit to my income. By the time I was able to break the contract with this business manager, I was deep in the hole.\n\nWriting this book was my way out. Not only had we received a fairly substantial advance from the American publisher, but they also had high hopes for it becoming a bestseller. If that happened, my financial woes would be over.\n\nI was thrilled to be working on a book that would sum up my regression studies. As with near-death experiences, I had stumbled onto a field of study that had not been fully explored. I had dissected near-death experiences, taking them apart like no one had before me. Doing that let me focus my life on a single worthwhile project. So it was with my past-life regression work. I saw the use of past-life regressions as an innovative form of psychotherapy and felt that this book would be a substantial addition to the arsenal of tools available in the field of psychology. I was proud of my efforts.\n\nBy August 1990 the book, which we titled Coming Back: A Psychiatrist Explores Past-Life Journeys, was completed. The manuscript landed on the publisher's desk on August 2, 1990\u2014the day Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein attacked Kuwait.\n\nAbout a week later the editor called and was bubbling.\n\n\"This book's remarkable,\" she said. \"I think we've got a best-seller here.\"\n\nI was thrilled. All the way through the process I had received accolades. The editor's assistant had read it and called with a story about her own past-life experience. The copy editor had gone through it and written me a long letter that included stories from friends who'd had very successful past-life regression therapy. And more than a month before the book's publication date, I received a call from a very effusive marketing director. He too believed that the book was destined for the top of the heap. There was plenty in my book for both sides of the argument, he declared. Believers and nonbelievers alike would be able to see the value in what I'd done.\n\nThen my editor added, \"If Saddam Hussein doesn't get in the way, you'll have a hit on your hands.\"\n\nSaddam Hussein! I had been watching the gathering storm in Iraq on television, but now I began to watch it in a more personal way. As the weeks progressed I saw in my mind two lines converging on one another, one representing the coming war and the other the publication of my book. When I expressed my concerns, both the editor and marketing director told me not to worry. The company had a big press tour planned for Coming Back, and there was no way to back out of it now.\n\n\"These press tours get a life of their own,\" said my editor. \"If we stop it now, we'll lose our momentum.\"\n\nAlways a fan of the news, I now watched it obsessively as U.S. forces took up positions in Saudi Arabia and waited as President George H. W. Bush and Saddam sparred verbally on the international stage.\n\n\"We have you booked on TV and radio in more than twenty markets,\" said a marketing assistant. A slight hesitation in her voice made me feel uncomfortable.\n\nIt was now the first week in January, and I was feeling the stress of the situation. Press tours are stressful anyway, but this one was worse. I would have to fight major world events for a few moments of airtime on TV or radio. And then, who cared? The hint of World War III would trump anyone's interest in a book on past lives. I knew it would certainly trump mine.\n\nAnd then there was that tingling in my throat. I was feeling weak and cold, and the constant tingling was foreshadowing worse to come.\n\nI begged one more time to delay the press tour. Bombing was going on in Iraq and had been for weeks. And President Bush was promising war if Saddam didn't withdraw from Kuwait by January 15. Couldn't they postpone this tour for a month or two?\n\nI made that appeal on January 13, three days before I was to go on The Today Show. When bombs started falling on the fifteenth, I was sitting in a hotel room getting mentally prepared for my appearance the next day. The marketing assistant called with disturbing news. The appearance had been canceled until a later date.\n\nAnd so it went in the next twenty or so markets. I would get on an airplane and fly to a city where a chirpy public relations escort picked me up at the airport and drove to a television or radio station where a distressed producer would meet us in the lobby with the bad news that our talk show or TV segment had been canceled. The explanation, of course, was that all of the airtime was being devoted to the war in Iraq.\n\nSome of the stations taped interviews with me that they saved for later. I don't know if these interviews were ever broadcast or if the producers just felt sorry for me. In fact, after traveling to about ten markets, I didn't care much about anything. The tingling in my throat, which had become very noticeable in the days leading up to the tour, had worsened substantially since the tour began. Now it had become a presence, an almost electrical feeling I could not ignore.\n\nBy the time I got to California I had done only one live interview and taped maybe three. The stress of the situation caused me to get sick faster than I had ever experienced before. I had to wear a thick sweater underneath my blue blazer, and in San Francisco I stopped at a men's store to purchase a pair of ski gloves.\n\nWhen I went into the studios with my escort, the producers looked at me nervously. The escort looked at me with the same discomfort, and when I caught sight of myself in windows on the street, I was alarmed as well. My eyes looked dead, and my face had the pallor of someone who was near death. I didn't care. In fact, I wanted to die.\n\nI called my co-author, Paul Perry, and told him I wanted to die. I was sitting in a San Diego hotel room, and all I could think about was climbing out the window and letting gravity take its toll. I was cold, tired beyond belief, confused, and losing the color in my vision.\n\nPaul talked me down, but I still couldn't get it out of my head that suicide was the only way out.\n\nBy morning things were better. I boarded the airplane for Atlanta and fell into a fitful sleep. But once I woke up again and tried to weave through the airport, I could feel my energy slipping and with it my mental stability.\n\nBack in Carrollton, I was surrounded by sympathetic friends who, knowing what this book meant to me, dropped by one by one to see how I was doing. Some clearly thought I was drunk when they spoke to me because I was slurring my words and not making much sense. The ones who knew I didn't drink insisted I see a doctor as soon as possible. I made an appointment to see my doctor on Monday, but by Sunday I had gone completely mad.\n\nWith a large bottle of the painkiller Darvon in my possession, I got in my car and drove to my office at the college. There, I reasoned, I would lock the door and take a dose of painkillers sufficient to kill me.\n\nIn my office I opened the bottle of Darvon and poured the pills out onto my desk. Then I began to take them several at a time with gulps from a can of Coca-Cola. I took about two dozen of the pills and then sat down at the desk. For some reason I called Paul Perry.\n\n\"I've done it,\" I said with a note of finality.\n\n\"Done what?\" he asked.\n\n\"I've taken pills and I'm dying,\" I said. \"I want you to be the last person I talk to.\"\n\nI could hear the controlled panic in Paul's voice as he started to ask a series of questions: \"What did you take? How many did you take? Where are you?\"\n\nI became somewhat angry at the line of questioning. I could tell that he wanted to get enough information to somehow intervene from Arizona. But I didn't want an intervention. What I wanted was good conversation in the final moments of my life.\n\n\"Look, Paul, I have researched death, and I know it's nothing to be afraid of. I will be better off dead.\"\n\nAnd that was genuinely how I felt. Myxedema madness had put me in the throes of a paranoia and despair so great that I felt everyone would be better off if I was no longer around. No amount of talk could convince me otherwise. Paul suggested a number of possible solutions to my problems, including an agent and CPA to straighten out my money problems and a new press tour to arouse interest in the book. I would hear none of it. I was ready to die.\n\n\"You know, Paul, being alive holds more fear for me than being dead. I have talked to hundreds of people who have crossed into death, and they all tell me that it's great over there,\" I said. \"Every day I wake up afraid of the day. I don't want that anymore.\"\n\n\"What about your children?\" Paul asked.\n\n\"They'll all understand,\" I said resolutely. \"They know I'm not happy here. They'll be sad, but they'll understand. It's time for me to leave.\"\n\nI could hear someone jiggling the office door knob as we spoke. Then there was a pounding on the heavy wooden door, a couple of raps at first and then a persistent drumbeat. Then a loud voice. \"Campus police, open the door.\"\n\nI ignored the demand and kept talking to Paul, taking a few more pills as we spoke. Within seconds a key was slipped into the door lock and the door sprang open. Policemen rushed in and before I could say much of anything they had put my hands behind me and sat me on the floor.\n\nOne of the policemen picked up the phone and began talking to Paul. Apparently Paul asked about the presence of pills, because the policeman began to count the pills on the desk. When he did that, he dropped the phone on the desk and from his police radio he dialed 911.\n\nAn overdose of Darvon has little effect on a person until it reaches a critical blood level. Then the painkiller overwhelms the heart's beating mechanism and quickly stops it cold. A dentist friend who had seen someone overdose on Darvon said it was like falling off a table: the person was operating fine until he just dropped to the floor. I knew that the same thing would happen to me shortly. All I had to do was wait. I sat patiently on the floor as EMTs charged up the stairs with their gurney and equipment.\n\n\"Are you okay?\" asked one of the EMTs.\n\n\"Sure,\" I said, and I was. Never better actually. I was not afraid of death, but I had obviously become very afraid of life.\n\nThings began to happen fast after that. My chest felt very heavy, and I had the feeling of slipping into a dark blue place. They hoisted me onto the gurney and strapped me in and rolled me quickly down the passageway to the waiting ambulance.\n\nAs they loaded me into the ambulance the world around me began to fade. The concerned EMT was in my face, trying to keep me awake. Another EMT was drawing something into a very large syringe, probably adrenaline to inject into my heart. \"Better get going,\" shouted one of the policemen as he slammed the rear doors. I could feel the ambulance accelerate, hitting speed bumps hard as we headed for the hospital. An elephant was sitting on my chest. My eyes were closed, or at least I think they were. Either way, I could see nothing.\n\nMy heart stopped.\n\nWhat happened next is almost indescribable, but I will do my best to make it less so. I could feel myself separate from the world around me. In a funny way it was almost like cellophane being pulled off a smooth surface, one reality separating from another.\n\nI sensed spirits around me, helpful presences, who were there to guide me through this separation. I tried to see these spirit guides, but I could not make them out because I was surrounded by a light that was not of this world. I could hear them speaking, and although I couldn't make out what was being said, their presence was soothing and calm and I felt a radiant love from them.\n\nI didn't have an opportunity to examine myself in this state to see what I looked like or was made of. And I didn't have the time I would have liked to try to make contact with the spirits either. Instead, I felt myself \"start up\" again as the doctors pumped my stomach and gave me a shot of a stimulant to the heart. The light went away, the spirits were there no more, and I came to in an emergency room.\n\nThat's what it's all about! I said to myself as I lay there on the bed. I didn't feel I'd been dead long enough to have a classic near-death experience, but at least I got close enough to see the city limits. I was oddly pleased. After defining, naming, and studying near-death experiences, I could now say I'd had one and, yes, it was real.\n\nI lay in the bed reliving the experience. There was nothing unreal about it. If anything, it was almost mundane, as though I had opened a door and walked into a strange room. I wondered what would have happened if my heart had been stopped longer. Would the spirit beings around me have become visible? And were they people I knew and loved? Would the light have changed and become that palpable and mystical light so many talk about? Would my life have come back to me in a review? Would I have been introduced into a life after life?\n\nI puzzled over these questions for some time and then settled on what I knew\u2014that an extraordinary transformation of consciousness had taken place at the point of death. I did not go into a blackness, as so many assume will happen. Rather, I found myself in a richer, deeper, and more real state of consciousness. I had gone somewhere that so many have described as heaven.\n\nThe next day I was transferred to a short-stay psychiatric facility. I expected nothing, really. For most of my life I had gone through periods of being extremely cold, having no energy, and developing the skin disease vitiligo. I had also been extremely depressed, even suicidal.\n\nYet even with these symptoms in plain sight, no doctor had ever diagnosed a treatable disease. So on this day in February 1992, I expected no meaningful diagnosis from the doctor who had been assigned my case. Still, I spoke politely to him about my medical history and suicide attempt. I noticed that he nodded and took a few notes, as all doctors do. He scanned what he had read and then made a proclamation.\n\n\"Oh, Dr. Moody, I'm sorry that no one has ever picked this up. But you have thyroid disease, myxedema,\" he said.\n\nI was very reluctant to believe that for all of those years I had been victim to such an easily diagnosable disease. He ordered a blood test, and in a few days he came in with the results. I remember looking at the lab value and seeing the number 119. An indication of the amount of thyroid in my bloodstream, 119 was such a low thyroid count that there was some concern among the medical staff as to whether I would get my mental faculties back.\n\n\"I think you will,\" said the diagnosing doctor. \"The greatest predictor for recovering your mental abilities is having a high IQ, which in your case means you'll probably make a full recovery.\"\n\nA full recovery to what? I wondered. I'd had myxedema for so long that I didn't know where a full recovery would take me.\n\nThe doctor started me on a course of thyroid medication (slowly at first) that took my blood levels back up to near normal. Soon I was functioning well again, but I was given a big warning by the doctor that at times I have not heeded (as you will soon see): Thyroid levels fluctuate dramatically, he said, and so will your emotions if you don't watch your levels at all time.\n\nMy life changed after that. I now knew the cause of my mood swings and the reason I sometimes wanted to kill myself. Like a person with diabetes whose insulin can sometimes swing wildly, I had finally learned that my thyroid could drop in a minute and take me with it. And it has continued to do that, sometimes with horrifying results.\n\nAnd yes, I still become suicidal at times. I still get into those moods where I wish I was dead, and I can even start to ideate on how I will kill myself. But now that I know the source of these feelings, I am armed with the wherewithal to stop myself and test my thyroid levels.\n\nI have found one positive side to my suicide attempt. Now, when people come to me with suicidal thoughts, I can talk to them with firsthand knowledge about this horrible urge. I freely share my own story of attempted suicide and tell them why I am glad I didn't succeed. I also bring in the data about people who have tried to commit suicide and had near-death experiences before being revived. These people say that they will never again try to kill themselves, not because they fear going to hell, but because they have learned that life does have a purpose.\n\nStill, as a psychiatrist and a human being, I am aware that some people are having suicidal ideation all the time. To address this I give patients that old psychiatric clich\u00e9: If you ask one hundred people if they have ever considered suicide, ninety will say they have, and the other ten are lying.\n\nIt's funny, but it's true. And it's good to know we are not alone in even our darkest moments.\nChapter Sixteen\n\nFor many years I had been interested in reproducing certain aspects of the near-death experience in people who were not near death. For example, being able to re-create a vivid life review without dying would be extremely valuable in a therapeutic setting for a patient trying to relive childhood trauma. Another aspect of the near-death experience that would be valuable to re-create would be the ability to see dead relatives. This would be helpful in a number of therapeutic situations but mainly in grief therapy for those with a desire to see the deceased just \"one more time\" in order to tie up loose ends and make sure the deceased is comfortable in the afterlife.\n\nOver the years researchers have presented a variety of ways to duplicate the near-death experience. Some in the medical profession have even done so without knowing what they were doing. In the 1950s, for example, a German physician named E. J. Medune developed carbon dioxide therapy: Patients who breathed a gas mixture rich in carbon dioxide reported having reactions very similar to NDEs, including the sensation of zooming through a tunnel and achieving varying levels of cosmic wisdom.\n\nMedune developed this therapy as a means to cure stuttering. It appeared to work well in that regard and even worked as a therapy for stomach ulcers. Subjects in the stuttering and ulcer studies may have achieved some level of transformation (as NDEers do) as a result of carbon dioxide therapy, but that is only my assumption, since the transformative effects of the \"Medune Mix,\" as it was called, were never duplicated.\n\nFor me, the most interesting part of the NDE is seeing departed loved ones. Of the nine stages of the NDE, this one seemed the most valuable to grief therapy, the work I was closely involved in.\n\nThe most common desire of people grieving over a loved one is to see the deceased again. When the death was very painful, the living person may want to see the loved one again to see if the pain is gone. Other times the grieving person may have unresolved issues with the deceased and wants to resolve those issues face to face. I have had patients who were molested by their fathers and now want to get the pain of the abuse behind them by talking about it with the late perpetrator. Still others are just lonely and need to fill that emptiness with one more loving encounter.\n\nThe desire to see a deceased relative was a powerful motivation for many of my grief patients. And for me, not being able to accomplish that goal for them was a great frustration. The ability to facilitate an apparition, if you will, was beyond the grasp of medical science.\n\nThen one day the answer landed on me, literally.\n\nI was browsing the dusty shelves of a used-book store in a small Georgia town. Spying an old book in the psychology section that looked interesting, I reached to pull it down from a high shelf and the book next to it slid out and fell at my feet. I picked up the book and looked at its title: Crystal Gazing. My only exposure to such things was in comics: Donald Duck would dress like a fortune-teller to bilk his naive nephews of their allowance.\n\nOrdinarily, I would have put the book back on the shelf and been done with it. But on this particular day I had time to let my mind roam, and I decided to do so with this fascinating tome by a scholar named Northcote Thomas. The introduction by Andrew Lang, an eminent psychologist from the early twentieth century, expressed his belief that the rational medical and scientific community would be appalled by anyone who tried to conduct medical studies on any form of crystal gazing.\n\nBut Thomas's work had changed his mind. Now, declared Lang, medical doctors should find research into crystal gazing as being \"no more offensive, really, than the dreams of the day or night. They are phenomena of human nature, exercises of human faculty, and, as such, invite study. To shirk examination is less than courageous.\" The book was dated 1900, and to my knowledge no one in the medical community had taken the Lang challenge and attempted any research on crystal gazing.\n\nAs I read on, though, first in the bookstore and then at home, I became fascinated with the possibilities of crystal gazing. I began to study the ways in which other cultures created altered states of consciousness by gazing into crystals, mirrors, or other clear depths, which in general is known as scrying. Then I began to research the ancient Greeks, my favorite culture, and the cave warrens they created known as psychomanteums, where people would spend weeks in order to connect for just a few moments with the spirits of their deceased loved ones.\n\nAs I studied the work of Thomas and other historical accounts of the art of scrying, I began to wonder if I could take it out of the realm of art and turn it into a science, making it an event that could be replicated at will and studied in a laboratory setting.\n\nI found this notion to be very exciting for a number of reasons. First and foremost was that scrying could be a very effective means of grief therapy for patients who were unable to overcome the depression and grief caused by the death of a loved one. Since grief is one of the most difficult of human emotions to overcome, I was particularly interested in this question. Seeing a deceased loved one just one more time could be an important turning point for patients trying to get past their grief and go on with their lives.\n\nI began to write down other reasons why I would launch myself into a study of the unorthodox world of scrying:\n\nDoes scrying explain why so many people see ghosts? Excellent medical research had shown that as many as one-fourth of Americans have experienced ghosts at least once, while one-third of Europeans report such experiences. By experiencing ghosts, I don't mean just seeing one but also feeling, hearing, or smelling a ghost. Such encounters are proof that the memories of our loved ones are deeply embedded in our unconscious mind\u2014so deeply that it isn't a great leap to think that we should be able to continue communicating with them in one form or another. Even the late astronomer Carl Sagan, no great fan of paranormal research, wrote in Parade magazine about hearing the voices of his parents calling his name more than a dozen times after both had died.\n\nCould crystal gazing make it possible to \"see\" ghosts in a laboratory setting? Because experiencing ghosts seems to happen spontaneously, there is no methodical way of studying this phenomenon. The study of ghost experiences is just a study of stories about these experiences taking place on their own, with no way of controlling when they occurred. But if crystal gazing was a method of inducing ghost experiences, then they could be created in a laboratory setting and studied by scientists. The idea of being able to observe a person experiencing a ghost was exciting to me. Not only could we observe the brain physiology that allowed this to happen, but we might also be able to investigate any direct connections between the brain and a possible afterlife.\n\nCould crystal gazing make it possible to view the unconscious mind? Since the study of psychology began, researchers like Jung and Freud have insisted that much if not most of what goes on in the human mind takes place in the unconscious. Thus, who we are and how we react and respond to the world is largely invisible and out of our control. Could crystal gazing allow us to consciously explore the unconscious, making it visible?\n\nCould crystal gazing make it possible to understand the creative process? Many writers, artists, scientists, and even businessmen credit the unconscious mind as the source of their creativity and their greatest work. Salvador Dali, the surrealist painter, devised methods of wakening himself in the midst of dreams so that he could use their surrealistic qualities on his canvases; the result was melting clocks and other bizarre images. Thomas Edison did the same, using techniques to capture the thoughts in his mind that arose during that fugue state between sleep and wakefulness. Could crystal gazing be a way of tapping into hidden creativity inside each of us? And could the systematic use of crystal gazing overcome blocks to creativity?\n\nCould mirror gazing be a way of exploring interesting and important events in history? The Bible is filled with events that could have been inspired by crystal gazing. In the First Book of Samuel, for instance, King Saul orders all mediums and spiritualists to be expelled from Israel and promises death to anyone who dares to conjure a spirit. Then, in a dramatic turnaround, Saul finds himself in need of advice from the late King Samuel. To avoid looking like a hypocrite, he dresses like a woman and travels to Endor, where a female medium reluctantly conjures the spirit of Samuel. The spirit apparently reveals the true identity of Saul to the medium because she becomes fearful of the king and accuses him of entrapment. Only when he promises to do her no harm does she reveal the spirit of Samuel to King Saul. The king weeps and declares that God no longer speaks to him through \"prophets or dreams,\" so he has now called on the spirit of Samuel to tell him what to do. There are many such events in the Bible as well as throughout history, involving figures like Abraham Lincoln and General George Patton. A study of mirror gazing could reveal some of history's great mysteries.\n\nIs a study of crystal gazing a way to explain humankind's propensity to believe in supernatural forces, or is it a way to actually reach the realm of the supernatural? Studying crystal gazing could reveal for the first time whether a supernatural realm exists by allowing science to re-create ghost experiences and probe them until findings are reached. But does crystal gazing itself open a door into another realm? Is this a door that we could learn to open at will? Would it explain our devout belief in the supernatural?\n\nI hastily jotted down the questions I wanted to answer in my study of crystal gazing and then refined them into the questions listed here. Then I crafted a statement and goal about the work I was about to do that read something like this:\n\nAs human beings, we are plagued by fear and anxiety about death.\n\nAs a society, we put death in its place, creating cemeteries that keep death out of our view. We have horror films to remind us of the terror in death, but other than that we don't talk about death very much, except when it is required.\n\nIn many ways these strictures are aimed at telling us that there is a world of the living and a world of the dead and one side can never venture into the other.\n\nYet in my experience there is a midway zone between the living and the dead. It is a zone that, logically, has nothing in it.\n\nWithout a doubt, there are certain experiences of living consciousness that seem to indicate that we survive death. Near-death experiences are one such phenomenon, as are seeing apparitions of the deceased and shamanic voyages. These experiences are seen as a transition between life and death. Because they have to do with both and yet neither, they might be called adventures of the Middle Realm.\n\nThe existence of the Middle Realm has no basis in scientifically proven fact. Yet people of sound mind and good judgment have experiences that convince them that the state of death is a transition into another dimension of awareness called life after death.\n\nWith all of this in mind, my goal was to explore mirror visions to see if they might be one way of entering the Middle Realm.\nChapter Seventeen\n\nI was teaching psychology at West Georgia State College at this time and decided to perform a small experiment with the students. I set up a crystal ball in the classroom and had a maintenance worker install light-excluding shades over the windows. I put lit candles around the room for effect. When the students came into the room, I had them sit at the big table around the crystal ball.\n\nA few days earlier I had explained the history and theory of scrying and asked for volunteers for my first experimental session. I didn't want to make participation mandatory for all members of the class, given that some were extremely religious and may have felt that this experiment was akin to devil worship.\n\nStill, the students who had volunteered were somewhat agog when they came into class that day at the way the room had been transformed into a mystical place using only darkness, a few glowing objects, and of course, the enormous crystal ball in the center of the table.\n\nWhen the students sat down, I did a brief relaxation session with them (which some of the students, who had Deep South sensibilities and weren't accustomed to even the most basic forms of meditation, described as \"weird\"), and then we began.\n\nThe instructions were simple. I told the students to half-close their eyes and gaze into the clear depth of the crystal. Mentally, I said, they should let thoughts pass through their mind until they became empty like blank slates. At that point, I told them, unexpected images might appear. Or they might not.\n\nNone of the students saw dead relatives, but a surprising array of images came to them over the one-hour session. Several saw what they believed to be past lives. One student was a soldier in the Civil War, another a nurse in seventeenth-century France, and one white student found himself working hard as an African slave on a southern plantation.\n\nThere were other discoveries too. A woman came to my office a few days later and tearfully told me that during the session she had relived childhood molestation by an uncle. And a young man told me privately that he had envisioned being dead and reborn. When he told this to his mother, she confessed that she had indeed left him alone in a bathtub as an infant and found him drowning when she returned. She revived him, but had never told anyone about the incident. He asked me whether I thought this was what he had experienced through scrying.\n\nBased on this simple experiment alone, I could see several therapeutic uses for scrying. Like past-life regressions, scrying seemed to dredge up painful memories, revivifying details and emotions and making them real once again. For patients who were \"blocked\" about their problems or had perhaps forgotten important details, scrying might be a way to break through these blockages, offering exciting therapeutic possibilities.\n\nBut was scrying a means by which to explore the Middle Realm, that place where the living and dying meet during near-death experiences? That question intrigued me, and I began to search for the answer on my own.\n\nIn a small closet I devised a simple apparition booth. On one wall I hung a mirror high enough that I could not see myself when I sat down in front of it. The only thing visible would be the clear depth in the mirror as it reflected the wall behind me. Then I installed a twenty-five-watt lightbulb to provide minimal light.\n\nIn this simple facility, I became my first experimental subject to attempt a facilitated apparition.\n\nMy goal was to see Grandmother Waddleton, my maternal grandmother. In preparation for the experience, I took a long walk and ate a high-carbohydrate breakfast to increase the level of the neurotransmitter serotonin in my bloodstream. Then I spent much of the day looking at photos of my grandmother and remembering her kindness, a wonderful experience.\n\nThen I went into the apparition booth. Sitting in the room's dim light, I gazed into the crystal clear, three-dimensional depth of the offset mirror, which was like looking into a deep mountain lake. I gazed into this mirror for an hour or more, thinking of Grandmother Waddleton and bringing scenes to life from the photos I had looked at for so long.\n\nYet despite two hours of effort, my beloved grandmother did not appear.\n\nHad I done something wrong? I wondered as I left the booth.\n\nI went downstairs to the living room. It was twilight now, and the experience of scrying had left me surprisingly tired. I remember sitting on the couch, thinking of nothing at all.\n\nSuddenly a woman walked into the room! It took me a moment to realize that this was not my maternal grandmother, Grandmother Waddleton, but my paternal grandmother, Grandmother Moody, who had died several years earlier.\n\n\"Grandma!\" I exclaimed, throwing my hands up to my face.\n\nI was awestruck. I had hoped to conjure my maternal grandmother because my memories of her were all very positive. My paternal grandmother was another story. Few of my memories of her were pleasant, and most were distinctly unpleasant. I remembered how she always sided with my father in arguments, and how she washed my mouth with soap for saying a word that she didn't think was appropriate. I even remembered her telling me I'd \"go to hell\" for flying in an airplane! My memory of her as chronically crabby, however, was in distinct contrast to the woman who was standing before me now, smiling.\n\nWe spoke. I heard her, although what I heard came to my ears with a crisp, electric quality that was louder and clearer than her voice had been before she died. Although we spoke and I could hear her, I was immediately aware of what she was saying even before she said it, which has led me to describe this experience as \"mind-to-mind\" communication.\n\nShe did not appear ghostly or transparent but was completely solid. And she was much younger in physical appearance than when she died. In fact, she appeared much younger than I had ever seen her. Still, I recognized her, and I would recognize her today if I saw her on the street. This was my father's mother.\n\nWe discussed our family, and she revealed family secrets that I didn't know but that explained many events in my childhood. I choose not to reveal them here, other than to say that these revelations explained some of the dysfunction that has been present in my own life and I have felt better since hearing them from her.\n\nI don't know how long we communicated. It seemed like a couple of hours, but it could also have been just a few seconds. However long it was, the meeting was completely satisfactory, and we wrapped it up in a way that changed my impression of my paternal grandmother. I no longer feared or disliked her.\n\nAt the end of our meeting, when there was nothing else to talk about, she said that we would meet again, and I said that I hoped we would. Then I stood up and tried to hug her, but she held up her hands to motion me back. I tried again, and her hands went up again. I noticed that her body was surrounded by a thin line of light that made her stand out from her surroundings; other than that, she looked just like an ordinary person standing there in front of me. I left the room to get a drink of water. When I came back, the apparition was gone.\n\nEverything about the meeting puzzled me. Why did I see my paternal grandmother when I had worked so hard to see my maternal one? Why did she appear to me in the living room after my session in the apparition booth? How was she able to reveal family secrets that I had never known unless she was truly my grandmother?\n\nAnd so on. The words poured out of me as I wrote them down in one of my ever-present notebooks. I called such experiences \"facilitated apparitions,\" and the excitement I felt over this work came from many different directions. Most important was my continuing study of the ancient Greeks. The ancients constructed psychomanteums all over Greece, and citizens would flock\u2014literally\u2014to these specially designed caves to experience facilitated apparitions. Why did they do that? The most obvious answer was grief therapy. Even the ancients shared the universal desire to spend five more minutes with a departed loved one. If I could replicate the Greeks' method of facilitating apparitions, I could develop a better means of grief therapy.\n\nDeveloping a controlled method of facilitating apparitions, however, would be far more than just another method of grief therapy: It would be a major step forward in paranormal research. Up until then, apparitional studies had been based on \"ghost stories\" about events that happen in uncontrolled situations. If apparitions could be facilitated, they could be studied scientifically using a variety of medical and psychological tools. Imagine, for example, a CAT scan image showing exactly how the brain communicates with the Middle Realm!\n\nAfter a while I put my pen away and mulled over the possibilities. Even though twilight was turning to darkness outside, I knew I was at the dawn of a new adventure.\nChapter Eighteen\n\nI went in search of the perfect location in which to pursue my study of facilitated apparitions.\n\nI was living in Carrollton, Georgia, at the time and started my search there. My criteria for the right house were simple but expensive. I needed a large place in a quiet neighborhood or perhaps in the country that was surrounded by enough land to give it the feeling of isolation. Being on a creek would be ideal since the sound of running water is relaxing.\n\nThe houses being shown to me by the local Realtors that fit these criteria were very expensive. Carrollton was within commuting distance of Atlanta, the Realtors explained, and in recent years city people had been moving here for a small-town experience. Hence, an inexpensive house was not easy to find in Carrollton.\n\nI made my frustrations known to the secretary in the Psychology Department, and she gently offered a solution: Alabama is just eleven miles down the road, she said. Homes are cheaper there.\n\nSo I went looking. And it was there that I came to believe that \"coincidence\" is just another word for universal intention.\n\nThrough a friend, I found a beautiful Victorian set in the middle of two acres. I liked what I saw, and soon I was in the office of the real estate agent listed on the FOR SALE sign. I told him who I was and said I wanted to take a look at the Victorian for sale.\n\nThe Realtor looked at me slightly askance and said, \"What are you really looking for?\"\n\nIt was a moment of intuition on his part because, although I liked the Victorian, what I really wanted was a gristmill. I had wanted to live in a mill house since I visited one as a young man with my uncle Fairley Waddleton, who was the chief of police of Oxford, Georgia. I had always kept that vision in my mind, and apparently I had it now because the Realtor appeared to know I wanted something different from the Victorian house I came to see him about.\n\n\"What are you really looking for?\" he repeated.\n\n\"I'm a psychiatrist, and I'm looking for a place out in the country where I can do some reading and writing,\" I said. \"My choice would be a gristmill.\" Naturally, I didn't say anything about gazing into mirrors, and I breathed a sigh of relief when he didn't pick up on that.\n\nHe rubbed his chin for a moment and said, \"Let me take you to a place near where I live,\" he said.\n\nWe drove down a country road through trees and fields and then over a wooden bridge to a big white gristmill on the edge of a broad and fast-flowing creek. The place was built in 1850, said the Realtor. An identical mill had been built directly across the creek, but it had been burned down in the Civil War. I thought I was in a dream.\n\n\"Perfect,\" I said.\n\n\"Yes, it is,\" he said. \"The problem is that it's not for sale.\"\n\nThe house was owned by the Doerrs, who had lived there for decades. Mr. Doerr was a retired sea captain and Mrs. Doerr a retired chemist. The Realtor knew them through their children, who were his age. For some time the children had wanted their parents to move because Mrs. Doerr had arthritis that had worsened from the daily climb up the stairs.\n\n\"I'll call them,\" said the Realtor. \"Maybe they'll change their mind about selling.\"\n\nWhen the Realtor called, he made his pitch to Mrs. Doerr. She made it clear that they weren't interested in selling. \"But you can show the house anyway,\" she said.\n\nI was on my best behavior that day as we knocked on the front door and went inside. I held out my hand to Mrs. Doerr and introduced myself.\n\n\"Dr. Raymond Moody,\" she said, her eyes looking off in the distance. \"Dr. Raymond Moody . . . Dr. Raymond Moody.... Are you the man who wrote that book?\"\n\nBefore I could answer, she walked into the living room and pulled a book off the shelf next to the fireplace. It wasn't my book at all, but a book by Dr. George Ritchie, the good friend to whom I had dedicated my first book, Life After Life. I had also written the foreword for Ritchie's book, and that's what she was enthusiastically pointing at now.\n\n\"George Ritchie is one of our dear, dear friends,\" she said. \"I think this must be a sign.\"\n\nThe chances of finding a gristmill that someone was willing to sell was highly unlikely, but the idea that they would be connected to me in any way, let alone through my good friend George Ritchie, was beyond belief for me.\n\nWithin a month I was in the home of my dreams.\n\nI brought in a local contractor who altered one of the upstairs rooms to my specifications, and soon I had my own psychomanteum.\n\nMy goal, of course, was to answer one question: Can apparitions of deceased loved ones be consistently facilitated in normal, healthy people?\n\nI devised simple criteria for the test subjects I would assemble:\n\n\u2022 They must be mature people interested in human consciousness.\n\n\u2022 They must be emotionally stable, inquisitive, and articulate.\n\n\u2022 None of the subjects could have emotional or mental disorders.\n\n\u2022 None of the subjects could have occult ideologies, since such leanings could complicate the analysis of the results.\n\nWith these criteria in mind, I contacted ten subjects and asked if they would like to participate in my \"Reunions Experiment.\"\n\nDuring a ten-day period, I scheduled each subject for a one-day session. Each one arrived on his or her appointed day, bearing mementos and photo albums of the person they hoped to see. They all dressed in comfortable clothing and had eaten a light breakfast with no caffeine drinks so they could relax.\n\nI started each session with a leisurely walk in the countryside, exploring the person's motivation for attempting to see the departed. I told each subject that there were no guarantees of seeing the departed loved one, but that we would try.\n\nAfter the walk, we would eat a light lunch of soup, salad, and fruit and then discuss in detail the person who had died and the subject's relationship with that person.\n\nUsually the subject would bring up touching memories. Often these memories would receive a boost from the mementos, which had been set between us. One man brought his father's fishing equipment. A woman brought her sister's hat. Another subject had his father's war medals. All were poignant and tangible reminders of the deceased.\n\nSometimes I would have the subject lie on a bed that had been built by a staff member. The bed was equipped with speakers, and the music emanating from them could be felt via bone conduction throughout the body.\n\nThese preparatory sessions lasted until dusk. Then, at the mystical hour of sunset, I would escort the subject into the mirror-gazing booth and turn on the electric light that was only as bright as a single candle. I would tell the subject to gaze deeply into the mirror and relax, clearing his or her mind of everything but thoughts of the deceased. Subjects could stay in the room as long as they wanted, but I asked them to refrain from wearing a watch so that they would not be tempted to glance at the time.\n\nAn attendant sat in the next room during the entire session in case any assistance was required. When the subject emerged, I encouraged discussion of what had happened for as long as the subject desired. Some of these debriefing sessions went on for longer than an hour. I made it a point not to hurry them. The session was not over until the subject decided it was over.\n\nI had some assumptions before starting this research. I expected that only one or two of the subjects would actually see a dead relative. And I suspected that those subjects who did experience an apparition would doubt the reality of what they saw.\n\nThe picture that emerged was vastly different from what I expected. Of the ten pioneers ushered through this process, five had powerful apparitions of dead relatives. And all of them believed that they had actually seen their departed loved one and communicated with that person.\n\nThe first subject's experience is still the most amazing to me because it showed that my technique truly worked, although in this case it worked in an unexpected way.\n\nI will call this first subject Ruth. She was a forty-four-year-old nurse whose husband had died two years earlier of a heart attack. She prepared to see him by following my suggestion that she bring along a photo album of their marriage and several mementos. We spent several hours talking about Ruth's husband and preparing her to see him, but when she came out of the mirror-gazing booth, she told me with great bewilderment that she had seen her father instead of her husband, and that \"Dad\" had actually emerged from the mirror to talk with her.\n\nAnother of these early patients went into the mirror and arrived at a structure that was like a \"railway platform,\" where he met with his two cousins who had died. He was puzzled as he talked about what he had seen. \"It seemed as though they were waiting for me,\" he said. Coincidentally (or not), this patient died a few months later in an automobile accident.\n\nAnother woman came to see her late grandmother, who not only appeared in the mirror and stepped out into the gazing booth but also put her arms around her granddaughter and warmly hugged her.\n\nAn East Coast surgeon came to see his late mother, to whom he felt he owed a great debt of gratitude for his success. She appeared to him in the mirror, where she was sitting on a couch. They had a wordless conversation, one that took place through mental communications.\n\n\"Was there any pain when you died?\" he asked her.\n\n\"None at all,\" she said. \"The transition was easy.\"\n\nHe continued.\n\n\"What do you think of the woman I am going to marry?\"\n\n\"It will be a very good choice,\" she answered, once again wordlessly. \"You should continue to work hard at the relationship and not be your old self. Try to be more understanding.\"\n\nAfter about ten questions, the surgeon's mother faded away. It was a very emotional time for this man, who felt he had dipped into a realm that he had only heard about and never truly believed existed until now.\n\nI too was stunned at the results as I realized that the psychomanteum offered an exciting form of grief therapy. Instead of having to talk to a therapist about the loss of a loved one, a person in the psychomanteum could talk directly to the loved one.\n\nVisionary encounters with departed loved ones are not frightening. On the contrary, they tend to be positive experiences that give people hope and a sense that the departed is comfortable, happy, and still with them spiritually. I knew this through my work in near-death studies. People who have near-death experiences are less afraid during the experience if they encounter a departed loved one. These encounters are just one of several factors that transform NDEers' lives by making them less afraid of death.\n\nI was thrilled at the notion that I could facilitate these powerfully transformative meetings in the Middle Realm. But I was also thrilled that I had been able to reveal in living detail the role of the Oracles in ancient Greece. Without understanding the role of the Oracles, it is impossible to understand Greek culture. It was the Oracle at Delphi that declared Socrates to be the smartest man in history, a declaration that set him on a lifelong search for meaning and understanding. The teaching center of Pythagoras was modeled after the Oracles, as were the teaching centers of other wise men from this amazing era. Many of these teaching centers\u2014places where people could delve into their own psyches\u2014were also known as psychomanteums.\n\nYet despite the fact that psychomanteums played such a large role in ancient Greek culture, little was known about them until late in the twentieth century. Historians like E. R. Dodds, who wrote The Greeks and the Irrational, said that the psychomanteums were caves where the teachers of the time called up the dead. But how or why was not known.\n\nThat all changed in the mid-1980s when archaeologist Sotirios Dakaris searched for and discovered the most famous Oracles of the Dead. His book revealed that he had discovered warrens of tunnels with dark corridors that led to underground chambers illuminated with torches. In one of the Oracles he and his team found a large copper cauldron that could hold a clear depth of steaming water in which a person could gaze and see those who had gone before.\n\nBy reading the Greek magical papyri, scrolls of magical recipes found in Egypt but written in Greek, I could tell how the ancients achieved a magical solution to problems ranging from getting rid of an enemy to finding the love of one's life. And of course, talking to departed loved ones.\n\nFill a bowl with water and cover it with a layer of olive oil, reads one prescription. Then surround the bowl with candles and chant these magical words (which are essentially nonsensical words aimed at clearing one's mind) and wait for the departed to appear.\n\nBy following the instructions of the magical papyri in a facility designed for just this purpose, I had created a modern psychomanteum in the style of the ancient Greeks.\n\nBeing an obsessive-compulsive personality, I dove into what I was now calling the \"Reunions Project,\" dedicated to achieving a gateway to the psyche. The biggest motivator for me in creating a psychomanteum was to deepen my understanding of the ancient Greeks, a culture I truly respected because it was based largely on the pursuit of knowledge. I called my psychomanteum \"the John Dee Theater of the Mind,\" naming it for the mathematical genius who was the official scryer (crystal gazer) for Queen Elizabeth I. I put out a call for patients.\n\nAnd the patients came.\n\nThrough word of mouth, people found out about the Theater of the Mind and began arriving from all over the country, and then from all over the world. Soon I was overbooked with people who wanted to see their late loved ones.\n\nI had clearly underestimated the appeal of the psychomanteum. I began to imagine that my rural Theater of the Mind would be like the ancient Greek Oracles, which attracted thousands of people each year who were so driven to see the departed that they traveled to the Oracles on foot. They often waited outside for days, camping in primitive conditions or renting local rooms, before being admitted to the heavily populated caves.\n\nI feared that my modern-day Oracle would be no different.\n\nSoon the patient load became overwhelming, and I became overwhelmed. Because the psychomanteum was still in its experimental phase, I wanted to manage every aspect of the reunion experience. That meant devoting all of my energy to only one patient each day\u2014an exhausting prospect considering that most of them were in a fragile emotional condition. Sometime these sessions would go on late into the night and be followed the next day by a session with another person just as emotionally needy. Soon I was on a treadmill of work, and that played havoc with my myxedema, which never seemed to fully go away, even with careful administration of medication.\n\nAll that kept me going were the case studies, which provided fascinating confirmation of the effectiveness and value of this modern version of a technique practiced so effectively by the Greeks. I conducted more than one hundred patients through the psychomanteum in the first months of the Theater of the Mind and was able to explore the varieties of experience that patients had when we used these amazing techniques.\n\nMany people had an encounter with a deceased person other than the one they had intended to see. I figured that about one-fourth of the patients visited with someone unexpected\u2014sometimes very unexpected. Also, many apparitions were not confined to the mirror but came out to be with the person. When this happened, patients often reported either being \"touched\" by the apparition or being able to feel its presence.\n\nOne example came from a man who prepared all day to see his father, who had died when the subject was only twelve years old. After hours of preparation, the man was surprised to be greeted in the mirror by his former business partner, a person he didn't even particularly like. Here is his account of what followed:\n\nWhen he came into the apparition booth, I saw him clearly. He was about two feet away from me. I was so surprised I couldn't think what to do. It was him, right there. He was my size, and I saw him from the waist up. He had a full form and was not transparent. He moved around, and when he did I could see his head and arms move, all in three dimensions.\n\nHe was happy to see me. I was amazed, but he didn't seem amazed. He knew what was going on, was my impression. He wanted to reassure me. He was telling me not to worry, that he was fine. I know that his thought was that we would be together again. His wife is dead now too, and he was sending me the thought that she was with him, but for some reason I was not supposed to see her.\n\nI asked him several questions. I wanted to know something about his daughter that had always concerned me. I had kept in touch with three of his children and helped them out. But there was some difficulty with his second daughter. I had reached out to her, but she blamed me to some extent for her father's death. As she grew older, she said we had worked too hard. So I asked him what to do, and he gave me complete reassurance about what I wanted to know, and it cleared some things up for me.\n\nWithout question, this man felt that his business partner had come out of the mirror to sit with him. It allowed him to make peace with his partner and \"put to rest\" his worries about his partner's family.\n\nAbout half of the patients reported communicating with the person who appeared in the mirror. And approximately 15 percent of those who successfully saw a person in the mirror said that they also heard the voice of the deceased person\u2014not the thoughts of the deceased, but that person's actual, audible voice.\n\nAnd then there were the \"take-out\" visions, apparitions that took place later, after the patient had left the psychomanteum. Roughly 25 percent of those who came seeking reunions had them after they had left the gazing booth and returned home or to their hotel. One such case was a well-respected television journalist who saw nothing in the mirror but did see her son, who had committed suicide, several hours later at the hotel. Here is what she had to say:\n\nWhen I got back to the hotel where I was staying, I made a few phone calls. Then I went to bed and fell sound asleep.\n\nI don't know exactly what time it was that I woke up, but when I did I felt a presence in the room, and there was this young man standing in the room, between the television set and the dresser.\n\nAt first he was pretty expressionless, and he was looking at me. I was so frightened, my heart was going a hundred miles a minute. I am glad I was in a king-size bed because I think I would have fallen off the bed, I was so scared.\n\nWhat was going through my mind was, Oh God, there must be another entrance to the room! That's how real he was, standing there.\n\nThis was no dream. I was wide awake. I saw him clearly, his whole body, except I didn't see his face. I looked at him, and he looked at me. I don't know how long it was, but it was long enough for me to be frightened, and I don't frighten easily.\n\nBut then I realized that I was having an apparition, that this was my son. It didn't look like him at first, but putting everything together, I realized it was him. As a matter of fact, it looked exactly like him as he had looked about ten years earlier.\n\nIt became very peaceful after that. I was very assured about my son, that he is okay and that he loves me. This was a turning point for me. It was a wonderful experience.\n\nMost interesting to me was the change that came over the people who had an apparition experience. Almost all of them defined their reunion as being \"real,\" meaning that it was not a fantasy or dream. Because they knew their experience was real, the subjects came away with a different outlook on life. As a result of seeing a being they thought had been extinguished by death, they became kinder, more understanding, and much less afraid of death.\n\nIn short, they became just like people who had had a near-death experience, only they didn't have to almost die to get there.\nChapter Nineteen\n\nIt didn't take me long to realize that I had made a major breakthrough in near-death studies. By melding ancient and modern techniques, I had discovered how to arouse many of the transformative elements of the near-death experience in people who were not near death. It was a great leap forward in the field, because controlled studies had been impossible up to that point. Plus, these techniques would provide a means of studying apparitions on a variety of levels, allowing for the examination of everything related to ghosts.\n\nI now understood on an even deeper level the words of the great psychologist William James when he said: \"The subliminal life has windows of outlook and doors of ingress which indefinitely extend the region of the world of truth.\"\n\nOver the year that I conducted almost daily scrying sessions, I wrote copious notes. Now I compiled those notes into a lecture paper for a European tour that had been arranged for me. Fully expecting criticism, I decided that the only way I could stave off a wave of ridicule would be to provide information that was perfectly logical.\n\nI began my paper by explaining exactly what scrying is, how I had discovered it, and its effect on me. Then I discussed the ancient Greeks and described their use of scrying in the Oracles they called psychomanteums. Apparently this was an effective means of therapy for grief and other issues because in ancient Greece thousands of people each year spent weeks underground in hopes of traveling to the Middle Realm.\n\nI described how I established a modern-day psychomanteum in a country home and how I altered a room with mirrors and dim lights to inspire the correct frame of mind in the patients. With the help of remembrance, focus, and deep relaxation, I noted, patients could then voyage to a Middle Realm that until then had been accessible only in the stories and myths of ancient Greece.\n\nI provided several stories from the psychomanteum and revealed the discoveries that I have revealed in this book\u2014that the deceased sometimes come out of the mirror, or that patients sometimes see someone other than the person they expected to see.\n\nIn the paper, I declared that what was important were not the specific stories, but rather the realization that these experiences could be controlled and so studied in a clinical setting. \"Mirror gazing may well finally allow these altered states to be studied in a laboratory setting,\" I wrote. \"This would represent a major leap forward in psychology. It would mean subjects could be interviewed immediately after\u2014or even during\u2014an altered state.\"\n\nI suggested that electroencephalograms and positron-emission tomography could be carried out during an apparitional experience to map the metabolic activity in the brain during these encounters. Perhaps then we could find \"hard links\" in the brain that would help us explore afterlife questions.\n\n\"Up until now it has been impossible to investigate these altered states in a laboratory,\" I wrote.\n\nBecause of that, many skeptics have said that those who have paranormal experiences as well as those who research them tend to \"overstate\" what happens, or even that the experiences themselves are fabricated by the subjects. This uninformed opinion rarely takes into consideration the sheer masses of people who see ghosts, or have near-death experiences, or even leave their bodies. Although we are talking about millions of people in these categories, some cynics call them liars or crackpots, denying an experience that they should instead be investigating. Mirror gazing would allow legitimate researchers an opportunity to research the outer reaches of the mind, and to show once and for all if they truly exist.\n\nAlthough I endorsed the use of crystal gazing, or scrying, as a research tool, I wrote that my main interests lay in the clinical uses of this ancient art. In working closely with people seeking reunion with departed loved ones, I could see firsthand how this tool was helping patients.\n\nI closed the paper for my European lecture tour with the story of a woman who came to the psychomanteum for a visionary reunion with her son who had died two years earlier of cancer. He had fought hard against the disease, but every time he was bolstered by a remission, the disease would come charging back, taking the old ground and then a little more. Finally he gave up.\n\nThe woman missed her son terribly and came to the psychomanteum in hopes of seeing him one more time. She wanted to know if the pain was gone and if he was happy in the afterlife.\n\nWe prepared all day for the encounter, and then I had her go into the apparition booth. She relived a number of memory snippets, dreamlike memories from his childhood. She also reported that he seemed to be in the booth with her, watching their life together.\n\nAnd that was it. Until a few days later. Then I received an incredible telephone call from her. A few days after her visit to my clinic, she awoke from a deep sleep into a state of \"hyper-awareness.\"\n\nThere, standing in the room, was her son. She sat up in bed and looked at him. The ravages of cancer were gone. He now looked as happy and healthy as he had been before the cancer that took him.\n\nThe woman stood before her son and began carrying on a conversation. She was in a state of ecstasy as they spoke for several minutes. He assured her that he was pain-free and happy.\n\nThe woman continued to engage him in a conversation about a number of things, including the remodeling she had done to the house after he died. She took him on a tour of the rooms that had been changed and showed him what she had done.\n\nSuddenly she stopped. She realized that she was talking to an apparition. And even though he seemed to be flesh and bone, he had come to her as a result of a lot of time spent before a mirror. She asked what had been unthinkable just a few minutes earlier. She asked if she could touch him.\n\nWithout a moment's hesitation, the apparition of her son stepped forward and hugged her, lifting her right off the ground.\n\n\"What happened was as real as if he had been standing right there,\" the woman told me. \"I now feel as though I can put my son's death behind me and get on fully with my life.\"\n\nReactions like this are the real reason I work on the fringes of psychological sciences, I would tell my European audiences. I appreciate the test tubes and research protocol, but there is something about witnessing the raw experience that compels me to continue my exploration into near-death studies.\n\nThis, in a nutshell, was the core of my lecture for the European tour. When I began it, I was deeply concerned that I might be laughed off the stage by talking about mirror gazing. So far I had spoken about it to only a few professionals in the United States. For the most part they had listened politely but were not wildly enthusiastic, especially when they realized the amount of time it took to treat one patient. By prescribing medications, a psychiatrist could treat a couple dozen patients per day. Even traditional talk therapy allowed them to jam in eight to ten patients a day. But by using the methods outlined in my reunions therapy, they could treat only one. It's nearly impossible to get an American psychiatrist enthused about treating one patient per day, especially using a time-intensive regimen that would require them to pay careful attention to the patient all day long. Plus, it was an innovative therapy. Which insurance company would pay for that?\n\nI didn't expect the response to my reunions work to be much greater in Europe, but I was wrong. The doctors there were outwardly intrigued by the possibilities of what I presented to them. Liberal-minded when it came to new psychological treatments, the audiences were curious and filled with questions? Were patients frightened when they saw their departed loved ones? Did having these experiences make people happier about life, or unhappier? Did departed relatives who had done bad things ever appear and apologize? And if so, did that solve any issues the living person might have with the dead one? Could scrying be done in groups as effectively as with individuals?\n\nThe questions just kept coming. My lecture would typically last about one hour, but the question-and-answer session at the end would sometimes go on for twice that long. Their questions kept coming. What is the success rate? And how do you define success? Are some of these experiences unpleasant for the subjects? Have you ever done scrying with an atheist? Do you even have to believe in God to believe in an afterlife?\n\nAfter each lecture I would receive offers to establish temporary clinics in which I could return to the city for several months per year and practice. There were many who saw, as I did, that this line of research could take the murkiness out of paranormal studies. They saw this as a way to study the meaning and validity of apparitions and offered to find institutions that would offer facilities and funds to do research.\n\nI was delighted at the positive response. But I was also exhausted. Several weeks before leaving the United States, my thyroid level had plunged to a dangerous low. I had gone to my doctor, who brought my levels back up, but that was never an indication that they would stay up where they should be. I was like a brittle diabetic whose blood insulin levels could take wild swings. For the time being I was fine, said my internist. But he warned me that with all the work I had been doing, the airplane travel, and the frigid weather I would encounter in Europe, I would probably have a wild \"thyroxin ride\" on my lecture tour.\n\nMy doctor's weather warming was well heeded. In warm weather I had to take far less thyroxin than when it was cold. He adjusted me for the warmer Alabama weather but reminded me to stay on top of my levels in Europe. \"Remember, Raymond, you don't have a thyroid gland,\" warned my doctor. \"So you are always on one side of the line or the other. Try to stay as close to the line as you can. Keep your thyroid levels stable.\"\n\nMy plan to stay close to the line was simple. I would go into a local hospital or clinic and have them test my thyroid level. Then I would take medications accordingly.\n\nUnfortunately, things didn't work as I planned. Toward the middle of my tour, I was in Czechoslovakia when I began to feel goofy. I was concerned about going to a clinic in the Czech Republic and being stuck with a needle. I had heard that many Eastern Bloc countries were reusing needles as a means of saving money, and I didn't want to run the risk of being exposed to AIDS, hepatitis C, or any variety of the other blood-borne diseases.\n\nRather, I crushed my pills and took them in crumb-sized bites, hoping that the small doses would raise my thyroid level enough that I could wait until I got to Switzerland, where medical care was better. I was doing two lectures per day now, with no days off and seemingly no time to get a blood test, let alone wait for the results. Or so I thought.\n\nIn fact, I should have made time, but I didn't. I was exhausted, delusional, and forgetful. Looking back, I don't remember much of that last week or so of the tour. I do remember thinking that I had my thyroid issues under control and then feeling a deep fear that I didn't, but pressing on anyway. The adrenaline of the tour would replace thyroid medicine, I told myself.\n\nSometimes our denial can lead us to become our own worst enemies.\nChapter Twenty\n\nBy the time I returned from my European tour, I was desperately ill from myxedema. I was cold to the bone all the time, and the man who greeted me in the mirror had sagging skin and a gray complexion. At times I felt as though I was looking at an alien. I had that detached feeling, like I was watching a movie instead of living my life. That movie was slowly turning to black-and-white as my color vision began shutting down from the critically low level of thyroid in my bloodstream.\n\nI simply needed rest until the medication took hold and raised my thyroid level. I needed a warm bed and the comforts of home. I needed my mother and father. I needed to go back to Macon, Georgia, where they lived. I needed family.\n\nWhen I arrived home, my father was obviously disturbed at the way I looked. He asked me where I'd been, and when I told him I was lecturing in Europe, he asked me what about.\n\n\"I'm sharing my psychomanteum research,\" I said.\n\n\"What's that?\" he asked, concern clearly filling his voice.\n\nUh oh, I thought. I had not told him anything at all about my scrying work and research, and now I could tell he was alarmed.\n\n\"Oh, it's some techniques from the ancient Greeks,\" I mumbled, trying to avoid conversation.\n\n\"What kind of techniques?\" he asked, gazing with an intense skepticism he reserved only for me.\n\n\"Oh, you know, Greeks spent sometimes weeks in an underground labyrinth before entering a large room and gazing into a cauldron of water where they would then see dead relatives,\" I mumbled, reciting by rote portions of the lectures I had delivered in Europe. \"They were called Oracles of the Dead.\"\n\n\"So what does this have to do with you?\" my father asked, the note of concern in his voice now intensifying.\n\n\"I've figured out a way to modernize it,\" I said, all the while drifting around in that blue-and-gray netherworld of myxedema. \"I've created techniques that get people in the right frame of consciousness to see their dead loved ones.\"\n\n\"You what?\"\n\n\"Yes, and then I have developed a chamber where they can gaze into an off-kilter mirror and see their dead relatives,\" I said.\n\n\"You have?!\"\n\n\"Yes, and the whole technique can be very effective. Some of the patients have even had their dead relatives come out of the mirror and sit with them in conversation,\" I said, a little more excited. \"Some of the patients have even had their dead relatives appear later, after they have left the psychomanteum.\"\n\n\"Psychomanteum?\"\n\n\"Yes, 'psychomanteum' is what I call the chamber where they sit and gaze into the mirror.\"\n\nMy father seemed genuinely interested as I told him about patients who had experienced successful grief therapy through the psychomanteum. When I got to the story about the woman whose dead son had hugged her so hard that her feet left the floor, he got up and left the room.\n\nMany minutes later he came back and put his hand on my forehead. I was stone cold. He listened to my heart with a stethoscope, stuck a tongue depressor into my mouth, and then shined a light into my eyes to gauge the reaction of my pupil to light.\n\n\"You need to go to the hospital,\" he stated authoritatively.\n\n\"Yes, I do,\" I said. \"I am not feeling well.\"\n\nHe left the room again, and in no time at all men in white coats came in and helped me to my feet. The world through my eyes was gray now, and I was thrilled to be going to the hospital. I had no fear that I would be stuck with a dirty needle here in the United States. Rather than having to guess how much thyroid medication I should take, medical tests could pinpoint the exact amount.\n\nI thanked the men in white coats for helping me, and I thanked my father for calling them. I didn't see Mom, but I could hear her sobbing in the kitchen.\n\n\"Tell Mom I'll be okay pretty soon,\" I said to my father. I was looking forward to coming back home when my Technicolor world returned.\n\nThe ambulance ride was a little foggy to me, but it wasn't long before I realized that we were not headed for Macon General Hospital.\n\n\"Where are we going?\" I asked one of the white coats.\n\nHe ignored me, and I went to sleep.\n\n\"We're here,\" said one of the white coats, shaking me gently. I opened my eyes to see that the hospital my father had in mind was one specializing in psychiatric disorders.\n\nI was angry and puzzled. My father was such a well-respected physician in Georgia that he was able to have his son committed to an institution just because he didn't understand the research and work I had been doing and thought I was delusional. Certainly the admitting doctor will understand and order me sent to the regular hospital, I thought as I was escorted into the facility by the white coats on each of my arms. After all, I had just spent a month in Europe lecturing. I had been received with standing ovations from medical doctors, many of whom wanted to come to the United States and learn the techniques of the psychomanteum. Surely this doctor would recognize the value of my work as, at the very least, a holistic approach to grief treatment. I expected to have a good laugh with the admitting physician over the fact that an old doctor had committed a young one for pursuing an ancient form of medicine.\n\nIt was soon clear that the laugh would be on me.\n\nI was escorted to a small office and greeted by a cheerless physician I'll call Dr. Hoot, who introduced himself as a board-certified psychiatrist. He began to ask questions about my mental state and soon clearly understood that I had myxedema and that I needed to get my circulating thyroid to its proper level. All was proceeding well, I thought, as the doctor took notes and I recited my glandular problems as I had to other physicians so many times before.\n\nBy now I had been at the hospital several hours, and my son Avery had arrived after being notified of the situation by his grandmother. Suddenly I remembered that I was to make a presentation of my psychomanteum work the very next month at Carlton College in Minnesota. They were waiting for information about my upcoming talk so they could publicize the event in a brochure that would be sent to the student body. I reached into my briefcase and pulled out a few pages that described the ancient history of the Oracles of the Dead and my modern approach to facilitating apparitions.\n\nBefore giving these pages to Avery so he could take them home and fax them to Carlton, I asked Dr. Hoot if he could make an extra copy. After an uncomfortably long time, Dr. Hoot returned and handed the original to me and a copy to Avery. He had a look on his face that immediately told me I had made a mistake in handing him the document.\n\n\"I hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of making a copy for myself,\" he said. \"This clearly shows that you have gone over the edge. Gazing in mirrors to see spirits? This clearly shows that you are a manic-depressive and need more than a dose of thyroid medication.\"\n\nHe then tried to convince me to take lithium, a powerful drug used in the treatment of manic depression. Although he prescribed the mind-numbing drug, I refused to take it. Instead, I insisted that they treat the myxedema.\n\nThat turned out to be the right thing to do, because my health took a nosedive within the next twenty-four hours. Thyroid functions in the body in much the same way as the volume dial on a radio. When turned to the correct level, the human organism functions just fine. But if the level of thyroid is too low, every aspect of the body functions poorly or not at all. My thyroid level was rapidly depleting, and as it did my volume dial was going down and down. My world went from gray to grayer to nearly black. I no longer worried about which hospital I was in, but was just glad to be in any hospital. When I could think at all, I began to think that I might not survive.\n\nOn my third day in the hospital I began to sense that I was surrounded by some very strong beings. They weren't angels, not even close, but they were otherworldly. They seemed very real.\n\nI never did see these people, but they were there, hovering around, apparently waiting to see if I was going to die. They were not menacing. Quite the opposite. If I had to give them a name it would be \"the Tough Love Crew.\" They counseled me not through words but through heart-to-heart communications. They didn't know if I was going to die, they said, but they told me not to worry, that it didn't matter one way or the other. Dead or alive, it was all the same.\n\nThen it was as though the physical layer of life fell away and I was in a parallel layer occupied by these beings. I was very conscious of this new realm because it was almost like being backstage at a play. I had a sense that real life was the play going on out there on the stage and that it was being controlled backstage. Being there made reality seem almost meaningless. The colors I saw were very vibrant, and the light seemed alive with substance and information. Anything I wanted to know was right there when I wanted it. I could pose questions to these people through the light and they would respond.\n\nI asked a question about suicide: Was it ever necessary? One of the female entities answered that it was never necessary to commit suicide because earthly problems are never as meaningful as they seem.\n\n\"Earthly things seem to have so much foreboding when we are on earth, but once you leave it you realize how small earthly problems are,\" she said. This woman, when alive, had once worked in a tax assessor's office, she said. Since I was having financial problems at this time, I asked her what to do. She dismissed my problems as meaningless in the grand scale of things. \"Money is nothing,\" she said, and let it go at that.\n\nThe experience in the hospital grew. I realized that Vi Horton, one of the first near-death experiencers I had ever met, was sitting at the foot of my bed. Oddly enough, I was not surprised to see Vi, who had had one of the most profound and verifiable near-death experiences I had ever studied: She had gone into cardiac arrest on the operating table and left her body. In this state, she drifted into the hospital waiting room and later was able to tell surprised family members what they had said as they waited for word from the doctor.\n\nVi didn't know that I was now in the hospital. A few weeks later, when the ordeal was finally over, I visited her in Augusta and told her that I had been hospitalized. She interrupted me and said, \"Yes, I know that, and I had an out-of-body experience and was there with you.\" She even told me the location of the hospital and which room I had been in.\n\nSome medical professionals who have heard me speak of these bizarre events say that I was merely delirious. But I have been delirious a few times in my life, and I can tell you that this was a completely different experience. Delirium is patchy and confused, and the imagery is surrealistically distorted. This was not like that. The imagery was more real and coherent than the ordinary physical reality we live in.\n\nIt was certainly more coherent than the one I found myself in when the thyroid medication took hold. When that happened, I found myself leaving that gray place and heading back to the Technicolor world. I was eating again, being able to taste food, and seeing colors, and best of all, I was ready for exercise.\n\nWhen not in the hospital, I walk several miles each day. Now, feeling exercise-deprived, I received permission to work out on the exercise bicycle in the hospital gymnasium. One day I was pedaling hard when a well-meaning nurse approached and asked if I thought I should be doing that. She had looked at my chart and seen the notes of Dr. Hoot. Believing I was manic-depressive\u2014which was what Dr. Hoot had wrongly put in my record\u2014the nurse was concerned that I might be in a manic mood and exercising too much.\n\nThe fact was, however, that they had taken my ordinary behavior and fit it into symptoms of manic depression. And since I exercise a lot, my good exercise habits were now considered a part of the wrong diagnosis. It was frustrating for me to carry this diagnosis, since it affected the way everyone saw and dealt with me. I soon became known to the staff as the noncompliant manic-depressive, the one who would not take his lithium.\n\nI think they would have forced me to take lithium had I not so obviously been improving as a result of the thyroid medication. Dr. Hoot seemed almost disappointed that I had so quickly become my old self again. He strongly recommended that I take the lithium at first but gradually said little about it as I began to resemble a warm-blooded animal instead of the reptilian creature that myxedema can turn me into.\n\nThen, as friends and patients heard I was in the hospital, they began to drop by to see how I was doing. They talked to Dr. Hoot and told him that, yes, they were familiar with my psychomanteum research and, yes, it actually worked. Some of them told the doubting doctor how they had been helped in their battle against grief by experiencing a facilitated apparition of a loved one. I watched Dr. Hoot listen in disbelief as one patient told of her late son, a suicide, who had appeared in full body form and carried on a conversation that gave her closure and changed her life.\n\nI finally had the opportunity to talk to Dr. Hoot in private about my facilitated apparition research. I can say that he never truly appreciated my research, which was okay with me. The Oracles of the Dead and psychomanteums aren't the kind of thing that some doctors even care to understand. But as I told Dr. Hoot, they were the kind of thing that all doctors should at least be aware of, if for no other reason than that such knowledge would increase their understanding of the reach of the human mind.\n\nI didn't tell him to avoid making snap diagnoses about patients by assuming that everyone fits nicely into one diagnostic pattern or another. I wanted to, but held back. That was something he should have learned in medical school.\nChapter Twenty-One\n\nLess than a year after this unpleasantness with my father and the mental hospital, I was interviewed on television by the girl of my dreams. Her name was Cheryl Marks, and she was a television producer and talk show host at WTOG in Tampa, Florida. Cheryl had lost her husband some years earlier. When she had a spontaneous apparitional experience with him not long after his death, she became passionately interested in near-death studies and my reunions work.\n\nWe were attracted like magnets from the day of the interview onward. A year later, in the fall of 1993, we married, and Cheryl moved to the Theater of the Mind in Alabama. It never ceases to amaze me how life unfolds. In the midst of some of my darkest depressions, I met the light of my life. Within a decade we would adopt two children from very different cultures. Carter, a Mexican child from a U.S. border town, came to us in 1998, and Carol Ann, a Blackfeet Indian from Montana, came in 2000. Having them has been a dream come true.\n\nFour years before the children arrived, however, and one year after we married, Cheryl and I took a belated honeymoon to Greece, where our goal was to see the Oracles of the Dead.\n\nWe hit the main tourist sites for a few days, but then went north to a place called Loannina so we could visit the nearby Oracle of the Dead in a place called Kanalaki.\n\nThe Oracle itself was high on a hill outside the town of Kanalaki. We took an eight-mile cab ride to get there. When we drove up the winding dirt road to the entrance, there was no ticket booth and no one at all in sight, let alone anyone from the Greek Antiquities Department. The sign on the gate said that the hours were 10:00 to 4:00, so we told the cab driver to return for us at closing, and we let him drive away.\n\nThat was when we met Socrates.\n\nThe first we saw of Socrates was his gnarled hand emerging from a cave near the entrance to the Oracle complex. Then the man himself appeared, a rugged, slightly heavy brute with longish unkempt hair and a lengthy beard peppered with gray. He was the ugliest person I'd seen in some time. He was surprised to see us, and he let us know in heavily accented English. \"No one ever comes here, least of all Americans,\" he said.\n\nHe gave us a tour of the roughly excavated Oracle site. We could still see the roof tiles of the Oracles and the excavated walls that marked the residences of the priests who facilitated the visions. Off to one side were walls that revealed a larger complex that Socrates said had housed the hotel rooms where visitors would wait their turn before going down into the tunnels.\n\nWhen we got to the niches in the caves where the patients slept, Socrates insisted that we lie down and take a nap. \"It's the only real way to appreciate the dream incubation that went on here,\" he declared.\n\nWe slept for about an hour and were awakened by Socrates. He wanted to take us through the rest of the complex. First, he said, each of us had to throw a rock over one shoulder, the ancient gesture for leaving one's past behind. With that ritual behind us, we went deeper into one of the tunnels. In the dark he held forth as if teaching a class, walking us through the entire procedure used to invoke the spirits of departed loved ones\u2014the same procedure I used in Alabama.\n\n\"I was an attendant here 2,300 years ago,\" he said, mixing English, Greek, and German. \"I know how it's done.\"\n\nCheryl didn't like Socrates and was glad when we left. She caught him leering lasciviously at her several times, and he kept saying she reminded him of Melina Mercouri, Greece's sultry version of Marilyn Monroe. On the other hand, I was intrigued by Socrates. There are few people in the world who understand how the Oracles of the Dead work.\n\nI returned to the Oracle site a year later with filmmaker David Hinshaw. We were working on a documentary about the Oracles, and this was one we had chosen to include.\n\nThis time we were greeted by a young man instead of Socrates. He spoke very good English and allowed us to roam and film freely. As we left I asked the smiling young man what had happened to Socrates. He became very serious.\n\n\"What do you mean?\" he asked.\n\n\"The man who used to work here,\" I said. \"I met him when we were here last year.\"\n\nThe young man shrugged. He was clearly uncomfortable.\n\n\"Other people have met the Socrates you talk about too,\" he said. \"But I have never met him. I think he comes only to certain people.\"\n\nI don't know that I believe the Socrates we saw was an apparition. He seemed very real to both of us. But when I look back on the experience of meeting Socrates, I realize that it's impossible to study ancient Greek philosophy without acknowledging the role of the Oracles. The mission in life of the real Socrates was started when he was told at an Oracle site that he was the wisest man. That led him to ask his famous questions of intelligent people, and ever since other Greek scholars have been seeking answers to difficult questions.\n\nBecause of that, the Oracles of the Dead are an unknown yet very important part of Western thought. With my scrying experiments, I was hoping to bring this concept back into the public arena, making it an important holistic treatment for grief as well as a method of personal exploration, if nothing else.\n\nThat has happened to some extent. Over the years since developing modern techniques for scrying, I have had the opportunity to teach these techniques around the world to many therapists who now use them with great effectiveness. But I have also faced the reality of our modern times: We are a pharmaceutical culture, one that would rather use pills to tackle problems like grief than invest the substantial amount of time and energy it takes to have a visionary encounter with a loved one.\n\nI understand why most people would choose to deaden grief rather than resolve it. Some people just don't know about these techniques, others might think they are not in keeping with the culture of their religion, and still others are convinced that they are not effective or unmotivated to explore them themselves.\n\nI also understand why a pharmaceutical approach to grief appeals to people in my profession. The techniques I have described in these chapters are extremely time-consuming and exhausting for the practitioner, as I have personally discovered. My reunions work made me much busier than I wanted to be.\n\nBut to me the thrill of inquiry is in discovering new things. And that's how it was in the beginning with the mirror gazing. As long as I was doing it with faculty members, medical colleagues, students, and others in a controlled group of people, there were no expectations. They knew they were part of an experimental group and were willing to accept any outcome.\n\nWhen actual patients came into the picture, they often misunderstood what was going on. Rather than thinking of me as the facilitator of an experience, they started treating me like a magician, as though I were in charge of whether they saw a departed loved one. I tried to dissuade them of this notion by telling them that no one, including me, was in charge of whether they saw a departed loved one. They themselves weren't even in charge. I just knew that some people experienced the presence of departed loved ones as result of this procedure and some did not. It has been that way for thousands of years, I told them.\n\nTo emphasize that I was no magician I took great care to tell new patients the history of gazing. I told them that in ancient Greece people had to wait twenty-nine days before they were permitted to gaze into the cauldron of water and find their departed loved one. Until that time, they had to wander around underground to put their mind \"in the right place\" to see the departed. Since then, many\u2014including me\u2014had reduced the amount of time for the entire procedure to approximately one day.\n\nStill, many of the patients didn't really care about the history of the procedure. Many didn't even want to talk about their loved ones or reminisce about them through mementos. No, all they wanted to do was sit in the mirrored booth and wait for their loved ones to arrive. They had seen Oprah's producer do it, they had seen Joan Rivers do it, and they were sure they knew enough to do it themselves. The process meant nothing to them. They just wanted the instant gratification of going to the booth and seeing Grandma.\n\nThe expectations became too great for me. Although more than 80 percent of the people who came through the Theater of the Mind saw departed loved ones, 20 percent did not. I didn't like dealing with the disappointment of those who did not reach their goal.\n\nI still have patients for my reunions work, but I have cut back greatly on the number of them. I tell patients up front about the process that needs to be followed, and I caution that if they aren't interested in performing every aspect of the process, then there is no need for them to even be there. I am also more careful in screening patients on the telephone. I ask them a series of questions that tell me in a matter of minutes whether they have the focus necessary to complete the reunions process successfully. Asking these questions doesn't ensure that every patient I accept will have contact with a loved one, but it has most assuredly increased the number of patients who leave with a smile on their face and a tear in their eye.\n\nMy reunions work has led me to soften the line that I believe exists between reality and the supernatural. I now feel that thoughts are things, and that reality is drawn not only from the supernatural act of thinking but also from the supernatural way of thinking. To realize how easy it is to evoke apparitions of the deceased was a major breakthrough, to my mind. To bring the world of the ancient Greeks into the modern world is an amazing act. Whether these techniques just access a place in our consciousness where memories of our deceased relative exist or actually extend our reach into the supernatural world is not the issue. On a human level, scrying is a successful treatment of the paralyzing psychological problem of grief. That is the point. Period.\n\nWhen I think of my reunions work, I like to think of what Aristophanes said about humanity. Although what he said is over two thousand years old and Greek, it reads like an ageless Zen Buddhist koan and perfectly expresses the relationship for humans between body and spirit.\n\nHumankind, fleet of life like tree leaves, unsubstantial as shadows, weak creatures of clay, wingless, ephemeral, sorrow worn, and dreamlike.\nChapter Twenty-Two\n\nThe subject of near-death experiences runs through both my professional and personal lives, keeping them joined and never letting me forget that while we are learning to live, we are also learning to die.\n\nIn 1992 my father passed away from multiple myeloma, a cancer that develops among the blood-producing cells in the bone marrow. I had such conflicted feelings about my father that I couldn't bear to be at his deathbed. As I looked back on our relationship, I realized it was both a blessing and a curse.\n\nI feared my father greatly\u2014I still do. He was not only a surgeon but a military officer in World War II\u2014both professions that call for an overbearing and demanding personality. Being raised by a town full of loving women, I didn't take well to his lack of gentleness. And for that matter, he didn't take to my mildness. Regardless of the subject, he always took the position counter to my own. And he did so with a vengeance, voicing his disregard for my opinions in the most demeaning of ways.\n\nI lived my life in constant fear of verbal and mental abuse, which made me the timid person I am. After his death, however, I could see a blessing in his dominance: He taught me about fallibility and the dangers of becoming too wedded to an opinion or position to be able to consider other options. I now realize that was one of the great positive messages I learned from his negative influence. Thanks to him, I became totally unconcerned about what the authorities think, just because they think it. Their opinions are worth hearing, but I still have to make up my own mind after weighing all of the evidence. And if the authorities don't like it, that doesn't deter me at all.\n\nWith the passage of time since his death, I have come to view my father as that fallible authority.\n\nBecause of this view of him I've developed over the years, I could perhaps bear to be at his deathbed if the situation were to present itself now. But in 1992, being with him at the hour of his death would have dredged up an intolerable amount of personal grief for me.\n\nNevertheless, what happened as he slipped away was a great vindication for my work. In the moments before his death, my brothers who were there at his side said his breathing picked up and they were amazed to see his eyes open; the doctors had told them he was in a coma from which he would not regain consciousness. He was wearing a beatific smile as he looked into their puzzled faces and said: \"I have been to a beautiful place. Everything is okay. I'll see everybody again. I'll miss you, but we will be together again.\"\n\nWith that proclamation, he died.\n\nUp until that point he had always felt dubious about my work in near-death experiences. He never fully embraced it and in fact thought it was foolish until I became famous for it and he himself achieved some personal notoriety for being the father of the Life After Life author. And we already know how he felt about my reunions work: The notion of seeing dead relatives was so crazy to him that he had me committed to a mental hospital.\n\nI felt sad when I first heard about his last moments from my brothers, but then a sardonic thought intruded. Dad's deathbed experience made him a believer. If he had survived, he might well have been my next patient in the psychomanteum.\n\nOn May 8, 1994, Mother's Day, I called my mother in Macon, Georgia, from a pay phone at a shopping mall in Las Vegas, where I was attending a near-death studies conference at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.\n\n\"Well, hello, Raymond,\" she said. \"I knew you would call me today.\"\n\nAs a devout mama's boy, I found conversation with my mother to be a great comfort. This day was no different. I stood in the mall and enjoyed a long conversation with her. She told me all of the neighborhood gossip as well as what my brothers and sisters were doing. When I realized an hour had passed, I told her I had to get back to the conference.\n\n\"One more thing,\" I said before hanging up. \"How are you doing?\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm fine,\" she said. \"Yesterday I got a rash on my arms, but Kay [my sister] took me to the emergency room and the doctor there said it was nothing. So I'm about as good as I can be.\"\n\nI questioned her about the rash, but she downplayed it.\n\n\"All I know is it was driving me so crazy I had to go to emergency,\" she said. \"The ER doctor got me an appointment with a dermatologist for tomorrow. We'll see what he says.\"\n\nThe next day my sister called me to report bad news. The rash was a late-stage symptom of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a fast-growing cancer of the white blood cells. Mom's was \"fulminant\"\u2014the fastest-growing possible. According to the oncologist who analyzed her blood tests, she had perhaps no more than two weeks to live.\n\nAll of the siblings descended on Macon with the goal of making her final days as comfortable as possible. We cared for her at home, and when she was checked into the hospital we stayed at her bedside. Two weeks from the date of her diagnosis, she died.\n\nIt was in the final moments of her death that my next field of research was revealed.\n\nShe had been comatose for two days, so we didn't expect much to happen besides her quiet passing. Shortly before she died, however, she awoke and with great coherency told us that she loved us all very much.\n\n\"Please say that again,\" said my sister Kay.\n\nWith great effort, Mom pushed the oxygen mask from her face and said again, \"I love you all very much.\"\n\nWe were deeply moved by her effort to express her love. We all held hands around the bed\u2014my two sisters, their husbands, and Cheryl and I\u2014and waited for the moment of death.\n\nAs we held hands the room seemed to change shape, and four of the six of us felt as though we were being lifted from the ground. I felt a strong pull like a riptide, only the pull was upward.\n\n\"Look,\" said my sister, pointing to a spot at the end of the bed. \"Dad's here! He's come back to get her!\"\n\nEveryone later reported that the light in the room became soft and fuzzy, like looking into the water of a lighted swimming pool at night. Rather than sadness dominating the room, we all became joyful. As I wrote later, \"It was as though the fabric of the universe had torn and for just a moment we felt the energy of that place called heaven.\"\n\nMy brother-in-law Rick Lanford, a Methodist minister, said that he felt as though he left his physical body and \"went into another plane with her.\"\n\nIt was like nothing that had ever happened to any of us. Over the next several days we all spent hours together in my parents' home talking about the experience, trying to assemble all of the details into a coherent timeline. What had taken place with my mother was a shared-death experience. Shared-death experiences are like near-death experiences, but they happen, not to people who are dying, but to people who are in the proximity of a loved one who is dying. These spiritual experiences can happen to more than one person and are remarkably like near-death experiences.\n\nI had heard of shared-death experiences before. The first time was from a Dr. Jamieson, who taught at the Medical College of Georgia and had been following my progress through near-death studies. One day she invited me to her office to talk about her own experience.\n\nJamieson had been visiting her mother two years earlier when her mom had a sudden cardiac arrest. Jamieson began CPR, performing chest compression and mouth-to-mouth for nearly thirty minutes before she realized that she was now an orphan.\n\nJamieson stopped, stunned by the situation she found herself in. Then, to her amazement, she found herself lifted out of her body and looking down on the CPR scene as though she were on a balcony. Trying to get her bearings, Jamieson looked to her left, and there was her mother, hovering with her. Then things got really strange. Jamieson looked in the corner of the room at what seemed to be a \"breach in the universe,\" where light was pouring in. Within that light were people Jamieson had known for years; they were all friends of her mother's who had died.\n\nJamieson watched as her mother drifted into the light and into a reunion with her friends. Then the breach closed down in a spiral fashion like a camera lens and the light disappeared.\n\nWhen it ended, she found herself next to her dead mother, totally puzzled about what had taken place in the seconds\u2014or was it minutes?\u2014before.\n\nI didn't know what to make of Jamieson's story. This was early in my study of these phenomena, and I had never heard anyone recount an experience like this one. When she asked what I thought of it, I struggled for words, finally settling on a name for what had happened to her: \"shared-death experience.\"\n\nI didn't hear another such story until nearly ten years later, in the early eighties. That was the decade when everything opened up in medicine and doctors and nurses were no longer afraid to talk about the events taking place in hospitals that could be considered spiritual or paranormal. It was then that stories similar to Dr. Jamieson's came to me not only through physicians and nurses but also from the families of deceased patients.\n\nI began to hear people talk about being with their dying loved one and seeing the room change shape and suddenly fill with a mystical light. There were stories about being swept into a tunnel of light with the person who was dying and seeing their life review. Sometimes several people would experience these events at the same time. It was as though the living were having near-death experiences.\n\nLet me provide an excellent example of what I mean. This woman from upstate New York was at her mother's bedside when she died.\n\nThe first thing that happened when my mother passed was the Light changed intensity and grew much brighter real fast. All kinds of things started happening at once, such as a kind of rocking motion that went through my whole body. It was like my whole body rocked forward one time real quick, and then instantly I was seeing the room from a different angle from above and to the left side of the bed instead of the right side. It was like I was viewing my mother's body from the wrong side according to where I was stationed in the room.\n\nThis rocking-forward motion was very comfortable and not at all like a shudder, and especially not like when a car you are riding in lurches to the side and you get nauseous. I was not nauseous or feeling uncomfortable, but in fact the opposite where I felt far more comfortable and peaceful than I ever felt in my life.\n\nI don't know whether I was out of my body or not, because all the other things that were going on held my attention. I was just glued to these scenes (from my mother's life) that were flashing throughout the room or around the bed. I cannot even tell whether the room was there anymore, or if it was, there was a whole section of it you hadn't noticed before. I would compare it to the surprise you would have if you had lived in the same house for many years but one day you opened up a closet and found a big secret compartment you didn't know about. This thing seemed so strange and yet perfectly natural at the same time.\n\nThe scenes that were flashing around in midair contained things that had happened to my mother, some of which I remembered but others I didn't. I could see her looking at the scenes too, and she sure recognized all of them though, as I could tell because of her expression as she watched. This all happened at once so there is no way of telling if that matches the situation.\n\nThe scenes of my mother's life reminded me of the old-fashioned flashbulbs going off. When they did, I saw some scenes of my mother's life in it like in one of the 3-D movies of the 1950s.\n\nBy the time the flashes of her life were going on, she was out of her body. I saw my father, who passed seven years before, standing there where the head of the bed would have been. By this point the bed was kind of irrelevant, and my father was coaching my mother out of her body.\n\nThat was amusing because in life he had been a football coach at the high school I attended. Frankly, I felt a little disappointed that he still had that coaching mentality, as if he had not moved on to better things since his death.\n\nI looked right into his face, and a recognition of love passed between us, but he went right back to focusing on my mother. He looked like a young man, although he was seventy-nine when he died. There was a glow about him or all through him\u2014very vibrant. He was full of life.\n\nOne of his favorite expressions was \"Look alive!\" and he sure did look alive when he was coaching my mother out of her body. A part of her that was transparent just stood right up, going through her body, and she and my father pranced off into this Light and disappeared.\n\nThe room sort of rocked again, or my body did, but this time backwards in the opposite direction, and then everything went back to normal.\n\nI felt great tenderness from my mother and father. This entire event overflowed with love and kindness. Since that day I wonder: Is the world we live in just a figment of our imagination?\n\nThat was the very question I had when we had the experience with my mother: Is the world we live in just a figment of our imagination?\n\nI found shared-death experience stories like this and others to be extremely valuable to the study of life after life. Skeptics have long said that near-death experiences are caused by a lack of oxygen to the brain as a person dies. This lack of oxygen causes people to hallucinate, they say, and near-death experiences are only dreams, the last gasp of a dysfunctional brain.\n\nBut shared-death experiences are different. They are extraordinary events that happen to people who are not ill but are most likely at the deathbed of a loved one. As that person dies the bystander has an extraordinary experience that mimics the near-death experience. Some parts of these experiences are subjective (for instance, people's claim that the room changed shape or that they saw a bright light that drew them toward it), while others are objective (as in witnessing a dying person's life review that reveals previously unknown secrets). And of course, sometimes groups of people experience mystical events.\n\nAfter exploring the events surrounding the death of my mother, I decided that, yes, it was time to take a look at shared-death experiences.\nChapter Twenty-Three\n\nWith many questions in mind, I put together the case studies of shared-death experiences I had collected. Then I went out and collected more. I did this in a subtle way. During lectures about near-death experiences, I would describe the phenomenon of shared-death experiences.\n\n\"Shared-death experiences are like near-death experiences only they take place in people who aren't sick,\" I might say. \"They might happen at the deathbed of a loved one, or they might take place elsewhere. Or they might happen to a group of people. But they resemble what we know as a near-death experience.\"\n\nWhen I would ask whether anyone in the room had had such an experience, several people would hold up their hands. Later I would interview them in detail and in private.\n\nAnother source for shared-death experiences was the deathbed research of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in England, from which I was able to gather nineteenth-century shared-death experiences. One of the books compiled by the pioneering researchers Edmund Gurney, Frederic Myers, and Frank Podmore, Phantasms of the Living, contains more than seven hundred cases of paranormal phenomena, many of them deathbed visions and shared-death experiences. Another book, Death-Bed Visions: The Psychical Experiences of the Dying by Sir William Barrett, a physics professor at the Royal College of Science in Dublin, is nothing less than the first scientific study of the minds of the dying. He concludes, by the way, that dying patients are often clear-thinking and rational and that the events around them are often spiritual and supernatural.\n\nTypical of the shared-death experiences found in Barrett's book is this one:\n\nWith reference to the incident I related to you, which happened several years ago, the following are the facts just as they occurred:\n\nI lost my daughter when she was seventeen years of age; she had been ill for some five years, and for eight months before her death had been confined to her bed. During all this time, and up to her death, she maintained a remarkable degree of intelligence and will. A fortnight before her death, one evening when I was leaning over the head of her bed, I asked her what she was thinking of, seeing her absorbed. She replied, \"Little mother, look there,\" pointing to the bed-curtains. I followed the direction of her hand and saw a man's form, completely white, standing out quite clearly against the dark curtain. Having no ideas of spiritism, my emotion was intense, and I closed my eyes not wishing to see any longer. My child said to me, \"You do not reply.\" I had the weakness to declare to her, \"I see nothing\"; but my trembling voice betrayed me doubtless, for the child added with an air of reproach, \"Oh, little mother, I have seen the same thing for the last three days at the same hour; it's my dear father who has come to fetch me.\"\n\nMy child died 15 days later, but the apparition was not repeated; perhaps it attained its greatest intensity on the day I saw it.\n\n(Signed) Z.G.\n\nI studied shared-death experiences just as I had done with near-death experiences nearly four decades earlier, dissecting them into their elements. The shared-death experiences contained most of the traditional elements of the near-death experience, including tunnel experiences, seeing a bright mystical light, out-of-body experiences, even the transformational quality found in near-death experiencers. But there were four differences that I found to be extraordinary and new.\n\nMystical Music: Those who have shared-death experiences very often hear music emanating from the surroundings. It is common for the music to be heard by several people, even those coming and going, and it can frequently last for long periods of time. The people I surveyed described this music in various ways. To some it was \"the most beautiful and intricate music I have ever heard,\" while to others it was \"the soft, wild notes of an Aeolian harp.\"\n\nThis phenomenon was also reported in the nineteenth-century work of researchers Gurney, Myers, and Podmore. There is no known explanation, other than to call it \"the music of the spheres.\"\n\nGeometric Changes in the Environment: Even though my family experienced this change in geometry when my mother died, it is still difficult for me to describe it, and the people I spoke to who had had the same experience were no better able to find words for it. A woman I interviewed said simply that the square room \"shifted.\" A man who'd had a shared-death experience at the bedside of his mother offered a confusing description of a room that \"collapsed and expanded at the same time. It was as though I was witnessing an alternative geometry.\" Others said that the room opened into an \"alternative reality\" where \"time is not a factor.\" And still another person likened this change in geometry to Disneyland, in that \"it made me realize that most of the stuff that happens in the world happens behind the scenes and that all we see is the surface, where the functioning part is.\"\n\nI don't know what this change in geometry really means. From my personal experience and the descriptions of others, it seems as though people who are dying, and sometimes those around them, are led to a different dimension.\n\nA Shared Mystical Light: The most profoundly transformative part of a near-death experience is the encounter with a mystical light. Those who see the light never forget it. Sometimes these individuals feel the light, as though it is palpable. Many NDEers declare that the light emits purity, love, and peace.\n\nThose who have had shared-death experiences say the same thing. Individuals and groups have said that the room of a dying loved one \"filled up\" with light. Some describe this as \"a light that is like being swept up into a cloud.\" I have heard it described as \"a light that is vivid and bright, but not in the way that we see with our eyes.\" Other descriptors have been \"translucent,\" \"a light filled with love,\" \"a light that tickled me,\" and a \"long-lasting light that stays even when it's gone.\"\n\nAn experience of light shared by a number of people at a deathbed does a lot to demolish the skeptics' argument that the light seen by those who have near-death experiences is nothing more than the dying brain shorting out. If a number of people who are not ill or dying share a mystical experience of light, then the light can't be caused by the dying brain of just one of them.\n\nMist-ical Experience: Another common event in the shared-death experience is seeing emissions of mist from the dying. This mist is described as \"white smoke,\" steam, fog, and so on. Often it takes on a human shape.\n\nI have spoken to many doctors, nurses, and hospice workers who have seen this mist. One doctor in Georgia who saw it happen twice within six months said simply, \"A mist formed over the chest area and hovered there.\" A hospice worker in North Carolina twice saw mist rising from a dying patient and described what she saw as clouds with \"a sort of mist that forms around the head or chest. There seems to be some kind of electricity to it, like an electrical disturbance.\"\n\nI don't know how to interpret the mist that some see at the point of death. There are so many who see it that it makes no sense to me to say that death is playing tricks on the eyes or that these are hallucinations. Plus, this is by far the most common element reported by those who have shared-death experiences.\n\nWithout question, the presence of a mist at death demands great attention. What is the composition of this mist? What does it look like exactly?\n\nI am excited about doing further research in each one of these aspects of shared-death experiences, not least because these experiences tell us far more about the afterlife than do near-death experiences. Why? Because those who doubt a link between near-death experience and an afterlife feel that NDEs are nothing but hallucinations caused by fear or a lack of oxygen to the brain. They say it is a physiological phenomenon, not a spiritual one.\n\nBut people who have shared-death experiences are not ill. The fact that healthy people sitting at the bedside of a dying loved one have these experiences gives us an entirely new framework in which to discuss mankind's most perplexing question: what happens when we die?\n\nIt is through the study of shared-death experience that we may get a clearer answer to the question of what happens to our souls after death.\nConclusion\n\nIt is through the study of shared-death experience that we may get a clearer answer to the question of what happens to our souls after death.\n\nThat sentence is a big step forward for me. In the beginning, when I first named the near-death experience and started near-death studies, I made it a point to neither believe nor disbelieve in the existence of the soul or a place called heaven. I was raised in a family that didn't attend church or believe in God. But aside from that personal history, I felt it was unscientific to conclude that we have a soul or that there is an afterlife. To do so would mean to some people that I wasn't objective in my work, that all of my research was merely aimed at propping up a belief, not at testing one. My goal in this research was to remain a true skeptic in the ancient Greek sense\u2014one who neither believes nor disbelieves but who keeps searching for truth.\n\nAfter more than four decades of studying death and the possibility of an afterlife, I have come to realize that my opinion is buttressed by thousands of hours of research and deep logical thought of the type that few have devoted to this most important topic. I have concluded that if everyone else has an opinion on the subject of life after death, why shouldn't I? As a result of this conviction, I have become brazen about voicing my viewpoint.\n\nOne opportunity came when a documentary filmmaker interviewed me about the afterlife. With the cameras rolling, he asked me: \"Why has it taken so long to answer the question, 'Is there an afterlife?' \"\n\n\"It's no surprise that the biggest and most important question of existence would defy our best and most rational means of solving it,\" I said. \"The question is so unfathomable in a way because by definition death means 'the state from which you don't get back.' So we are dealing here with an enormously complex question, and it would be scholarly misconduct for somebody to portray this as an easy question that is going to yield with little effort.\"\n\n\"But it's obviously frustrating,\" he said. \"No one has been able to answer the question of an afterlife. It's almost incomprehensible, unfathomable, really.\"\n\n\"The notion of eternity is unfathomable,\" I said. \"But that doesn't deter me as a lover of philosophy from thinking about it. This physical realm in which we live is unfathomable too. If you don't think so, ask yourself basic questions about the size of the universe, or even how we got here, and you quickly get into unfathomable realms of thought, just like you do when addressing the spiritual realm. I'm okay with that. Part of the excitement of life is that we get to ponder things we don't understand. If I knew everything and there was nothing left to explore, that would be ghastly to me, boring. I am glad that there is no state in which we know everything.\"\n\n\"So what do you think happens when we die?\" he asked.\n\nMy mind flashed back to the thousands of people I have listened to over the years as they told their story of near-death and the miraculous journey they took at the moment they almost died. I thought about my own journey to the brink of death. I realized that, yes, I was very experienced in both objective and subjective research into life after death. I answered the question from the heart.\n\n\"What do I think happens when we die? I think we enter into another state of existence or another state of consciousness that is so extraordinarily different from the reality we have here in the physical world that the language we have is not yet adequate to describe this other state of existence or consciousness. Based on what I have heard from thousands of people, we enter into a realm of joy, light, peace, and love in which we discover that the process of knowledge does not stop when we die. Instead, the process of learning and development goes on for eternity.\"\n\n\"That's quite a concept,\" he said. \"How does this make you feel about God and his intentions?\"\n\n\"I feel good about God,\" I said. \"I have a relationship with God and talk to him all the time. But what I really don't know, from a rational point of view, is whether life after death is in his plan or not. And it may well be that God has something in mind for us that is even more remarkable than a life after death, which means the terminology we use in this frame of reference may not be adequate. There may even be a subsequent state of existence in which the notion of an afterlife as we know it is invalid. I love God, I have a trusting relationship with him, but he hasn't told me anything yet about an afterlife.\"\n\nUntil he does, I am going to keep searching for answers. The spiritual universe is a very big place, and the joy of exploration I find in it is boundless.\nAbout the Authors\n\nRaymond Moody, MD, PhD, is the bestselling author of twelve books which have sold over 20 million copies. His seminal work, Life After Life, has completely changed the way we view death and dying and has sold over 13 million copies worldwide. Called \"the father of the near-death experience\" by the New York Times, Dr. Moody has researched a variety of paranormal experiences, from ghost sightings to past lives. Dr. Moody received his medical degree from the College of Georgia and his PhD in philosophy from the University of Virginia, where he also received his MA and BA For more information visit his website: www.lifeafterlife.com.\n\nPaul Perry has co-written four New York Times bestsellers, including Evidence of the Afterlife (HarperOne), with Dr. Jeffrey Long. Perry is also a documentary filmmaker whose work has appeared internationally on television. This is the fifth book he has written with Dr. Moody. For more information, visit his website: www.paulperryproductions.com.\n\nVisit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.\nAlso by Raymond Moody\n\nGlimpses of Eternity (with Paul Perry)\n\nLife After Loss\n\nLife After Life\n\nThe Last Laugh\n\nReunions (with Paul Perry)\n\nComing Back (with Paul Perry)\n\nThe Light Beyond (with Paul Perry)\n\nReflections on Life After Life\nCredits\n\nFront cover design: FaceOut Studio, Jeff Miller\n\nCover image: \u00a9 Shutterstock\nCopyright\n\nPARANORMAL: My Life in Pursuit of the Afterlife. Copyright \u00a9 2012 by Raymond Moody and Paul Perry. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.\n\nFIRST EDITION\n\nEPub Edition \u00a9 2011 ISBN: 9780062046444\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data\n\nMoody, Raymond A.\n\nParanormal : my life in pursuit of the afterlife \/ Raymond Moody with Paul Perry.\n\np. cm.\n\nISBN 978\u20130\u201306\u2013204642\u20130\n\n1. Moody, Raymond A. 2. Near-death experiences\u2014Research. 3. Future life\u2014Research. 4. Parapsychology\u2014Research. I. Perry, Paul. II. Title.\n\nBF1045.N4M665 2010\n\n133.901'3092\u2014dc23\n\n[B]2011025943\n\n12 13 14 15 16 RRD(H) 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1\nAbout the Publisher\n\nAustralia\n\nHarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.\n\n25 Ryde Road (P.O. 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