Piazza Navona

Another great day in Rome. 

We were exhausted from two days of sightseeing, having walked more than 15 kilometres, so today we got up late and took the bus to Piazza Navona where, two thousand years ago, chariots raced around a dusty, elliptical arena to cheering crowds. Now the stands are gone, replaced by tenements and restaurants. Huge stone fountains and an obelisk occupy the centre of the square.

We had just ordered our lunch in a tiny trattoria on a narrow, cobblestoned street away from the square, when an elderly, well dressed man came up and asked us something in Italian. His angled dark eyebrows and stubble of grey beard gave him a stern look. He had large, black-rimmed glasses, was bald on top but wore longish grey hair over his collar.

I said “I’m sorry, we don’t speak Italian,” and he said in English, “There is sun on those other tables, may I sit next to you here in the shade?”

“Of course you may.”

And so he asked where we came from and I said France, and he was surprised by that, but then started speaking to us in French so I explained that I was an Australian now living in France.

I asked him how long he’d been in Italy and he said 70 out of his 81 years and then, just as our meal arrived, he pulled out a cigarette packet and asked me if it would be a problem if he smoked. I said yes it would, but thanked him for asking, it was very considerate. I politely suggested he could move to another table that was now in the shade and he seemed happy with that.

He had a well-educated, urbane manner, perhaps a little distracted, perhaps a tad off-centre mentally. While he was waiting for his meal he was reading a book by Andrea Camilleri, titled La Mossa del Cavallo.

I know this because he got up and disappeared into a doorway just as his coffee was brought out, leaving the book open on the table. I had to satisfy my curiosity.

There was something slightly melancholic about this old man, as if he had lost his wife and now lived a lonely life. Yet he had a scholarly air and carried himself with dignity.

The old man came back after about ten minutes and we said goodbye.  We walked back to the square and stopped for coffee at the Bernini café on the edge of the piazza, now half cooled by shade and half bathed in warm sunshine.