Roma is a city of sounds. It is, in fact, a noisy city. Take for instance our street, the Via Giulia. Somewhere…nearby…Italian parents have bought their teenage son a set of drums. I know this because he has been practicing every afternoon and he is very loud. And while building walls are often 30 cm thick, so thick as to interrupt cell phone signals, the large windows cannot insulate those inside from the sounds outside even when the interior shutters are closed and locked. There is the ding-ding-ding of a little bell on a bicycle down below. Parents are talking to little children as parents do everywhere with melodic, sing-song voices. Someone below is whistling The Marseillaise. The sounds on my street don’t speak with an Italian accent; they speak an international language. It is one I understand very well.
The narrow, winding vias are defined by the stoned and stuccoed walls that rise from them, walls that create echo chambers and sounding boards, especially at night. And we live on what might be considered a fairly quiet street. Nevertheless, we have been awakened on numerous occasions by city sounds at 2 am despite the benefits of ear plugs.
Although at times the noise is irksome, it can be very beneficial. Given my lack of sure-footedness, I rely on the bumpity-bump, bumpity-bump of the cars on the cobblestones to warn me to move either to the left or to the right side of the via. In the mornings as we wait to cross the Corso Vittorio Emanuele swarms of business-suited Vespa-riding business men and women buzz through the intersection. When the light changes to green, the vespas and motorcycles are always in the front of the pack. They move en masse. The light turns red. Once again, a new swarm hovers right in front waiting for the next green light. I don’t really understand why it is that the scooters are always in front of the pack as each successive light turns green but it is always that way; it must be an Italian law, or something.
In the afternoon, horse drawn carriages take to the Corso with their clippity-clop, clippity-clop; they carry tourists past romantic Italian sites. Now I've always found the juxtaposition of the carriage and the car on the Corso less than romantic. At the end of such a journey, the young man in my imagination should tenderly ask the lovely lady in the carriage for her hand in marriage. On the Corso he would need to shout his plight of love to her! The horses’ ears are bound with little stockings which I presume keep them from being startled by the cars that whiz past them. What keeps the lovely lady from being scared out of her wits, I wonder!
The most forlorn sound is the sound of the sirens. Their existential screams, and there are many of them, pierce the air. I hear them and I’m transported back to the Cold War era. You would think that this cry would be the ultimate warning device causing other vehicles and pedestrians alike to yield; rather, the ubiquitous shrill nullifies its effect. Oddly, it is not the scream of the sirens that causes cars to move to the side of the street. No, it is merely a small hand-held red and white sign grasped by some brave bureaucrat that succeeds in the submission of non-emergency vehicles. It is the power of silence in a noisy city.
We live just two blocks away from the Campo de’ Fiori where often the delightful sound of street musicians is interrupted by either seagulls or foreign visitors squawking to each other (who let “those” Americans into “my” city). Of course, when the Italian rains come to town, no one can escape the mantra “l’ombrelli” from every Indian or Pakistani street vendor who appears out of nowhere.
The bells of the city create a most marvelous sound. And there are lots of churches, so there are lots of bells. This city has not forgotten the meaning of the Angelus at noon or of the call to church at the start of Mass.
On Saturday evening we were walking home when we noticed that the Church of Death was sponsoring a free Baroque concert. The trio of musicians was composed of a cellist, a clavichord player, and a flautist. Now the flautist did not play a silver flute. Instead, she played a wooden flute. The music was incredibly smooth. I now think that all flutes should be made this way.
I can only attempt to convey these sounds to you. To hear them, you must come to this lovely city yourself. There is so much to see everywhere but don’t forget to listen. It is worth the journey.
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