Tuesday 17 June: Roman summer

I know that the solstice is a few days away, but summer is definitely here. There’s a reason I wanted to come to Italy in the spring: the heat. If you know me, you know that I don’t do heat very well. At 60 (Fahrenheit) I am comfortable in shorts and a t-shirt. At 70, I want to go around in my boxers. At 80, I do go around in my boxers (well, not at work). And over that, I melt. It’s in the upper 80s at 11 am these days, and even the Romans have stopped wearing coats. Some of them still have on sweaters, though. I get hot just looking at them.

There is not one cloud in the sky, which by mid-day is no longer blue, but almost white. The sun is a huge, blazing disk of gold and white fire. It drenches the landscape with a storm of clear light, throwing the details of nature and architecture into stark clarity. Luckily many of the streets are narrow and surrounded by high buildings, and remain in the shade most of the time. When you walk into an open piazza, it’s like stepping into an oven. By mid-afternoon marble, bronze and steel are too hot to touch, and nearly everyone goes inside for siesta. This does not do me much good, since I don’t even have a fan, much less air conditioning. Neighbors told me, open your windows at night and close the cool in during the day. I tried it once, only to come home at 2 pm to a furnace that had melted a chocolate bar onto the table. The windows stay open all the time. I try to plan my afternoon to be in someplace air conditioned: a library, museum, or archive. The churches aren’t air conditioned usually, but marble and travertine keep them cool on the inside, and if I’m done with research for the day, I’ll wander into churches to see the stray Caravaggio or Raphael or Bernini.

Later in the afternoon, between 4 and 5 (or 1600 and 1700, as they say here), the breeze starts. A wind blows down the streets and alleys, and my side windows catch it and send it through the apartment and out the front window. If I’m home, I take a quick cold shower, and just stand in the breeze drip-drying. The evenings and nights cool some, but it’s still over 80. Closing the windows isn’t an option, even to close out the din of Trastevere at night. I’ll take the racket over the heat any day. The coolest and quietest part of the day is between 4 and 7 am, after the clubs have closed but before the street cleaners start their hazmat work. I should catch some much-needed sleep while it’s comfortable, but sometimes it’s just too pleasant not to enjoy, so I’ll get up for a while, sit at my window, and watch the sleeping street until the first pink glow in the sky tells me that the sun is back to bake Rome for another day.