Rome Comes Alive at Night

At night, people walk their dogs, eat gelato, and stroll hand in hand down the Tiber River. (Elizabeth Bastian / MJ)

BY ELIZABETH BASTIAN,
Managing Editor
Follow @LizzieBas

I just spent nearly all of the last two hours running around our neighborhood of Trastevere as well as historical Rome, including the Piazza Navona with Bernini’s Fountain of Four Rivers and Piazza della San Pietro in Vatican City.

Everything is more beautiful in the soft twilight, and I am coming to find my way around a new and exciting city while fulfilling my running addiction. It’s exhilarating on many levels.

Rome has a night life every single day of the week. Often times one can barely discern the difference between a Tuesday night and a Saturday night because the sidewalk cafes are busy all the time.

No matter what time, day or night, people are always out and about. They walk their dogs, they eat gelato, they stroll hand in hand down the Tiber River. I love being a part of this urbanism that, culturally, has remained unchanged for thousands of years. Quite different from America, really.

Street vendors will walk around in the piazzas after dark and try to sell these flying light up toys. They launch them high into the air, sometimes gaining as much height as the four or five story buildings that make up the majority of Rome. It is a beautiful sight to see as one sits at an outdoor table watching the sun go down. The sky is constantly aglow with tiny twinkling multi-colored lights.

Even the thought of returning to the States (as everyone refers to America here) depresses me at this point.

And on that note, Happy Fourth!