Rooftop In Rome: Peace and Tension
July 5, 2018. Rome, Italy. 1:00-3:00 am
Location: My Hotel Rooftop
It was 1 am on my first night in Rome, after a full day of travel. Planes, trains, and buses, had taken me all the way from Austria to Italy. It was my 7th day in Europe, but my body was still having a tough time adjusting to the 7 hour time change.
So lying awake in bed at 1 am; I decided it was time for a little adventure!
July 5, 2018. Rome, Italy. 1:00-3:00 am
My hotel was just a half mile away from the Colosseum so I figured I would walk there and do some drawing.
“The thought of walking through the city so late at night got my blood pumping...”
On my bus ride over from the airport, I concluded that Rome looked significantly more dangerous than I had anticipated.
Pretty much every square inch of the lower 6 feet of every building I saw on the way in, was covered in graffiti. The metro wasn't much better. A person over the intercom repeatedly told us to watch for pick pick-pockets, and Policemen guarded the gates of the metro, holding giant guns across their chests, and wearing full military regalia.
“I decided, however, that the adventure was worth the risk. When in Rome right?”
As I was walking down from the top floor of my hotel, I saw an open window, leading to a rooftop connecting my building to another. I peered my head out before deciding that this would be my first stop. The Colosseum could wait.
Once on the roof, I walked around, searching for the best view to draw from. I found this really cool angle where all of the buildings took a sharp angle downward in unison. They were all about the same height, but they each had so much of their own unique character. The building I came out of, which is just barely visible in the far left of the photo, had a nice cream color to it, but was super dark because of the lack of lighting and covering of the deep blue sky. The next building on the left had this beautiful rough city look to it. I envisioned the countless people who had lived there and all the history within the walls. This building also had the most lights on, projecting a nice yellow ambiance from the windows. It made me think of that Edward Hopper ‘Night Hawks’ painting. The next two buildings were brown and made me think of pictures I’d seen of urban New York City or the city buildings in the old Nickelodeon show, ‘Hey Arnold’ that I watched growing up as a kid.
Behind me was a giant clothes hanger stretched across buildings. The sky was dark and all I could hear was the constant hum of the A/C unit and some loud geese who chose to grace me with their presence for the first 15 minutes or so. They were so loud. Of course, obviously I couldn't understand any noises the geese made... they were Italian.
“The whole scene was very serene”
Once the geese left it was just me in the pitch black, with a light from my phone propped on my lap so I could half see the paper… or so I thought…
“... And that’s when I saw him.”
About an hour into sketching, out of the corner of my eye, I catch an old Italian man standing on his porch in the building behind me about 20 feet away. As I turn my head towards him, we lock eyes for an awkward minute. I could see both an alarmed and confused look in his eye. Attempting to break the tension, I smiled softly and waved.
This set him off. He began ripping into me in Italian. I had no idea what he was saying, but he was waving his arms and shouting, with a very angry look on his face. I tried to calm him down, by shouting: "English. I only speak English." He didn't care. The tongue lashing continued. I held up my sketchbook to show him I was harmless. I shouted "Artist." Still, he didn't care. He continued on for what seemed like several minutes.
I was concerned that the whole thing might wake up neighbors, or that he might call the police, but then I thought: what can he really do? I’m harmless right now, and I’m not damaging anything by sitting here. So, I just sat and stared at him, letting him continue until he finally ran out of energy, threw his hands in the air in disgust, and walked back inside.
Over the course of the next hour, I continued to sit in that same spot, sketching, listening to the hum of the A/C, the birds in the air, and occasionally peering over my shoulder to see if the old man was still looking out his window.
Every now and then he would return to the window and just give me a look of disgust… But I continued on... in the darkness. Just me... on a rooftop, in Italy, over 5,000 miles from home. There was peace and there was tension. I wanted to soak it all in.
I ended up walking back to the Colosseum after that to get another hour or so of sketching done alone in the dark streets of Italy.