Happy Birthday Rome !

AUGURI CARISSIMA ROMA !  You don’t look a day over 2765 !  Once I threw a rooftop birthday party for my city in which everyone came dressed as (and in the character of) a Roman : the befana arrived, and the porter, the poet Horace, the lady in the market who cleans the artichokes, senator Andreotti, Federico Fellini and Nero.

Old time Romans : do you remember the wonder of the birthday fiaccole  (candles) illuminating the entire Campidoglio and Michelangelo’s stairway leading up to it ?

The first-century B.C. historian Marcus Terentius Varro is credited with establishing the city’s date of birth, which he in turn based on a date ascertained by his friend, the astrologer, mathematician and philosopher Lucius Taruntius Firmanus. Although contemporary scholars are at loggerheads over the actual date, archaeological finds in recent years such as an eighth-century BC wall on the Palatine hill seem to support the legend.

The city’s birthday has been marked annually since 1870.

Weather permitting we will go to the Janiculum Hill to raise our glasses and to look over the Citta Eterna’s weathered, ever-remarkable beauty. Happy Birthday Rome !