A Wander along the Aurelian Wall, or "one thing too many"

Once having found the Wall I could not forget it, or be unaware of its continuity. Its reemergences into view, out of covering buildings, never are not dramatic: whether in view or not it is there, and shapes one’s sense of the city.

Elizabeth Bowen, A Time in Rome. 1959.

Rome’s largest ancient monument is largely overlooked. It is mostly glimpsed, wearily, from a cab on the way into town from the airport and immediately forgotten. But there it lurks—an eighteen kilometer (twelve mile) band of brickwork and travertine; of towers and gates; of incorporated aqueducts and tombs—encircling the city centre.

Sometime in those strange days of twenty-twenty, when the strict two month lockdown was over but while Rome was still pretty deserted, I took it upon myself to walk the Wall (I vehemently agree with Elizabeth Bowen’s capital “W”, it demands a capital) taking photos for one of my Zoom talks. There’s no thought of where to go—one has, after all, just to follow—as bucolic stretches segue into narrow kerbs bursting with scrappy weeds along urban highways, then bereft of the usual angry traffic jams.