ROME TO STAY UP LATE

Evening Star, Issue 20254, 15 August 1929, Page 12

ROME TO STAY UP LATE

FASCISM NIGHT LIFE No great capital keeps such exemplarv hours as Rome. By 10 o’clock the Corso, normally one of the most uncomfortably crowded streets in Europe, is "half empty, and by H o’clock the hush of sleep has so far descended upon the city that the visitor who sallies forth in search of nocturnal gaiety must return early and disappointed. But now a movement is on foot to create a brighter Rome. This aim is very literally interpreted by the Fascist Commission. It is (proposed, among other innovations, to illuminate the chief monuments of antiquity in such a way as to “ render them more suggestive and majestic at night.” Plans have been put forward to provide permanent indirect lighting ior the ruins of the Palatino and the gigantic pile of the baths at CaracalTa, as well as for most of the other ancient monuments, both within and without the city walls. A moonlight visit to the Coliseum — if possible to take an al-freseo supper there—is a duty no conscientious foreigner omits to perform. But if the plans of the “ brighteners ” mature he will be able to do most of his sightseeing between dinner and bedtiine by taking the municipal bus on a nightly round of the illumined ruins. The Foro Italico—the large and usually almost deserted square in front of the Victor Emanuel monument—is proposed as the centre of another effort to make nocturnal Romo less “ provincial.” Here it is suggested that open air concerts and cinema shows should be held in summer till midnight.

Nowhere is there so much excuse as in Rome for the tourist who wanders among the monuments with his head buried in a guidebook, only looking up long enough to compare the ruin before him with its description in the book. Temples and monuments are so close together and so jostled by modern buildings that confusion is more than pardonable.

Whatever the artistic wisdom of illuminating ruins that look so impressive it? the strange light of a summer night, there is unquestionably value in tablets that indicate, for instance, that the quiet Piazza Navona was onco the circus of Domitian, that the Piazza del Paradise occupies the site of the theatre of Compey, and that the Corso is the modern name for the Flaminian Way.