A Roman Affair
Words by Valerio Coretti
Artworks by Giacomo Riccardi
Rome doesn’t flirt.
It doesn’t try to win you over.
It simply stands there, larger than you, older than you, heavier than anything you can carry.
You don’t walk through Rome. You get pulled under.
At first you think it’s admiration. Awe.
That sharp intake of breath when the light cuts across a stone face, when a church door swings open and you feel your body stop.
But it doesn’t stay that clean.
The beauty here is relentless.
It presses against your skin.
It clings to your thoughts.
It doesn’t ask for your gaze — it demands it, and it drains you.
After a while, you stop falling in love and start trying to survive.
You look at marble and it looks back.
You feel the weight of centuries, and it doesn’t lighten for you.
And somewhere in that exhaustion, reverence collapses.
You start noticing the cracks, the broken noses,
the rain-streaked torsos.
You stop wanting to admire. You start wanting to bruise.
To mark it back. To pull it down to where you can touch it.
This is why we show the statues distorted, eroded, almost undone.
Not to destroy their beauty, but to live inside it,
to meet it on equal ground.
This is the affair Rome leaves you with.
Not something you asked for.
Something you carry, long after you leave.
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