I don’t know if it’s a secret. But there is nobody in Rome during Christmas. There were tens of thousands of people in St. Peter’s square for midnight mass, and at least twice that many people there Christmas morning…but to be honest, I have no idea from where they came. There were no exorbitant lines at the Vatican museums, the Coloseum, or any of the other churches or museums we toured. I only bring this up to further demonstrate how much this added to Rome feeling intimate and personal. The access we had to the spirit of Rome, not by way of throngs of tourists or half-day sprints from landmark to landmark, but in a relaxed, steady, almost private pace that allowed the experience to feel more like reading a great book than being in a foreign country or city.
It’s easy to focus a lot of attention on the great and grand parts of Rome. It’s easy to get swept up in the scale and immense beauty of St. Peter’s Basilica, the glimmering jewel that it was on our Christmas morning walk. The Roman Forum, with its relic remnants reminiscent of the height of the Roman Empire, is enough to overwhelm and inspire awe. Standing at the bottom of the Coloseum engulfed by one of the most famous and oldest symbols of man’s ingenuity ever created coaxed thoughts and feelings I don’t think I ever had before, nor had I words sufficient to represent them. And while trying to rank or order these places in terms of “favorite,” or “most memorable” would be futile, I will say that the vision of the Pantheon lit at night makes me pause. For reasons I can’t fully articulate, the Pantheon stands out as being somehow differently beautiful, singularly representative of a world, a culture, an empire that built this very building nearly 2000 years ago. Even Michaelangelo, not easily impressed and often critical, marveled at it, claiming it of “angelic, and not human design.” (Yet another thing he and I have in common.)
But the great and the grand weren’t the only draw. On the contrary, the quirky and quaint, the small and symbolic parts of Rome were the mortar to the big bricks of epic in the walls of our own temple to Rome. Things like La Bocca della Verità, a giant, ancient face carved in stone was believed to bite the hand off of liars who placed their hand in the face’s mouth; thus the name, The Mouth of Truth. Across the street from San Giovanni in Laterano is a small chapel which contains la Scala Santa, the staircase believed to be the one Christ ascended to meet Pontius Pilate before his crucifixion, brought to Rome by Constantine’s mother, St. Helena. It wasn’t just landmarks, though. 
It was also taking a coffee in Piazza del Popolo and people watching; strolling up the Via Veneto toward the Borghese Museum; browsing the little Christmas fair in Piazza Navona; sipping a ciocolato at Sant’Eustachio on a cold, late night.
We didn’t run all over the country or all over the continent. For 10 days, we stayed in Rome. We took our time, we explored, we wandered, and we got to know a little of the city. We ate where locals ate, walked everywhere, and had the greatest time. Unhurried, Rome revealed itself one church, one piazza, one fountain, one cobblestone at a time. That inspiration I felt, I came to realize toward the end of the trip, wasn’t necessarily put there by the trip or by the city – but instead, the trip, the city, the architecture, the art, the streets, the culture, the history, Rome, brought the inspiration out of me, awoke what had been there all along. And just as we brought back a small piece of Rome, so too did we leave a small part of ourselves there to rediscover upon our return. It is in this way, among other ways, that Rome is, as it ever was and ever has been, The Eternal City.
From Left to Write 