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Colosseum backdrop.
An article from February 2025 co-written by Ally & Turtle Bunbury
The Pantheon and the Pope
Assisted by Professor Google, I grip the wheel of our duck egg blue Fiat 500 while my husband navigates our way into downtown Rome, bouncing over the seven hills on roads that seem more like boreens back home than ancient highways into the Italian capital. Up, down, up down, we bob until we finally cross the River Tiber and swing our adorable car into a parking spot off Via Giulia. We grab our overnight cases and set off into the streets, knowing we are a 17-minute walk from our destination. Our suitcases have wheels, but the sound is so loud on the cobbled pavements that, for the most part, we carry them.
It is after 10pm and our energy levels are waning after a long day of travel. Stumbling into the city centre, suitcases in arms, our most profound concern is that the chefs will have already summoned the kitchen porters to close up shop. We take a punt and pile into the first place we find, Blasi, on Via di Torre Argentina. It’s absolutely perfecto: Aperol Spritz, a pair of pizzas and a bottle of Umbrian red. The place is buzzing, and, despite our suitcases, we instantly feel like locals in the heart of Rome.
The Pantheon by Night
The Pantheon Door dwarfs Ally.
This is the magic of the Eternal City. We’ve not yet been on the streets for 17 minutes and already we feel like Roman citizens.
And so it continued, as the evening progressed. Our chosen residence for the night was Minerva Relais, a refined and charming pensione accessible by a large green door off Via del Piè di Marmo. The alley name translates as Marble Foot Way and is named for a giant marble sandal-clad foot that appears at one end of the street: this was seemingly part of a colossal statue of the Egyptian goddess Isis. There’s no escaping antiquity wherever you go in this city.
Powered by pizza, we ascended the narrow stairs to the fourth floor of our pensione where we found our bedroom, assessed it favourably and lay down our cases before returning to the streets to catch some midnight ambience. In both our minds, we keep thinking about the Pantheon, which neither of us have seen before. Its about 500 metres’ walk from our bedroom and one of our pals had told us to be sure to visit it at night.
Within nanoseconds, we are back at street level on Piazza della Minerva, musing beside a large marble elephant lumbering an obelisk on its back. Sculpted by Bernini, commissioned by Pope Alexander VII, circa 1667.
But this was a warm up. The ‘thin crust’ brick walls of the Pantheon soon appeared. It was 1 am by the time we stood in front between the famous pillars. We had read up on the Pantheon beforehand and learned how it used to be gaudily coloured. How the name Agrippa on the front is kind of irrelevant, as it is the name of the fellow who built the earlier version. How it was built by Hadrian, he of the wall, who generally played a low-key game when it came to throwing his name about. And how it remains in such good condition because the Christian church took it on way, way back.
We met a young couple engrossed in a photography session in front of the immense, Game of Thrones-esque doors. We slalomed and danced between the immense granite columns, each one requiring its own ship to be floated from the Egyptian quarry up the Nile to reach the Mediterranean 1900 years ago. Each white marble base was likewise shipped in from Mount Pentelicon in Greece.
The next morning, Sunday in the Eternal City, we woke to a symphony of ringing church bells. Valentina, the hotel’s receptionist, peeks into our room as we accidentally left our keys in the door. We laugh. She told us the Pantheon is her favourite place in Rome as she tied a paper bag containing fresh croissants to the door handle of our room.
We departed, happy customers, suitcases in hand, and returned to the Pantheon, hoping to pop in but nobody was allowed in, because Mass was in motion. Our luggage was a bore so we decided to march to the car park and fling the bags back in the Fiat, which was easily achieved. Liberated, we attempted to reach the Vatican, but got lost in the labyrinthine streets. Enter Giuliano, a kind stranger who took us under his wing, leading us to the entrance of St Peter’s Basilica. As we thank him, he pats our shoulders and says, Pray for me. Just before he disappeared into the crowd, we asked for his name. Giuliano, he smiled as we heard a familiar voice emanating from loudspeakers. We paused and looked between pillars, above the crowds, and a man in white is on the screen, a man in a white cap, addressing the people.
‘Sweetheart, I think that’s Il Papa!’ says my husband, and so it was. The man in white was Pope Francis. People clapped as he waved from his window.
We celebrated with gelato, and then marched to the Trevi Fountain. There were so many people it was hard to take in the beauty, but in honour of my favourite show ‘Emily in Paris’ (who had her own adventures in Rome) I tossed a coin into the water.
Hot Priest Calendar on sale in Rome. Yes, Ally bought one.
Onwards to Hadrian’s Temple, where we dined on a simple yet perfect lasagne before attempting for a third time to enter the Pantheon. There were long queues but at last, we and 5000 others made it, and of course it was amazing, the oculus, the dome, the marbles, the alcoves, the tombs, the whole thing, but each human does reduce the joy by a jot. Maybe we had hit cultural overload. Debating whether to walk to the Colosseum, we admitted defeat—our feet had had enough.
Back to the streets, popping our heads into a Leonardo museum by the Palace of the Chancellery, to the Tiber, to the car park, and I’m behind the wheel again as we made an impromptu decision to spin past the Colosseum one last time before leaving Rome.
We drove along the river, the Via dei Cerchi, marvelling at the Circus Maximus, the Teatro di Marcello, the Palatino and then, blow me down, the Colosseum itself, justifying its colossal reputation. There was no way we had the energy to queue again, and the place was streaming with people, so we parked on a side street and took in the view for a few respectful moments before picking up a couple of cokes for the journey onwards.
Escape to Umbria
Umbrian street
As we left the city, the landscape transformed – creamy yellow buildings dissolving into rolling hills. We ventured eastwards on sturdier roads than those we had arrived on, and then northwards, with the serpentine Tiber swimming beneath. Crossing the border into Umbria, we found ourselves flanked by forested mountains on either side as we made our way towards Acquasparta, where Galileo once lay low. And like a scene from a film, we arrived at a secluded stone cottage with a private garden and a pool overlooking a medieval hamlet with white, crumbly gravel crunching underfoot, silvery olive groves and the scent of rosemary and juniper.
We meet Emanuella and Renzo, the owners of the cottage. The first thing they tell us is, We love this house. It’s a sentiment we immediately adopt as our own. We booked through HomeExchange.com, a brilliant house-swapping platform. What makes the system appealing is its flexibility; your swap doesn’t need to be simultaneous with your exchange partner. They don’t even need to stay at your place. Instead, you swap your house for points. With over 270,000 homes listed across 145 countries, it’s a global traveller’s dream. An ice cream parlour of rentals – so many choices, so many flavours, and yet no rent changes hands. The more points you accumulate, the better your options. No matter where you are in the world, the process is simple: they stay at your place, you stay at theirs, and the only cost is settling the cleaning bill.
For those seeking retail therapy, Umbria is not the place. But for those craving unspoiled tranquillity, it is a paradise of olive groves, wildflowers, and endless mountains.
The Roman theatre at Spoleto lies just below Piazza della Libertà, integrated with Palazzo Ancajani and the Museo Archeologico Nazionale. Dating to the 1st century BC, it has a semicircular cavea, orchestra and stage structures, partly rebuilt for modern use. From the piazza you glimpse the curving seating through arches of the palazzo, while full access is via a tunnel leading into the museum complex. The theatre forms part of a wider ensemble including remains of a Roman domus and other structures, illustrating Spoletum’s role as a Roman centre and later medieval town. Today it hosts performances, especially during the Festival dei Due Mondi, so it still functions as a living performance space.
I attempted to speak Italian, relying on my Spanish as a crutch, but quickly discovered that adding an “-o” to the end of words does not suffice. We are here for a week. A week of blissful Umbrian solace. Occasional urban injections in Acquasparta and Spoleto where I learn that the Italian for postage stamps is francobolli. Freedom to do as we please, to walk, read, swim, sleep and recalibrate after a long run in the homeland. This is the place. All will be well. Che sarà, sarà, as the Umbrians perhaps say.
