ROME. It takes your head off your shoulders and gives you wings you never knew existed. “This city, frozen with happiness in childhood,” in Brodsky’s words, is exactly how, with special density and strength, as in childhood, happiness floods these vias and piazzas.

O wondrous action! This city immediately integrates the newcomer into its magnificent perspective, which in a mysterious way, without effort, resonates in a person only what is authentic, only what is worthy of eternity, what resonates with the space of the city. And that’s why - at first without understanding the reason - once you get to this city, you experience a happy liberation, almost weightlessness, when the tinsel of external worries and sorrows falls away, which belong to the moment and cannot withstand a new dimension. The heart leaves everything empty, but it is filled with such childish joy that it is difficult to contain. You immediately trust this city, like an old dear friend.

The leitmotif of this city, which is written along its horizon line, interrupted by pine trees, domes and Romanesque campaniles reaching into the sky, is the frailty of momentary care and the eternity of the real, and above everything is a call to the most important meeting for every person, a meeting with yourself: get to know yourself - gnotis auton. And it seems that the main secret of eternal Rome is a great, intimate and joyful message to the heart of everyone who enters its gates: Man is a sacred thing: Homo res sacra.

I was in Rome. It was flooded with light. So,
How only a fragment can dream!
On my retina there is a gold penny.
Enough darkness for the entire length.

Joseph Brodsky