Piazzas that deliver : Basking in la dolce vita in Rome’s liveliest neighborhood squares : Destination: Italy

Twice I’d been here. Each time, I came, saw, inspected the Sistine, assessed the Colosseum, entered and ogled the Pantheon and Forum. If it was winter I bought roasted chestnuts and was reminded that the idea of roasted chestnuts far exceeds the reality. If it was summer, I ordered Italian ice cream, the reality of which cannot be exceeded. Then it was back to the churches and landmarks.

But eventually, peering up at one more clock tower or squinting at yet another fresco, a stranger in Rome crosses a threshold. Suddenly, the most important thing in the Eternal City is not to find where Julius Caesar was stabbed, or name the father of Romulus and Remus, but finding a place to sit still, to rest sore feet, to sip something, to read something, to eavesdrop, to disappear in the shade.

That’s what piazzas are for, and Rome must hold more of them than any other city. The smallest of these city squares amount to little more than a confluence of streets, a fewparking spaces, a nameplate on a wall, a child chasing a stray soccer ball. The greatest of them dominate a city that once dominated Europe. Yet on both of those previous visits, I passed time in only the most obvious of Rome’s hundreds of piazzas.

Then the chance to visit Italy arose in June, and I set myself a goal: to search out and soak up a few choice and underappreciated piazzas--places where actual residents of Rome might be found pursuing daily routines, places less celebrated and less trampled than the Piazza Navona, the Piazza San Pietro, and other leading tourist stops.

I would look for theaters of human behavior, for Romans frowning at their newspapers, haggling over produce, casting furtive (and not so furtive) glances at the opposite sex, narrowly averting motor-scooter collisions, hanging out their wash, hollering at each other from second-story windows. I would permit these piazzas to handle a fair amount of tourist trade, but I hoped it would have more to do with tomatoes or antiques than with Iron Maiden souvenir towels, such as those I passed in the Piazza Navona.

For my base of operations, I chose the Hotel di Teatro Pompeo, four long blocks south of the Piazza Navona (and built upon the ruins of the theater in which Julius Caesar was stabbed to death). Around the corner lay the Campo de’ Fiori, where I spent parts of every day I had in Rome.

Campo de’ Fiori

Though its name literally translates as Field of Flowers, the Campo de’ Fiori has most of the standard piazza features. It’s a paved rectangle where streets intersect, and it’s dominated every morning except Sunday by a market offering produce, flowers and fish, sold by fishmongers who occasionally retreated to whisper into their cell phones. (I suspect Rome has more cellular telephones per capita than Los Angeles.)

The rectangle is surrounded by restaurants and shops, and the scene teemed with local people fondling local products. Three flower stalls. One seller had arranged 12 kinds of olive oil. Another stacked baskets of peppers, oregano, mushrooms, bananas, watermelon and asparagus. Another merchant, not quite with the program, offered canned tomatoes. On market days they set up about 6 a.m. and start packing up at 1:15 p.m. By 2, the marketplace has vanished and the restaurants have doubled the size of their sidewalk dining areas.

I was watching the setup early one Saturday , waiting for a caffe latte and cornetto (pastry), when I heard an American voice. Soon I was comparing notes on the neighborhood with Ellen Nordstrom Baer of Norwich, Vt. She was, it developed, a lyric mezzo-soprano, here for her European debut in a production of “Die Fledermaus” at the soon-to-begin Rome Festival. During rehearsals for the mid-July performance, the festival organizers had housed her in a nearby hotel.

“I had no clue about the neighborhood at all,” she said, beaming. “I was suddenly reminded of the Boston fish market. Then I thought, ‘My God, this is the real thing.’ Everything looked tempting. I didn’t know where to go first.”

The stores and restaurants included The rectangle is surrounded by restaurants and shops, and the scene teemed with local people and products.

Ristorante Om Shanti, an affordable place for snacking at an outdoor table and watching the world go by; The Drunken Ship, a young people’s bar with post-modern stainless steel furniture and an international clientele, and a high-end butcher and deli shop called Il Fiorentino, with old mosaics on its walls and yuppie customers elbow to elbow.

There was a wine shop, too, and a movie theater, a couple of ice cream places, several more restaurants, and no church, which is unusual for a well-used public space in Rome.

This absence no doubt connects to the square’s history and its central statue: Above the canopies of the produce stalls stands the cowled figure Giordano Bruno, a monk accused of heresy and executed here, by burning, in 1600.

Piazza Borghese

Next, in a piazza as quiet as the Campo de’ Fiori is clamorous, I found a few pages and trinkets from the Old World.

To reach the Piazza Borghese, you begin at the foot of the Spanish Steps, aim southwest and stroll the length of Via Condotti (the street of Gucci, Bulgari, Giorgio Armani and Louis Vuitton, among many others), and continue as the street name changes to Via Fontanella Borghese. There won’t be much reward for you if you make this journey in the late afternoon or evening: You’ll probably find a newsstand, a bunch of parked cars and about 15 locked-up, dismal-looking gray metal stalls.

But if you arrive between about 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. on any day but Sunday, those stalls will be open and bulging with rare books, old prints and antiques. Bronze busts. Century-old maps. Dusty old leather-bound books, such as “A History of British Moths,” in four volumes, by F.O. Morris, B.A., and W.E. Kirby, M.D. An oil painting of Naples. Botanical prints.

A few shops surrounding the piazza display still more antiques and various other specialty items. Fontanella, a few paces away, is the nearest of several high-end restaurants in the neighborhood.

In a city so epic and ancient, haggling with the stall merchants in your bad Italian or their bad English is a welcome intimacy.

Giuseppa Frisoni Medici, keeper of a stall for 50 of her 81 years, caught me eyeing a bronze bust of a bearded man and was immediately at my side with a smile and a price: about $1,500.

But for me, she hinted, there might be a special price possible. Richard Morosi, another piazza veteran, led me over to his books. His specialty was history, and among his prize items was a 12-volume collection of Mussolini’s speeches from 1914-1939, offered at about $200. (There were books on Roman mythology, as well, including one which reminded me that before the she-wolf took custody of Romulus and Remus, they were fathered by . . . Mars.)

For me, it was all charming, but also a bit sad. The growing use of the piazza as a parking lot seems to be edging the book and print people, for all their charm and civilization, toward oblivion.

Morosi told me his grandfather had been the first to sell books from a wooden stand in the piazza, just after World War II. Then Morosi’s father followed--there he was, in fact, the grim, wrinkled man with the cell phone at the neighboring bookstall--and now here was Richard, the third generation Morosi with a bookstall.

I hope there’s a fourth, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere

For a more pleasant view of what urban evolution can do--and for a taste of Roman night life--I found my way to Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere.

Trastevere (which translates as “across the Tiber”) was one of the city’s poorest slums in the 19th Century, and even now a wrong turn can leave you in a marginal neighborhood. But in recent years, restaurants and bars have been breeding in the narrow streets, and here and there Trastevere can remind you of Paris’ Left Bank, with lower rents. There are still no hotels handy, but if you’re near the Piazza Navona or Campo de’ Fiori, it’s no great exertion to walk cross the Tiber on the all-pedestrian Sisto bridge (if you cross by night, pause halfway and look for the distant spotlighted dome of St. Peter’s), make your way down narrow Vicolo dei Cinque, and turn left at the smallish Piazza di San Egidio.

If you do this by day, as I did on my first visit to the neighborhood, you pass many locked-up doors--bars and restaurants that will be opening later and filling with local and international students, twenty-somethings and others. (Rome’s only English-language movie theater is also in the neighborhood.) But even in the slow hours, the alleys will probably be full of naughty children, flying soccer balls, laundry flapping in the breeze, and bent old ladies sitting along the sidewalk in splintered old chairs. At the center of all this lies the Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere.

On one side, dominating the piazza, stands the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere, fronted by sturdy columns, topped by a startling mosaic of a dozen figures against a field of gold. Art historians say the mosaic, seven or eight centuries old, is a rare surviving example of what many medieval churches looked like before architectural fashions changed. Inside, there is more striking mosaic work, and even more gold.

Though the church stands at some remove from the usual tourist route, it’s possible that this was the first place of officially sanctioned Christian worship in the city. The church’s foundation is dated to the year 222, when Christianity was still commonly referred to as a cult, and the oft-told tale is that the non-Christian emperor of Rome, Severus, allowed the Christians to build because the alternative was allowing another tavern, and he thought the city had too many of those already.

Outside the church stands a fountain, its surrounding steps peopled by locals and tourists, napping or nuzzling or suntanning or waiting for someone. There’s no auto traffic in the piazza, which makes lounging a lot easier, and allows merchants to set up card tables. During my visits, the items on sale there were health products, in many cases hawked by merchants with cigarettes dangling from their mouths.

Around the piazza’s periphery stand two restaurants and the more casual Caffe di Marzio, where I spent an hour of my daytime visit nursing an orange juice and people-watching. To my left sat a local couple, each silently consuming a different newspaper. To my right, a man with a mustache, pipe, broad-brimmed white hat, and jeweler’s loupe was squinting to assess a wristwatch. By the entrance stood an itinerant mandolin player, plinking. Soon, however, a scornful waiter arrived to shoo the musician off.

When I came back on a Saturday night, the cafe and restaurants were packed, and the whole piazza was vibrant with the sound of strolling guitarists, the cascading fountain and the din from the bars and restaurants down the street. Even the bookstore seemed to hit its stride around midnight, and events took on a merry, random quality.

I stopped at one bar to take a photo of the crowd waiting outside, and before I could get my tripod in place, the bar’s featured performer, a comedian, was standing in the doorway, directing all attention to me and hollering “Hey, Fellini!”

Fleeing amid gales of laughter, I took refuge two blocks away in a bar called Molly Malone’s, where I fell into conversation with a pair of English Jesuits, one already ordained as a priest, the other, Nicholas Tucker, just finishing four years of study at Gregorian University and preparing for a year as a pastoral assistant. Though the university was across the river, both of them were inclined toward Trastevere when time came to relax with a pint.

“Piazza Santa Maria--now that’s a great place,” Tucker said. “The church is incredible.”

Then conversation moved on to England’s Royal Family, the contrast between Roman and English habits, the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. I headed off to dinner, and a drink after dinner, and finally the return stroll across the Ponte Sisto, with St. Peter’s faintly lit in the distance. By then it was well after midnight. Sign on as a piazza man in Rome, and you work all hours.

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Rome Piazzas

Locations of some of the city’s lesser known squares- and some old favorites:

Piazza de Spagna

Piazza Fontana de Trevi

Piazza Borghese

Piazza San Pietro

Piazza della Rotonda

Piazza Navona

Piazza Campo de’ Fiori

Santa Maria in Travtevere

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GUIDEBOOK

Rome’s Piazza Toppings

Getting there: Alitalia, Continental, Delta, KLM, Lufthansa, Swissair, TWA and United offer restricted economy fares from LAX to Rome beginning at $1,038. Taxes add about $29 to that price. Alitalia’s is the only nonstop service; the others include at least one stop.

Where to stay: Near Campo de’ Fiori, Hotel Teatro di Pompeo (Largo de Pallaro 8, Rome; telephone 011-39-6-687-2812, fax 011-39-6-687-5531) has historic location, pleasant public and private rooms. Standard double room: about $160.

More affordable in the same area (with smaller rooms and forgettable interiors) is Albergo della Lunetta (Piazza del Paradiso 68; tel. 011-39-6-686-1080, fax 011-39-6-689-2028). Standard double rooms: about $80; with shared bath, about $57.

Near the Piazza Borghese, the Hotel Portoghesi (Via dei Portoghesi 1; tel. 011-39-6-686-4231, fax 011-39-6-687-6976), stylish and more than 150 years old. Standard double rooms: about $140.

Near the Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere (just across the Tiber River over the Sisto bridge), the Ponte Sisto Hotel (Via de Pettinari 64; tel. 011-39-6-686-8843, fax 011-39-6-683-08822; standard doubles about $133.) is a large place with a palm-shaded courtyard.

Near the Piazza Navona, if you’re ready to live it up and pay a price, the ivy-clad, elegantly furnished Raphael Hotel (Large Febo, 2; tel. 011-39-6-682-831, fax 011-39-6-687-8993). Standard double rooms: $220-$290, depending on season.

(Rates quoted above calculated at 1,500 lire per $1.) For more information: Italian Government Tourist Board, 12400 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 550, Los Angeles, CA 90025; tel. (310) 820-0098.