ROME’S LITTLE ISLAND OF CALM

At first it seems sufficient to be in Rome, taking the measure of the city that calls itself eternal but has the attention span and metabolism of a fruit fly. Yet even the most avid visitor eventually notices that the place is too noisy, too crowded, too chaotic.

It’s then that one searches for a quiet corner, an enclave of calm, where it’s possible to draw a deep breath before plunging back into the maelstrom. In short, one needs an island refuge, and Rome has such a refuge, Isola Tiberina.

Roughly the size and shape of an ocean liner that’s run aground in the middle of the Tiber River, Isola Tiberina’s history stretches back 2,400 years, to the city’s origins. Travelers and early settlers used it as a steppingstone across the Tiber, and archeologists have recently unearthed evidence supporting the legend that the island sprouted from grain that had been dumped into the river and took root on rocks just beneath the surface.

Isola Tiberina also was renowned for its healing waters, pure air and significance as a health center. According to myth, Romans seeking relief from the great plague of 291 BC sailed to Greece and consulted the sibyls. On their return, a serpent, assumed to be an incarnation of Aesculapius, god of medicine, swam off the ship and onto Isola Tiberina, marking it as a fitting location for a temple to the divinity. Sick people congregated under its porticoes, hoping to be cured.

To this day, the island is associated with medicine and is the site of the hospital of the Fatebenefratelli (literally, the Do-Good Brothers) as well as a number of small clinics and a nursing school. For frazzled tourists, it also offers a respite from the city’s raucous daily commedia dell’arte.

Linked by one bridge, Ponte Fabricio, to the labyrinthine streets of Rome’s Old Jewish Ghetto and by another bridge, Ponte Cestio, to the city’s tumultuous quarter of Trastevere, Isola Tiberina has broad, marble-faced banks--perfect surfaces for sunbathers, strollers, fishermen, graffiti artists and poets. Among the heartfelt literary efforts on display during my most recent visit, one crooned: “Lucinda, even if our life/ were a dream/ It doesn’t matter/ We’d be dreaming together. Lucio.”

At the bow of the island, pointing north, palms and umbrella pines shade the hospital. Down at the stern, as if on a different island or in another climatic zone, grow thick-trunked sycamore trees, their mottled bark peeling off like curling scraps of paper. But none of the vegetation is lovelier or less expected than what grows in the cracks of Ponte Cestio. Tufted with wildflowers, this stone bridge miraculously sports several full-grown fig trees, which flourish like a hanging garden.

However, this is no placid, lotus-eating Eden. Isola Tiberina is still Roman. It has a cafe; a tabaccaio that sells cigarettes, matches and stamps; a farmacia frequented by patients and their relatives; two churches, San Bartolomeo and San Giovanni Calibata; a precinct of the Tiber River police, and an embryonic museum that nobody seems to know much about.

The island also has small-scale traffic and parking problems, and that’s how Francesco Spera earns his salary. Isola Tiberina is his beat. Each day, in lashing rain or lacerating heat, he patrols the piazza between the hospital and San Bartolomeo. And when anybody implies that Officer Spera has a safe, cushy job in a police department that faces formidable problems in other precincts, Spera takes pains to point out: “My life is a roller coaster. OK, there’s little crime, but we do have rush hours just like the rest of the city. And on top of people piling in to visit patients, we have ambulances and cars rushing sick people to the emergency room. I have my hands full keeping things moving.”

The parking in front of the hospital is supposed to be reserved for doctors. “But what can I do?” Spera asks with a shrug that no Sicilian fisherman or Calabrian farmer could deliver with deeper resignation. As he speaks to me, drivers persist in importuning him. “My wife is sick. Let me get her registered, then I’ll move my car,” says one. “I’ve got to pick up my mother. She’s being discharged in 10 minutes,” says another. To everybody, Spera answers: “It’s illegal. I could ticket you or have you towed. But be quick about it and I’ll look the other way.”

Plagued though he is by responsibilities, Spera takes time to show me around, walking over to the museum, which is locked. “I’ve never seen it myself,” he says. “God knows when it’s open. Once a year, I think. What we should do is ask the Polizia Fluviale [the River Police].” And he rings the bell of a door across the way from the museum.

After a word from Spera, the police buzz us through a gate and we stroll the length of a quay, where on summer nights the municipality used to put on plays, concerts, dances and art exhibits. But because of complaints that the noise disturbed hospital patients, the events were discontinued several years ago, and this part of the island seems to be in a state of picturesque disrepair.

Spera and I walk beside Castello Pierleoni-Caetani, an ancient castle that dominates the central portion of the island’s north shore. The walls looming over us appear to have been pitted by age or small-arms fire, and they’re streaked with rust stains from the metal studs hammered into the bricks to hold them together. Grillwork covers the windows, but there’s nobody behind the weather-warped glass.

Beyond a second gate (more like a garden gate than the entrance to a police barracks) stands an aquarium of the sort seen in seafood restaurants. Through jade green water thick as bouillabaisse, three fat carp lazily submarine around. Il Comandante l’Ispettore Biagio Rutigliano of the Squadra Mobile Sezione Fluviale shakes my hand and says, yes, the carp were caught in the river, close to the island. But they are by no means extraordinary specimens, he assures me as he leads the way to his office, a gun-metal gray, starkly furnished compartment such as one might find on a battleship. “We once caught a carp that was as big as my desk.” He raps the top of his with an authoritative knuckle.

When Il Comandante says he knows nothing about the opening hours of the museum, I postpone culture and propose tagging along with the river police on a typical mission. But Rutigliano says he’s not running an enterprise for the entertainment of tourists. This is the business end of the island, and he and his men have serious work to do. “When the river is high and we go out in our rubber boats, we feel like this . . .” He picks up a paper clip and bounces it around on the palm of his hand. “There are trees and boulders floating on the current. If you run into one of them . . .” He bends the paper clip into a pretzel shape.

Reluctant to have me leave with a macabre vision of the island, Rutigliano guides me out onto the small terrace behind his office. It has lovely views of the river, the leafy sycamores, and a short distance from Isola Tiberina, the celebrated Ponte Rotto, or Broken Bridge. Constructed in the 2nd century BC, the bridge is now reduced to a single arch above frothy water. If, as James Joyce wrote, “a pier is a disappointed bridge,” then the Ponte Rotto, which doesn’t touch land in either direction, must, despite its beauty, be doubly depressed.

But even here in the balmy air, confronted by the beauty of Roman ruins, Rutigliano is less interested in history and architecture than in the river and its malevolent moods. Unlike Parisians who have incorporated the Seine into the city’s sentimental lore and romantic life, Romans, with good reason, are fearful of the Tiber, which used to flood catastrophically before it was channeled between deep marble walls. During heavy rains or when flushed with melting snow from the mountains, it still represents a danger to the island, and Il Comandante describes the highest water he has seen. “It rose right over these terrace walls,” he says. “It rushed through here as high as my chest.”

“You were here?” I ask, impressed.

He smiles at me, as if at a slow learner. “Of course not. We had to evacuate.”

Isola Tiberina’s attractive trattoria, Sora Lella, is at the end of Ponte Fabricio and is perhaps less famous for its cuisine than for the fact that its owner was the sister of Aldo Fabrizi, an actor whose most notable role was that of the priest in Roberto Rossellini’s 1945 film, “Open City.” It’s an unpretentious, reasonably priced place that, in the knowledgeable opinion of my 16-year-old son, has the tastiest, most piquant penne all’arrabbiata in Rome.

A few months ago, when I ate there on a rainy midweek night, there were few customers, and the waiters competed with one another in recounting a capsule history of the restaurant. They claimed that there had been an eating establishment located on this site since the 14th century, and they boasted that their clientele gravitated here from all over the far-flung reaches of the city.

Given Sora Lella’s long history, it might strike some as surprising that, when I returned a few days later, I discovered that it had shut down for reasons that nobody could explain. But having lived in Rome for years, I knew better than to despair. With the city’s baroque real estate regulations and its continuing politically charged campaign for historic preservation, I have no doubt that Sora Lella fell afoul of some bureaucrat who will eventually be persuaded to change his mind. As they say in Rome, “Only for death is there no solution.”

At present, the island has no private residents. The last one was an American, Milton Gendel, who had an apartment in Castello Pierleoni-Caetani from 1958 until 1983. Parts of the Castello date back to the Middle Ages. During the Renaissance, the Caetani family donated it to the Franciscan friars. When, in the early 1980s, it passed on to yet another proprietor, who wanted to renovate, Gendel had to move out.

Still, he continues to be concerned about the island, and he’s a font of information about its history and present status. In fact, when I called him recently, it turned out that he’s the prime mover behind that mysterious closed museum. With the help of prominent Italians as well as organizations in England and the United States, Gendel is computerizing enormous amounts of historical data, which--Deo volente (God willing)--will be turned into a chronology of the island and displayed on computer screens in the museum. Eventually Gendel hopes to program entries for each year since 292 BC.

He’s eager for Americans to support the project, explaining that Yanks have been key presences on the island. The pre-feminist figure Margaret Fuller, a contemporary and friend of Emerson and Thoreau, came to Rome as a correspondent for the New York Tribune. But in 1849, as Italian patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi and his troops defended the city against a French attack, Fuller put aside journalism and was appointed director of the Isola Tiberina Hospital, where many of the wounded were treated.

Following Margaret Fuller’s example, I dropped my journalistic neutrality and asked how to join the Tiber Island History Museum Assn. Membership, Gendel said, cost about $75, which entitles me to an impressive replica of the medallion first minted for Emperor Antoninus Pius in 149, showing the mythical snake swimming ashore.

Unlike the snake, I’m content to use the bridges rather than swim to Isola Tiberina when I’m in Rome. But I don’t dismiss the myth of the island’s healing properties. To the contrary, I count on a visit to Isola Tiberina to restore me before I head back to the enchanting maze of the mainland.

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GUIDEBOOK

When in Rome

Prices and phone numbers: The country code for Italy is 39. The city code for Rome is 6. All prices are approximate and computed at a rate of 1,402 lira to the dollar. Hotel rates are for a double room for one night. Restaurant prices are for dinner for two, food only.

Getting there: Delta, TWA, USAir and Alitalia airlines offer daily direct flights to Rome from Los Angeles.

Where to stay: Hotel Excelsior, Via Vittorio Veneto 125, telephone 4708 or (800) 325-3589, fax 482-6205. A sumptuous spot whose fame predates “La Dolce Vita” days. Rate: $290 and up. Hotel Margutta, Via Laurina 34, tel. 322-3674, fax 320-0395. Rooms 50, 52, 54 have private terraces. Simple, charming; on a quiet side street. Rates: $100 to $110, including breakfast. Both hotels are about a 20-minute walk from Isola Tiberina.

Where to eat: Ristorante La Campana, Vicolo della Campana 18; tel. 687-5273. A lively spot whose loyal regulars range from movie stars to students, Gore Vidal to Martina Navratilova; $65. Spiriti, Via Sant’Eustachio 5; tel. 689-2499. Serves simple dishes such as melon and prosciutto, salads, light pastas and desserts for as little as $20. Both restaurants, on the Old Jewish Ghetto side of the Tiber, are about six blocks from Isola Tiberina.

For more information: Italian Government Tourist Board, 12400 Wilshire Blvd, Suite 550, Los Angeles, 90025; (310) 820-6357.