2003: Blackout in Rome

2003: La Dolce Vita Loca.

by Carl Russo

I.

What's the worst that could happen to the city's biggest festival?

Rome's first annual White Night (La Notte Bianca) was expected to beat out Christmas Mass with the Pope for attracting crowds. The September 27 festival—based on the popular Nuit Blanche in Paris—was promoted as the night the Eternal City would party till dawn. Monuments, museums, churches, theaters, cinemas, shops, and restaurants would all throw their doors open to revelers, while concerts would spring up like Bernini fountains from every piazza.

This was news even in a city where la dolce vita is lived till the wee hours on a work night. My strategy was to sleep away the afternoon on the beach, as generous amounts of white wine and sunshine put me out fast. Being a hot Saturday, the train was packed with tourists en route to the shores of Ostia, but I held on for the stop at Castel Fusano. The beaches there are cheaper (yes, you pay for your spit of sand) and refreshingly free of my fellow Americans.

By nine that night Rome's cobblestones were covered with pedestrians, prompting drivers to exhibit the Italian form of road rage: barreling through in a silent burn. People huddled over their little blue programs, arguing over which of the hundreds of events to see. The air was balmy and charged with excitement. A carpet store, the kind you never actually see open for business, was illuminated and full of smiling clerks passing out free glasses of wine to the grateful masses.

Skipping the Coliseum, which required a troublesome reservation, I began the night with an outdoor performance of Act III of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Thousands descended on the Piazza Argentina, which overlooks a pit of 2000-year-old columns. The play's location was right, as the emperor was assassinated a few blocks away, but the actors wore modern black and read scripts from music stands. We wanted pomp! We wanted togas! And there's just something wrong with hearing the Bard in a foreign tongue ("Amici, Romani, paesani...").

My chance to see Michelangelo's sketches required standing in a mobbed antechamber to the Museum of the Palazzo Venezia—an experience as stifling as riding Rome's cross-town 64 bus at rush hour. Once our group of twenty strangers was admitted, we sighed in the darkened solace of the air-conditioned galleries. The Renaissance Man's ink studies were lit like jewels under glass. Fine nudes with crosshatching not unlike R. Crumb's sat beside beautiful washes of the Sistine Chapel, St. Peter's Basilica and many other masterpieces.

With scarcely enough elbow room to slug back a supersized Peroni beer, I squeezed through the adjacent Piazza Venezia, perhaps Michelangelo's most sublime public space. Not only did the grand staircase accommodate a sea of humanity swimming up and down its length, but the steps served as a screen, projected with images of ducks and flying people.

Surrealism now the theme, I clawed my way into the Complesso del Vittoriano, a multi-tiered museum throwing a Fellini exhibit. The extravagant tribute to the late maestro of celluloid featured his napkin storyboards, film clips unspooling in every direction, and props from scenes etched into every cinephile's brain: a statue of Christ last seen dangling from a helicopter, sequined vestments from a lewd Vatican fashion show.

To keep fresh, I bellied up to a bustling bar for an espresso before setting off for the elusive Palazzo Farnese. Now the home of the French Embassy, you can't see Carracci's famed sixteenth-century ceiling frescoes (always compared to the Sistine's) unless your blood is blue or you made a reservation back in 1998. But on White Night, everyone was welcome. Unfortunately everyone showed up, and I'd had enough of queues.

Things were getting sloppy at the nearby Campo dei Fiori, by day an old-world produce market, by night a youth-driven meat market, and now a drunken playground with enormous lounge chairs as part of a DJ installation. I resisted the urge to jump up and down on the furniture alongside the chemical-damaged kids.

Was that a raindrop? No one expected the downpour that struck at 3 a.m. A million-and-a-half celebrants scrambled suddenly into bars, alcoves, and tunnels. By sheer luck I was near my rental apartment just off the Campo, and I reemerged with an umbrella and a fresh bottle of wine.

The showers drenched the damned souls banging on buses too crammed to stop. At 3:35 a loud pop was heard and everything went dark. Cheers erupted, then screams, followed by the smashing of bottles. Pandemonium took over. Hooligans taunted police cars.

Some made the best of Italy's historic blackout, seeking refuge in bars serving drinks by candlelight. Thousands more were stranded in the subways, or spent the night in the train station. I was luckier than most, fingering my way up five flights of a spiral staircase in the darkest void ever, feeling around for the keyhole, then finally collapsing into bed the morning after White Night went black.

© 2004 A Rat's Ass Production. All rats reserved.