Rome doesn’t reveal itself all at once. It comes in fragments—a warm breeze through a side street, the sudden presence of ancient stone beneath your feet, the smell of espresso curling out from behind a half-closed shutter. You don’t discover Rome. You drift into it.

I didn’t come with a checklist. I arrived with soft shoes and an open morning, letting the city set the pace. Some days I’d walk for hours and realize I’d seen nothing on a map, but somehow everything that mattered: a woman watering potted basil on her balcony, a cat asleep on a sunlit vespa, the echo of footsteps in an alley too narrow for sound to escape.

The Colosseum appeared out of nowhere one afternoon, not as a monument, but as part of the landscape. Cracked and beautiful. Unapologetically old. I stood there for longer than I expected, not out of awe, but because it felt good to stand still. To be one person among many who had passed through, looking up.

In Rome, time folds in on itself. Morning cappuccinos blend into afternoon wine. The past lives comfortably alongside the present, and neither feels rushed. I let myself become part of that rhythm—walking slowly, eating slowly, listening for the stories between the sounds of the city.

There was no single moment I’ll remember most. Just a collage of light and texture: the chipped paint of a doorway, the heat rising off cobblestones, the laughter of a family eating late into the evening. Rome gave me nothing definitive, and maybe that was the gift. It let me wander.