Sabbatikos

When we first arrived in Rome, Tawny wasn’t feeling well, so I set out to explore the city, winding my way down from the Borghese Gardens area to the Spanish Steps and Bernini’s Fontana della Barcaccia (“Fountain of the Ugly Boat”) in the Piazza di Spagna just below the steps.

Since Tawny had missed the Steps on the first night, I suggested we visit them after the Vatican, as we had to disembark at the Spagna metro stop anyway to get back to our hotel.

We wandered out from the station into the Piazza di Spagna and found ourselves in a sea of bottles and broken glass strewn across the cobblestones, surrounded by hordes of drunken Dutch Feyenoord football fans. Dozens upon dozens of them were lined up against the wall of the corridor leading to the piazza, urinating in a great yellow stream that ran downhill and pooled in the uneven cobblestones below. We hugged the northern wall, which still had a swath of dry cobblestones above the flow, and carefully made our way into the piazza. As we turned toward the Steps and the fountain, it became clear that we were not in a safe place. That realization only deepened when the riot police arrived. Tawny suggested we save the Steps for another time and get the hell out of there. I looked to my right and recognized a street our taxi had driven down earlier that day. “We can go this way around and get to the top of the Steps to look down and see what’s happening.”

We hiked up the steep road and into a staircase that led us to the back side and top of the Steps, where we could hear clinking bottles, drunken Dutch fans singing football songs, and police barking orders from behind a barrier of riot shields, positioned to prevent the crowd from ascending the Steps, while police helicopters hovered overhead.

We made our way to our tour of the Borghese Gallery and eventually returned to our hotel around 6 p.m. We headed to the rooftop bar, thinking we’d enjoy a glass of wine. But at 6:05, they told us, “Sorry, we can no longer serve wine. The city has imposed a restriction on serving alcohol until midnight because of the Dutch hooligans.”

“What?!”

We went down to the lobby and spoke with the concierge, who explained that the police had informed the hotel to stop serving all alcoholic beverages. He also warned us that our dinner reservation would likely be affected and that the restaurant might not be able to serve drinks either.

As we considered our dwindling options for enjoying a fine glass of Italian red on our vacation, a pair of Americans approached us and announced they had just purchased two bottles of wine from a nearby wine shop that either hadn’t heard about the temporary prohibition or was choosing to ignore it entirely.

The next morning we headed to the Spanish Steps and Fontana della Barcaccia to see the damage before heading to the Coliseum. Throngs of Italians had come out to see the damage to their beloved and recently restored Bernini fountain as well as the news media. The fountain had been drained, barricaded, and experts had been brought in to survey the damage.