In this world, there is, perhaps, only one place where you can still witness the very instant when the ordinary shatters, transforms and gives way to wonder – so much so that mere chronicle demands to become story in order to be truly understood.
Where even a rally, effortlessly, simply by happening, becomes something else: a myth to be passed on, living proof that history is woven from stories – and that stories are everywhere. In the wind, in the stones, in the faces of those who watch.
That wind is the Ponentino.
The stones are travertine.
The faces belong to people who, even without knowing it, are hunting for the extraordinary – and will find it, if they know where to look.
The place, the place where the birth of wonder is the only spectacle that matters, is Rome.
And the rally is the Rally di Roma Capitale, which since 2013 has begun in the brief sigh of a July evening in the ancient belly of Urbs, the “central city”, only to scatter immediately into the woods that once belonged to the Latins.
And these are the notes of a summer Friday, when the passions, smells, noises, cheers and fears of a car race are but fragments of an eternal ritual of struggle and competition – always the same in intention, always different in form.
In Rome, nothing really matters. Not even victory.
No surprise there: the Eternal City is like this.
It welcomes everything, digests everything, as it always has.
Never startled – sly, almost indifferent.
Attentive to nothing, yet never careless.
So, let the rally commence, may the best one win – but quickly.
Listen: night is falling
What draws the people – scattered in small groups or lured by a sense of excitement – towards the cars is first the roar of the engines, imposing themselves on the sweaty, clamorous chaos of the Monti district, then the line of vehicles, one by one, neatly arranged, noses pointed at the Imperial Fora.
The hell of unruly cars and buses on Via Cavour seems a thousand miles away, though it is just around the corner, with its tourist pizzazz and Bangladeshi grocery stores that never close.
The Colosseum looks on, patient, millennial, weary, yet ready to welcome another crowd, even as it lets the previous one drift away – those who have just walked through its bowels.
The swelling murmur of mechanics, drivers and spectators, the impatience of horsepower waiting to be unleashed, do not stir its stones, but they ignite the faces around it, even if all eyes are still on its mighty walls.
Rome has seen far worse, endured and, in the end, even tamed Attila's invaders. What's this, by comparison?
Soon it begins. The announcer calls for attention. For a moment, eyes turn to him, too.
It is the perfect instant: a new postcard for Rome's infinite album begins here, where spectacle and sacrifice have always collided.
The engines of the European Rally Championship are just the latest pretext.
The cars, in line, their liveries now aggressive, now elegant, speed off, skimming the amphitheatre before climbing the Oppian Hill. A straight as short as a hallway at home. Then curves, right, left, in succession, to make the trial harsher. In certain stretches it seems the replay button has been pressed, but it is there that one savours the driver's gesture, the navigator's precise cue, the winning downshift.
Children scream in delight, thrilled by the power in the trembling asphalt that takes hold of their bodies; adults hunt for angles, frames, exposures and timing to capture history and technology in a single shot to be posted instantly.
The craftiest closely watch the dozens of influencers (more or less influential) who have rushed in pursuit of hype.
Rome does not co-operate. Or rather, it does so in its own way. The stones turn rosy, the light grows languid, languorous, insufficient to snatch a decent shot for most of the amateur photographers. It is the slow sunset of early July over the Imperial Fora. And it takes centre stage.
The true spectacle – the one that pulls eyes away from the speeding machines – is happening elsewhere. And indeed, at a certain point, gazes – like phone cameras – rise, searching for space and hunting not for cars anymore, but for columns silhouetted against the sun.
There, the light turns golden, making everything surreal, enchanted, otherworldly.
The rally becomes a fleeting apparition, just one of the many clamours of the metropolis, which meanwhile stages a thousand other scenes of life.
Is that the moment when wonder is born?
Of the people and of the peoples
The spectacle is also elsewhere, among those whose names are not emblazoned on the car doors, but who have come to be a part of it all.
Tourists, fans, onlookers, locals on a stroll.
Among them, the new Romans, from a host of different countries, with children on shoulders, strollers and flags. Loud, festive, colourful. Balanced across generations: adults forming a circle, minors at the centre; youth more numerous than elders.
They make their way from Piazza Vittorio, from Esquilino, from San Lorenzo.
And mark their difference. With dignity.
They discovered travertine by crossing oceans and deserts. They tread it with their sandals, often resembling the caligae of old. They do not know it, perhaps, but when sacrifices were still being made in Minerva's temple, Rome was already like this: of the people and of the peoples, all equal citizens of the Empire.
And the clock keeps ticking
“But is this a rally?”
The question comes from an expert, one of those who is all about times, engines, understeer. No malice in it: it is his first time at the Rally di Roma, and it is only northern-European humour. He knows it's a real rally – and that tomorrow, on the harsh mountain roads, it will be even more so. His point is only: how different it is!
And who could disagree? The only similarities with other rallies are here: in the noise, in the smell of petrol, in the stopwatches that click every three minutes and which, in this context, are the practical proof that eternity can indeed be subdivided.
And, like any other rally, there is the eternal hunt – for the Pirelli cap, whose logo, yellow as the sun and red as fire, shines on the majority of the most powerful cars and beloved drivers.
Beyond that, everything is different. No mud, no forests: only history and worked stone. No real suspense for the result. In the end, what prevails is the feeling that you love being there but would also like to be elsewhere – perhaps just a kilometre away – letting go, surrendering to the city.
Perhaps at Campo de' Fiori, in a lay prayer to the 16th-century philosopher Giordano Bruno, who lost his life in that square for his free thinking.
Perhaps eating artichokes in the ancient Portico d'Ottavia area.
Perhaps passing by (once again, as if by chance) for the thousandth time in your life, the Trevi Fountain – and still being surprised.
Perhaps in one of the many venues where an important slice of culture – from Italy and beyond – still exists and continues to be produced.
And you hope the cars go even faster, that the tyres bite the smooth, challenging asphalt with greater hunger, so that you have the time to do all this.
Rome lives around you.
This race is just a fragment of what she has to offer.
500-horsepower chariots
Meanwhile, spectators arrive and spectators leave – or change vantage point.
Those who move only a few metres are the ones with passes for one or more of the lounges set up in the bars facing the Colosseum.
Even without the characters of a Paolo Sorrentino film, these are still Roman terraces transposed for the event: cocktails, local politics, men and women in fashion, the latest must-read book, the caustic remark aimed at someone who has just turned their back – who in turn fires the same kind of barb at their companion as they walk away. Everyone knows it's like this, everyone does the same.
Selfies and poses mingle in a somewhat tired, casual sociality, savouring the Ponentino that finally cools the 39-degree heat of the day.
Rome is relationship. Rome is the will to be there. Rome shows up even when it already is.
Meanwhile, the amateur racers begin to compete: the slower ones, the true enthusiasts, the majority of the nearly 100 entrants in the race, who spend money and entire weekends sweating in fireproof suits and eating dust with every breath. The soul of the rally, any rally, is them. The champions, the stars, are such because there are always those who will chase them.
The question that had until now remained buried, shy and almost afraid of irreverence, finally surfaces: who is gifting what to whom? The rally to Rome, or Rome to the rally?
One might ask the same of certain stages of Sardinia's Rally Costa Smeralda, perched above the cliffs, or Greece's Acropolis Rally, on the road to Marathon.
As there, the special stage in the capital serves to add splendour to technology. By minimising it, humanising it, revealing it for what it ultimately is: means, not end.
On the throne of the first stage sits Boštjan Avbelj, a Slovenian racing for Italy in a Czech car (Skoda Fabia), a new general from Illyria seizing the Empire for a night. Multi-champion Giandomenico Basso – who will easily win the entire race – chooses instead not to overdo it.
But no one notices.
The true spectacle was elsewhere. Everyone knows it, the drivers included: they collect the applause but credit the setting around them. They feel like heroes – privileged all the same – but not absolute protagonists.
After all, neither were the charioteers of old.
They will have time to reclaim the stage, but not tonight.
Embrace us, Rome, before we fall asleep tonight
The curtain falls. The Imperial Fora can rest for a few hours before once again being overrun by tourists and pleasure seekers.
The crowd disperses, farewells are exchanged, the people immerse themselves into the nearby streets, still vibrant.
Drivers and staff head towards Ciociaria, where Rome begins to blend into Naples, and where the real race will unfold.
But Rome remains.
Perhaps because of the Catholic Jubilee Year, perhaps not, but the city seems tidier, more austere, almost spotless.
And not only on the racetrack. It seems to have found itself and finally delight in it.
Even if only thanks to an Argentine, then an American, sitting on the oldest throne in the world.
As if Urbs had decided, at least today, to show only its true splendour.
A reborn self-awareness that – between curves and curbs – re-emerges like an ancient smile. And you feel as though you've found again a friend who, teasing, says: “I've always been here.”
Without the roar of the cars, in the ordinary traffic, you feel Rome breathe and slip into the night.
More beautiful. More brazen. More indifferent than ever.
Delicate, even among the walls and murals of Rebibbia station, the logistical hub for many rally workers.
“Stanotte è per te, e se non tornerò domani è lo stesso…” you hear from a presenter via a car radio at the traffic light. “Tonight is yours and if I'm not back tomorrow, it'll be all the same.”
And you know it's no coincidence.
It is Rome itself, bidding farewell with the voice of yet another of its countless gifted children.
Showing, once again, the very instant when the ordinary sheds its skin and becomes something else, to make room for wonder.
