Basilica by Anna Shvetsova

Then the time shrinks,
turns tables and what was once tangible becomes a past. And in retrospective you see — orange dots of trees in morning Vatican, impeccable statue of Venus looking at you attentively, you see 500 stairs on the way to breathtaking St. Peter’s Basilica but most of all you see the golden sunset lying on the top of Roman Forum. It is so vivid that you should not fall into sleep to see it again — it is as though you never really  left the City. Or was it the City which never really left you?
Then with the passage of time, when the memory finally wants to blur some images, they start to  pervade your dreams. Morning ride to Vatican, sunlit bridge of Saint Angelo, rich decorum in Villa de Borges; solemn splendor of Pantheon, holy quiet of cathedrals  and of course — the unforgettably tender, celestial blue of Sistine Chapel, as though mere sky and God descended to Michelangelo to help him complete his masterpiece.
I remember my first sunset in Rome and how I then realized that it is the city of sunsets. Then when the sun goes down onto the top of churches, fountains, statues and buildings, you may feel a sacred quiet and the breath of eternity at these streets. Remember, how they said in Casablanca? “We’ll always have Paris”. But now that I traced his heart and soul year after year of astonishment, day after day of long golden walks across the city, now I know: that before Paris and Vienna, before Madrid and Amsterdam, even before London and New York there was Rome.
And there will always  be.