Private Rome [antikvár]

PREFACEm:Y LOVE AFFAIR WITH ROME began some thirty years ago, and it remains a passion that though all-consuming is never blind. It is the many contradictory facets of this city that continue to enthrall me and keep the flame ahve. For Rome is at once glamourous and provincial, proud yet petty. And most of those visitors seduced by the sumptuous beauty of it all, forget that Rome is also about decay. The very coexistence of these qualities and flaws 1 find particularly poignant.The city makes me think of a jilted woman, a faded beauty at a grand ball. She sits apart, no longer part of the running. Yet such is her elegance and grace that she retains the ability to charm, to fascinate all those who look on her. Neither age nor years of decadent excess can wither her. Beneath the skin that is now sometimes scarred and pockmarked, the bone structure is perfect, and you can still see vestiges of a once rosy bloom.Likewise, along the streets of the 'centro storico', behind the scaffolding, the chipped marble and stone, and the peeling paint, you can still marvel at the proportions and the classical purity of the city's greatest buildings and monuments.Rome is like the movie star a little past her prime, still alluring because she exudes all the confidence and personality of someone who knows she has nothing left to prove. And this, after all, is the kind of woman 1 love to dress the woman, mature or young, who knows that wearing clothes with style has more to do with poise and self-awareness than with all the fluctuating rules and fads of fashion.