It is perhaps more than a little ironic that the place where I belong, being an American Jew, is the piazza outside of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, Italy. The piazza was constructed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in the early seventeenth century and the collonnade which encloses it was conceptualized to look like two welcoming arms. St. Peter's is a beacon that calls millions of pilgrims - on religious, artistic, and touristic journeys - and the piazza serves as the first impression of the usually much-anticipated approach.
My experience in this piazza, within Bernini's embrace, was one of intense and repeated engagement. For two years I lived in Rome and worked as a tour guide, giving tours of sites all over the eternal city. Over the course of those two years, I spent countless hours in this piazza with my colleagues, waiting for our tour groups. This architectural masterpiece, in effect, became my office. While I waited I would chat with the other guides, read on the travertine steps, or grab a piece of pizza and eat it while leaning on the columns composed of stone pilfered from the Colosseum just across the river.
In this place of such transient activity, where most people visit for the day, a morning, an hour, I began to learn the subtle constancies. I know this piazza in the cold rains of winter and in the oppressive heat of summer when the black stone paving makes your feet feel like they might melt. I know the way the sun moves around the space and the best places to stand at each time of the day to get the optimum shade. I also know the places not to stand in order to avoid getting bombed by a territorial and aggressive pigeon. I got to know the police officers, the security guards, and the bathroom attendants; familiar faces in a sea of anonymous ones.
All of this knowledge came as a result of my continued interaction with the piazza. In these intimate engagements this place began to reveal itself to me and I, in turn, became a part of the place.
