La Notte Bianca

La Notte Bianca, "The White Night", is an all night event that happens once a year in Rome at the end of the Estate Romana summer arts festival. This year over 400 events were planned, and over 1000 artists participated, in the visual arts, cinema, theatre, music, dance, sports, and special exhibitions throughout every neighborhood in the city. All the major churches, libraries, and museums stayed open and were free to the local public, tourists and students. Highlights included tightrope walkers, pyrotechnic spectacles, magic performances, video installations and screenings on the Tiber, poetry readings, and dance parties in the major squares, continuing through the night on Saturday until dawn on Sunday.

Our evening begins at 10pm with a glass of wine at our local bar. The owner Pietro who on a normal evening would close at 8pm, is doing a serious and steady business. He tells us he plans to stay open through the night until dawn, as the next day is Sunday and he can sleep all day. The neighborhood is already filled with people joining in the celebration. Down the street, the fine arts cinema in the Campo dei Fiori is showing a special selection of european films that have won the Golden Lion, or Leone d' Oro in Venezia. In the nearby Largo di Torre Argentina, a Shakespearan group is re-enacting the death of Julius Caesar among the ruins where emperors once walked. There are small parties in the side streets where groups of neighbors and friends have gathered with food, wine, and candles to have their own private celebrations. They send a cheery buona sera our way as we walk past. All the trattorie, bars, and shops are open and blazing with light, filled with revelers spilling out onto the pavement.

Most of the major streets are closed to traffic and open only to pedestrians, a vast improvement from the first La Notte Bianca in 2003, where we heard stories of Italians abandoning their cars in frustration, snarling traffic throughout the night and into the next day. As we cross the street and head into the Ghetto, we see the rocking disco buses that are traveling about the perimeter. They all have their own Djay, and you can you can jump on and off at will and dance through the night as they giro all about town. This culminates in the Piazza della Republica, where the buses unload near dawn, and there will be what is billed as a "sound-clash finale," a huge dance party with jazz and rock musicians in the square.

It is amazing to walk up Via Teatro della Marcella with thousands of others, a frenetic street where normally you would put your head down, take a deep breath, and pray to the Madonna that you make it across in one piece. We are heading toward the Piazza del Campidoglio, where Gianni Morandi, a guitarist, is having a concert, one of four popular artists that will be performing there tonight. There are so many people that we are unable to get close, and instead settle for the square where large video monitors and speakers have been set up to televise the action. The energy is incredibly high. The Piazza Venezia, the largest square in the centro storico, is filled with people as far as the eye can see. Italians are swaying and singing to the songs and sharing food and bottles of wine. Many have climbed statues, fountains and light posts to try to get a better view. La Notte Bianca is the perfect venue for the Romans, as it suits their need to congregate and to celebrate with both a festive, flamboyant exuburence, and in amiable chaos at the same time.

Our destination is to make it to the Piazza del Popolo to see the Ara Pacis, or the tomb of the Emperor Augustus, which has a special opening and will be lit tonight, but we are diverted by the crowds into smaller streets, and find ourselves at another wonder of the ancient world, the Pantheon. Seeing the magnificent building from the exterior at night is striking, but being able to go inside feels mysterious and timeless. We get a true sense of the scale of the the oculus, the 40 foot opening at the top. Set against the black velvet night, it feels like the eye of the gods watching over all inside. Some of the restaurants are closing, but we find the last two seats at a nearby pizzeria. We are a group of night travelers, and there is an atmosphere of shared conivial banter and laughter in the room.

The title "White Night" has a double meaning, also referring to the full moon which is shining overhead. As we walk back through the streets, the city is bathed in a patina of silver light, which washes and spills over every stone and crevice of the architecture. We reach our apartment a little past 3pm, but the festa continues on into the first light of dawn.

The next day, Roma sleeps in. The paper reports an estimated two and 1/2 million people in the streets for the White Night. The headlines read "Si accende la Notte Bianca: alla citta insomma." The White Night lights us up :all of the city is well.