Everything Sounds More Beautiful in Italian

Z is for Zanzara

not a zanzara but the eery beauty of this ruin on the Appia Antica captivates me, photo from last week, February 2023

Z is for Zanzara. The Italian language makes anything sound beautiful, even the wretched mosquito. 

If there is anything I dislike about Rome it’s the mosquitoes. From Summer to late Fall the city is plagued by them and it’s no fun. 

The zanzare like me. And it isn’t reciprocal. 

I can collect a dozen or so mosquito bites during one innocent aperitivo. I get big red welts on my legs and have to take antihistamines for the allergic reaction.  If I don’t spritz some sort of poison on me before I go out I become their dinner. 

And yet right when I think okay I’m done with this place, I can’t take one more mosquito bite, one more hot humid day, one more afternoon of the Scirocco blowing trash through the streets like tumbleweeds in the Wild West - and then, just like that, I’ll be overcome by emotion and am in love all over again with Rome. 

Of course it happens gazing up at an elegant Borromini spire or looking over the ruins at the Foro Romano, or walking in circles under the oculus at the Pantheon. I will be moved to tears at every Bernini fountain, angel or arch. It’s as if each ancient column and marble bust casts a love spell over me. 

To behold the beauty of Rome is worth every poisonous prick of a zanzara. 

But it isn’t just the monuments and landmarks that move me.