In 1822 Giacomo Leopardi was finally allowed to leave home and visit Rome. He was 24. A child prodigy, he had spent his life in the remote town of Recanati in the Italian Marche, governed at that time by the pope. He was extremely excited to be going on this first trip. Having read Cicero, Caesar, Livy and Tacitus, Rome was for him both the seat of past glory and the focus of his patriotic dream of a united Italy, a political credo he had assumed in rebellion against his reactionary father. Monaldo Leopardi had kept Giacomo at home largely out of fear that the young man's brilliant mind would be polluted by liberal influences. He need not have worried. Giacomo hated the eternal city. The place was noisy and filthy, the people stupid. 'All the greatness of Rome,' he wrote home, 'has no other purpose than to multiply the distances and numbers of steps you have to climb to see anyone at all.'

LRB 21 July 2005 | PDF Download