I was fifteen when I first saw Rome. One of my mother's sisters had invited me to stay with her; we lived in a little hotel near the Via Nomentana and we were on our feet from morning till evening because I wanted to see “everything.” I came home convinced that I had actually seen “everything.” It took a few more years before I began to realize that I would never be able to see “everything” in Rome, and would have to spend the rest of my life exploring it.
Having grown up in the western part of Germany after the war, in cities that had been destroyed and then drearily rebuilt, I arrived in Rome in 1966 to find a city that, it seemed, had yet to undergo the heartless ravages of modernization. I saw Pope Paul VI carried through the streets on the gilded platform, the sedia gestatoria that once bore the consuls of the Roman Republic; it swayed past me, borne aloft by eight sediariiclothed in red damask. The accompanying cardinals wore ermine mozzettas about their shoulders, their long red satin trains buttoned high, clinging in folds on their backs. At that time, the radical decisions that would break with the liturgical tradition had already been taken, but the old forms were still being observed, just as, seen from Earth, certain stars still twinkle although their light has already been extinguished.
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