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Yes . . .but Rome is bigger than it looks and a few map-inches turned out to be several miles . . .and you could get killed on the street-with-no-name which turns out to be a narrow, no-sidewalks, practice racetrack for Italian Grand Prix drivers . . And the only sign I saw in an hour of walking pointed straight ahead and said "Naples." It was then I began to wonder if any old catacombs was going to be worth this.

It was — and this time the kid wasn't scared.

Homework: "Catacombs . . .underground Christian cemeteries . . .deep galleries carved from soft volcanic stone . . .hundreds of thousands of graves . . .including Popes and martyrs . . .Second to Fourth Centuries, then abandoned until 16th Century . . . ."

It isn't like the Forum where you can just go wandering around. Guided, one-language tours only. And many posted rules. No photos. No smoking. No leaving the group. And no interrupting the guide with questions.

Okay, down we go. The corridors are narrow, uneven, cool, dimly lighted. The color of everything is a tufa-brown, even the light from the guide's flashlight, which needs new batteries. For those expecting skeletons, there are none on the tourist routes. Some well-preserved wall paintings, many Christian inscriptions incised in brick and marble. A maze of passages in which groups speaking different languages may meet head on — only to be switched out of each other's way like trains shunted onto sidings. Forty-five minutes. Tip the guide.

Once back in the fresh air, I felt as if I had just been on a mouse-tour of a giant underground cheese with many voids and holes.

There are several catacombs under different managements in the area. I had seen one, had I seen them all? Maybe. I caught a public bus back to the city.

In the middle of a huge traffic jam near the Tiber, a tiny Cinquecentro Fiat is stopped in mid-roadway with its hood up, its engine silent and its driver, a pretty young woman, standing helplessly midst a sea of epithets and anger. A Rome police officer in an impeccably pressed uniform, white gloves and designer sunglasses (with mirrored hexagonal lenses) approaches in a John-Gotti stroll. He holds a cigarette in one hand, salutes the young woman with the other, then takes a cursory look at the expired engine. A hundred horns sound a furious chorus. The cop engages in a smiling interview with the car's driver. She smiles back. He takes off his sunglasses. She lights a cigarette. He takes a note pad from his breast pocket and writes with a pen. The traffic jam may now extend from Trastevere to the Vatican. The cop closes the car's hood, taking care of his clean gloves. Driver and police officer seem to be getting along nicely. Two exasperated truck drivers volunteer to push the Fiat into a parking place. Cop nods, okay, fine, do that. He continues interview with driver. The stream of cars begins to move around them . . . Trevi fountain may be the most popular tourist site in Rome, every day, at almost any hour. The head count at the Vatican may be greater, but Trevi is always a happy circus of people, a too-big fountain squeezed into a too-small public square. Book facts: "85 feet high, 65 feet wide . . .central figure is the sea-god, Neptune . . .the work of sculptor, Nicolo Salvi . . .basin holds coins thrown by those who wish to return one day to Rome . . . ." Yes, but there must be some other reason for these crowds, for the souvenir vendors, for the fruit stands, for the postcard salesmen, for the endless parades of tour groups following their leaders' flags. Almost everyone wants to toss a coin into the water, of course, but that could not be the only reason for such a mob scene. Turn your back to the fountain and throw the coin over your left shoulder . . .or is it the right? . . .no matter, you'll return . . .you'll see! The coins freckle the bottom of the basin (and the city gladly sweeps up the contributions).

Is it the theatricality that brings so many people? Like many other tourist sites in Rome, Trevi is a stage. The giant figures and prancing horses and tumbling, noisy waters are a performance, and the audience surrounds the show in a semi-circle which has an orchestra level, a mezzanine and a balcony.

Never mind the coins or Agrippa or Pope Clement, my bet is that Trevi's fame is really Federico Fellini's legacy — the fountain is a pop icon born of La Dolce Vita, the very place where Anita Ekberg waded about in her long, black gown while a perplexed Marcello sat on a stone bench holding the glass of milk (for the white kitten, remember?) Tour guides still point out where these two cavorted three decades ago. Right there . . .take my picture there . . .where she was . . . .

I love this fountain for my own nostalgic, romantic reasons — and I never fail to toss a coin over my left shoulder and wish that it will not be for the last time. The first time I saw them, the mounted police, I thought they had come from a parade, that it was perhaps a holiday. There were two, in smart blue uniforms, red stripes on the pants, gleaming black boots, swords in chrome scabbards. They rode on very large gray-white horses and went slowly down the center of Via Condotti, the elegant, pedestrians-only shopping street. Alerted by the clatter of hoofs on pavement, the crowds parted with hardly a look, giving the big animals passage; up above, the two police were having an easy conversation, paying no attention to the people below. I watched their imperial progress up the street, late sun at their backs, two silhouetted figures sitting tall above the crowds. Later, I saw many more Carabinieri around Rome, always in pairs, always on the white horses.

They say there are two great honors for Italian families — that they may have a son who will become a priest — or a Carabinieri. "The most famous of Rome's seven hills . . . ." The phrase caught my attention. (The seven-hills business had always puzzled me because this doesn't seem a hilly place, yet there they were on the maps, all with names.) The Capitoline hill is the smallest, yet most important they say, a place where I should try to envisage the monuments and temples that once faced the Forum from here. The hill, in the center of Rome, is reached by a long stairs and topped by a Michelangelo-designed square — the Campidoglio — formed by three facing buildings: a Senatorial Palace, still used by local government, and two palace-museums — wherein, one Sunday, I find three wonderful things.

A small bronze statue — the Spinario — depicts a young Greek boy removing a thorn from his foot. There is nothing heroic about the lad, but his pose and gesture are so lifelike, so human, that museumgoers circle the figure and circle again, unwilling to leave the affecting image behind. I thought, this kid is everyone's child.

Then: A giant figure of an ancient god reclines in front of a fountain at the New Palace entrance. He is called Marforio, wears a bemused expression, and was one of several statues credited, in the Middle Ages, with the ability to talk — specifically to make satirical comments about those in power. If Marforio had been a real person, Fellini would surely have cast him in a movie.

The third wonderful thing? The bronze she-wolf herself, suckling the twins, Romulus and Remus, ancient symbol of Rome, a statue by an unknown Greek or Etruscan artist, perhaps 2,500 years old, perhaps more. My first sight of the famous work is as if I have spotted a noted person on the street — There she is, I know her, what's-her-name . . .you know, the one in Rome, the one with the two kids, the wolf . . . .

Yes, but I learn something else today, too. Those kids were added to the statue hundreds of years later — and considering that, I take another hard look. Of course! Why didn't I sense it before? The twins may seem cherubic, but they are rendered as greedy, Renaissance brats compared to the wolf — which maintains a look of aloof dignity.

From a window in the museum, I look down on the square below. A Sunday wedding party is gathering in all its finery. The men and women stand on the black-white trapezoids of the Campidoglio's marble pavement like elegant chess pieces. Sound of their babble rises and falls as the murmurings from within a seashell. My imagination ignites . . .and the people below are now wearing togas and sandals . . .they must be waiting for Augustus . . . .

On certain days the Pope addresses the crowd which gathers in St. Peter's square (which is an oval). The Holy Father appears at a window in his private apartments, the second from the right on the top floor of the big, boxy Apostolic Palace. From any location below, this window seems very high and far away. Shortly before the Pope appears, a long, red, embroidered drapery is hung from the window and the French-style casements are swung open and only thin curtains are left to flutter, the last veil. At noon there are two strokes of a bell and the curtains part and the Pope appears, a small figure in white at the bottom edge of a too-large picture frame.

On this All Saint's Day, the patient crowd about half fills the sunny square — about 50,000 people, they say. Video cameras are raised all around; blinks from strobes bestow a contemporary form of applause. Children's shiny helium balloons escape and drift over the crowd — green dinosaurs, Mickey Mice.

When the Pope's amplified voice first projects from several speakers, pigeons are startled into flight. The small, motionless man in white speaks for several minutes. Every word is distinct and the crowd seems to listen. Then a Latin prayer is accompanied by the voices of an unseen chorus. All of this echoes richly across the great space.

When the Pope disappears from the window, bells in St. Peter's begin to ring, hammering at first, loudly celebrating, commoting among themselves, an arrhythmia, a clamorous argument in vibrating bronze. The Pope's curtains are drawn, the red drapery is pulled in, the windows closed. The spiritual emperor is departed, but the bells continue for a persistent time as the crowd drifts away in all directions. I allow the sound to descend on me — a joyous tirade against sin, I suppose it is, an exhortation for me to lead a better life.

I look at my watch and wonder: What does the Pope do next today? Pranzo (lunch), I suppose — at least, that's what I'm going to do. Everyone gets a little hungry around midday. When power and politics went wrong for Popes long past, they sometimes took refuge in a great fortress nearby the Vatican. It is known as Castel Sant' Angelo these days, a major tourist attraction, another of Rome's enduring symbols, a huge, drum-shaped structure perched on the banks of the Tiber, topped with the famous statue of the angel, St. Michael, drawing his sword. Museums sometimes numb my brain, but Sant' Angelo lets me pretend. Yes, it is a museum, but a realistic one where Italian parents let their kids run around the walls and bang-bang at invaders. Any traveler who has grown weary of trying to piece together history on the basis of a guide book and a few broken columns will relax and enjoy at Sant' Angelo.

The make-believe begins as one enters the fortress via massive wooden drawbridges. An armorer's blacksmith shop has a huge bellows and many tools scattered around and seems ready to start turning plowshares into swords at the drop of a match. Likewise the Corporal of the Guard's Room — helmets and weapons and lanterns all about and ready to defend the Pope. Outside, on the "bastioni" (parapets), there are guns and medieval catapults and neat piles of white marble cannon balls.

Within the huge structure there are elegant rooms, huge fireplaces, massive old furniture, frescoes in recognizable condition and creaking wooden floors. The treasury room contains massive chests; a storeroom deep in the fortress held oil and grain in giant amphora. This is a nice old castle, not a ruin. It even has a pleasant cafe on the top deck where one can sip an espresso in the sun and take a 360° look around the Roman skyline.

What color is Rome? The easy, trite descriptive term usually given is "ochre" — albeit it takes a painter to explain what that out-of-a-tube term (like "Siena") really means. As I wander around neighborhoods of Rome, I see buildings which reflect many palettes of color, mostly warm and muted, mellowed by age, streaked, faded, flaking, stained, neglected, hardly ever new-looking, but every one original and all different: mustard, peach, pigskin, red wine, amber, terra cotta, rust, melba toast, honey, rose, iron oxide, spaghetti-sauce, mud, bay horse, weathered cedar, potter's clay, cinnamon, suntan pants, old brick, tawny port, purple heart, cafe latte . . . .

What color is Rome? Don't ask. So. A visitor here may, after a time, begin to feel an elementary grasp of history, a sense of control over the story of the place, the layers. The centuries, like ducks, get put in a row. The Caesars and the Popes get sorted out . . .a little. Benito Mussolini's xenophobic maps, still displayed on the Forum walls, depict the spread of the lost empire. Museums date the artifacts: five hundred years before Christ — two thousand years since. That's it, no? No. There were some interesting people here before that. I find the Etruscans in an out-of-the-way palace after a walk through the Borghese gardens. Villa Giulia is included in all the guide books, but it does not draw big crowds. It was built by a Renaissance Pope as a luxurious hideaway in which to entertain friends. Now it contains the largest, finest collection of Etruscan art and artifacts in the world, an absorbing albeit limited picture of these enigmatic people who populated Italy from the Po Valley to Rome for hundreds of years before the rise of Roman power.

Like the Egyptians, Etruscans believed in an afterlife in which the deceased would need stuff — nothing fancy, just the ordinary accouterments of everyday. As a result, Etruscan tombs are the source of almost all that is known about these pre-Romans.

Villa Giulia's many glass cases could be called an unimaginative display, but a single astonishing object will make a visit there memorable — a terra cotta double-sarcophagus on the cover of which recline the life-size, sculpted figures of a husband and wife, presumably enjoying a serene and happy afterlife together. It is the work of a 6th Century Etruscan artist — who understood how to depict a love that would never die. The flip phone has come to Rome — everyone is making al fresco calls: monks, Gypsy pickpockets, policemen, waiters at sidewalk cafes, street artists, tour guides, Via Veneto prostitutes, Swiss guards at the Vatican — and a young man on the Spanish Steps who holds a young woman in a long embrace, her head buried on his chest, his chin over her shoulder, his arms circling behind her back — where he is punching in a number on his phone. You are told it is impossible for utility companies to dig in old Rome without striking some archaeological trove, some layer of civilization, some urgent reason to stop work and call in the academic authorities. And even after scholars have investigated and excavated and sifted and brushed, another decade or two may pass before the significance of the new hole in the ground is understood, much less explained.

An extraordinary illustration of Rome's layered history can be found at the Basilica San Clemente, a small treasure of a 12th Century church in an otherwise uninteresting district. Thanks to the curiosity and diligence of an Irish Dominican priest in 1857, excavations beneath his church revealed the well-preserved remains of another, 4th Century Christian church — and below that, most remarkable of all, the remains of two houses from days of the Roman Republic. One of these was later converted to a Mithraem — a temple for the clandestine worship of a pagan god, Mithras.

The three layers of history at San Clemente are preserved and available to visitors in a real (not just realistic) way. The subterranean pavements and earthen floors tilt and slant; Mithras himself, in bas relief on the altar, is shown cutting the neck of a sacrificial bull; the torrent of a main Roman sewer, the Cloaca Maxima, still roars through the foundations — and a room which may have been a gymnasium where gladiators trained is eerily empty . . .until you think about it.

Had I seen it all now? Had I covered all the important sites? I thought so. But then, in the taxi on my way to the airport, I spot a near-perfect marble temple I must have missed — I twist to look out the rear window — a beautiful, round structure with Greek-style fluted columns! How could I have overlooked that? More important, what was it?

On the flight home, I dug out my guides and found the answer: "Temple of Vesta . . .oldest standing marble temple in Rome . . .dates from the reign of Augustus . . .a church in the Middle Ages . . .ancient produce market was nearby . . . ."

Good thing I threw a coin in the fountain . . .Arrivederci Roma! . . .I'll come back soon, to continue . . . .

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